Principal's Weekly Update

We were happy to see parents and students engaged in conversations at Student Led Conferences on Tuesday. If you were able to attend, I’m sure that you were impressed with the level of and types of work which your child has done to date this year. You may have also noticed that this work is not done in isolation- that many assignments are meant to reflect and reinforce the skills and dispositions which are components of Trumbull’s Vision of the Graduate. Once again I was impressed with the extent of the conversations– some went on for over an hour. We hope that some of these conversations will continue throughout the rest of the school year.

Impressed doesn’t even begin to describe my own reaction to our Broadway Babies production of Charlotte’s Web. The play was charming, poignant, and nostalgic, in equal measures. Stated otherwise, it was “Some Show !!”. I marvel at the number of students involved in the cast and crew– we had a small army of assistants this year. You can see visual evidence in the full cast and crew picture at the bottom. I offer my thanks to the parents who volunteered their time and talents to help out, to include dads who engaged in their own “barn raising” ceremony (they constructed the set for Zuckerman’s Farm). Mrs. Saunders and Mrs. Cerulli should take the biggest bow for their endless hours of work with our students– they once again made some real magic on our Madison auditorium stage.

One more reminder that you can see former Broadway Babies (grown up Broadway Babies ?) in the THS production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. A glance at some of the choreography and singing might be the final motivator you need to decide to check it out. Show dates are March 14th and 15th, as well as March 21st and March 22nd (Friday and Saturday of this weekend and the following weekend).Tickets are on sale now at thsmusicals.com.

We were pleasantly pleased with the number of students and parents who turned out for the informational meeting about our new Track & Field team. Our coaches have created a Google Classroom for communication throughout the season. The classroom code is 5gmhpg4. ** Please note that students should only join the classroom once they are registered online.

Good News:

We learned that two of our Madison students were named as State Level Winners in the PTSA Reflections contest and that they will be honored at a Recogntion Ceremony in May. Seventh graders Grace Giacobbe and Zoe Hoyt are our award winners-- Grace was recognized in the category of Visual Arts and Zoe was honored in the Literature category. We could not be more proud of these two students !!

Announcement:

Starting on Tuesday, March 18, and running through Friday, March 28, NJHS will be sponsoring a Book Drive to benefit Columbus School, a Pre-K-8 school in Bridgeport. We are collecting both new and gently-used children’s books, and collection boxes will be placed in both Reading and Language Arts classrooms. The top-donating reading or language arts class at each grade level will win a Dunkin Donuts breakfast!

Reminders:

Come join us at the 2nd Annual Cornhole Tournament on Friday, March 21st at 6 pm. Proceeds will support the PTA. The entry fee is $25 for teams of 2 (student + adult). Register now here. As I’ve said in previous weeks– we will have the NCAA basketball tournament games on a big screen TV, so the event doubles as a “watch party”-- the event provides some real “laid back” fun and a time to socialize, for both students and parents.

Madison PTA’s Annual Online Auction is back next weekend. Participating is easy:

• Register as a participant

• When bidding opens, you can set your lowest bid and highest bid and the system will automatically do the bidding for you.

• You will receive email notifications if you are the highest bidder and winning the prize, or if you’ve been outbid.

• Some prizes have a buy it now option where you can pay a certain price and the prize will be yours.

• When bidding closes, you will receive email notification if you have won any prizes.

• You will be contacted about coordinating prize pickup in Trumbull for any prizes that can’t be emailed to you.

• Not interested in bidding on prizes, but want to support the PTA? There is also a donate option at the end of the auction catalog.

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Bidding begins Friday, March 21st at 8:00 pm and ends at 10:00 pm on Sunday, March 23rd. Check out the prizes here. New prizes are still being added every day.

In a bonus "big photo" at the very bottom of the letter, you see a screenshot of the most importnat morning news from the week. You might be familiar with the WFSB morning news "Hometown Scramble" competition--Scot Haney shows the names of 3 Connecticut towns wtih the letters all jumbled. It's then a race for viewers to solve it and to be the first to send in the correct answers, Our own John Mastrianni was the winner one day this week-- John supplied them with this photo to accompany the announcement that he was the winner. Perhaps our ongoing focus on morphology and how words are put together helped John to hone his word deciphering skills.

So much going on next week-- I didn't even mention yet that the students will be enjoying a "World Langauge Week", filled with fun activities which celebrate langugage and culture. This Sullivan will start his week with some corned beef on Sunday in anticipation of St. Patrick's Day (note this week's background). As a reminder, the students have Monday off-- not because of St. Patrick's Day, but instead because it is a staff Professional Develpoment Day-- we might refer to it as St. PD's Day. I will end with that, which probably doubles as both a "dad joke" and a bad joke. Enjoy the rest of your weekend !!

Take care,

Peter Sullivan