Community Nest

"Relationships are the agents of change." Dr. Bruce Perry

February 21 - February 25, 2022

Our Gray Hawk Mission Statement

OUR GRAY HAWK FAMILY works together to help students feel safe, loved, and inspired so they can be empowered learners and engaged citizens.

Gray Hawk Kindergarten Round Up Parent Meeting - March 22 6:30 pm

Gray Hawk Talent Show on Thur. 6 PM at BLHS

Don't forget that OUR First Annual Talent Show is this Thursday, March 3 at 6:00 pm. OUR Gray Hawk staff will perform to kick off the event, followed by the awarding of the USD458 STAR AWARD. OUR GRAY HAWKS will show off their talents for the rest of the event.

All participants MUST attend the rehearsal at 6:00 pm on Wednesday at BLHS.

We CANNOT wait to see you all there!

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CALLING ALL MENTORS

We know that it takes a village to raise a child and we need your help! Loving and caring adults are needed to help support what we are doing at Gray Hawk. There are opportunities to support classroom teachers with projects as well as work with individual students on a daily or weekly basis. Please click on the logo above to get more information and become a mentor at Gray Hawk.

All community members are welcome! Dr. Springer is very interested in signing up some male mentors that are willing to give up to 60 minutes a week working with individual students. If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Dr. Springer directly for more information. Thank you!

CONFERENCES

Conferences were a rousing success! Thank you so much for being able to pivot with the cancellation of school due to snow.

Featured Literature

This week as we prepare to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday we’ll be taking a look at some stories that let children know that being different is worth celebrating! We may not think of Dr. Seuss as a diversity author, but he definitely wrote stories that the theme focuses on how being different is OK.

Our featured story this week is Horton Hears a Who. This book showcases Dr. Seuss’ ability to create a heartwarming story, along with an enjoyable story that all can enjoy! When Horton discovers a clover that actually contains a village of people he decides he needs to help them. Through a lengthy list of hardships, teasing, and being made fun of, Horton sticks by his friends. After all, “a person’s a person no matter how small”.

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The Sneetches and Other Stories - Dr Seuss

In this timeless story Dr. Seuss tackles the idea that we have to look a certain way to be accepted. The idea of having a star on the belly making a character better always tickles young readers, but it is apparent by the end that looking different shouldn’t matter at all.

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Gertrude McFuzz - Dr. Seuss

This is another classic story about Gertrude, the Girl Bird, who wants to look like other fancy birds. Through many silly actions, at the end Gertrude learns that she is perfect just the way she is. Every student can relate to wishing they had what others had, looked like others do or dressed like others.

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The Butter Battle Book - Dr. Seuss

In the Butter Battle Book Seuss presents a cautionary tale about the importance of respecting differences. Using his typical rhyming verse the book is a great way to point out that being different is not a reason to fight.

PROMOTING DIVERSITY

As a part of our commitment to ensuring that our students are exposed to the contributions of people of color and from different backgrounds, we kicked off this past week by giving daily clues to a famous person from history that has made our world a better place. This past week, the students heard the following clues:

I was born on March 14, 1997 in Columbus, Ohio. I was one of four children in my family. My mom and dad were not able to take care of us, so our grandparents adopted us and provided us with a very good life. When I was six years old, I tried gymnastics for the first time and fell in love with it.

When I was 15 years old, I left public school so that I could be homeschooled. This gave me the opportunity to train 32 hours a week to attain my dream of being an Olympic athlete. I would go on to become the world’s greatest female gymnasts.

I am the most decorated female gymnast with 30 World and Olympic medals. When I was 16, I became the first African American all around world champion. In 2016, I became the first female gymnast to win four gold medals at a single Olympic games in Rio in 2016. Out of the 555 US Olympic athletes at the games that year, I was the shortest American athlete at the Olympic games at 4’6”

She began suffering from the Twisties at the Olympics in Japan in 2020. The twisties are a condition that makes it very difficult for gymnasts to track where they are in the air. It can be very hard for gymnasts to do well if they are suffering from the twisties.

Celebrating Simone Biles

Neuro News

I was incredibly fortunate to be invited to speak about the Applied Educational Neuroscience framework at the AEN Symposium last Saturday before flying down and to share at the Attachment & Trauma Network's Creating Trauma Sensitive School's Conference in Houston. It was a whirlwind weekend full of networking, learning, and connection. While I was enthralled to be there I was certainly ready to get back to OUR Gray Hawks. I wanted to share some photos from this conference. Some of these ideas and topics will be revisited with OUR community as we continue to build OUR Gray Hawk culture.