What's Up, Westy Academy!

Hello Westy Academy Families!

Pardon a longer message today—I just wanted to bring up two quick things with our community.

Despite our student’s hard academic work, we’re noticing a bit of a concerning trend in our electives classes. Our students are starting to dabble in profanity. Naturally, we address this on the spot, but we’ve seen an unusual uptick in casual swearing outside of our students’ homerooms. Our specials and electives teachers are seeing this behavior all the way down to first grade!

Although this is concerning, it’s not unnatural or unheard of. Children by their nature push boundaries, and one way to get an adult’s attention is to say something they’re not supposed to! There is also the reality that “bad words” in one family are totally acceptable in another family. “Oh my G*d!” or “That’s so stupid!” may be deeply offensive in one household, and it may not even get noticed in another. There are a few ways you can address this at home if you are noticing that your student is coming home with language you don’t approve of.

• Talk to your students about certain language being OK in some settings and not in others. Something I say with my kids is that when they go to school they are going to their job. While you’re at work you have to use professional language as you don’t want to offend your boss or your customers. This works well for intermediate aged students.
• For very young children, we have found the most success with the following: “If you don’t know what a word or phrase means, then don’t repeat it!”
• For middle school aged students, talking to them honestly seems to work well: the way you talk around your friends should be different than how you speak to adults. I use the work example a lot with middle schoolers, but the following example works as well: “Look, you don’t want to go up to your teacher or your parents and tell them all about a crush, do you? That would be awkward! But you might tell your friends about it! Likewise, when you’re around adults you want to use the language that is suited for that conversation. I talk with my boss differently than I talk with my friends from college.”

To be clear, most of this strikes us as pretty innocent. Our students aren’t cursing at teachers. We just want to make sure that our students don’t develop bad habits and we certainly don’t want our students to go home feeling offended. We’re well known in the district—particularly our middle schoolers—for being very polite, professional and respectful when we go on field trips, visit the high school, practice interviews at job fairs and while we travel abroad. We want to continue to help our students put their best foot forward in all settings. Please help us with this and any feedback you may have, we’d love to hear it.

That’s it for this week! Enjoy the long weekend!

Russ Warwick

Principal

Westminster Public Schools

Westminster Academy for International Studies

7482 Irving St.

Westminster, CO 80030

p. 303-657-3882

o. 303-428-2494

rwarwick@westminsterpublicschools.org |http://www.westminsterpublicschools.org/

Street Wise Arts presents Fresh Fibers with Alexandria Jimenez!

Explore art activism through fiber art. Students will explore the use of color, typography, textiles and texture while creating flags, wearable art and other 3D objects. Participants will learn about artists from Keith Haring to Nick Cave and their impact on art and society. Final artworks will highlight the youths interests, perspectives and personal voice.

Join us! Classes start next Tuesday, February 28th @ 3:40pm!

Space is LIMITED! Make sure to complete the paperwork today!

REGISTRATION LINK BELOW!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc-XNxwOlIX-s0kPntQKIoY6aJg9CspQ7yAKC04-N5Jc9mabw/viewform

We wanted to take a moment and celebrate our students and teachers! For the past few weeks, both the teachers and the students have been working very hard: we are all pushing to make the most out of the weeks before the CMAS test so we can perform our very best on the state assessment. We are seeing some very dramatic academic gains and hope the trend continues! Please congratulate your student on their hard work this long three day weekend!

• February 20th: Presidents Day--No School for students
• February 24th: Coffee with the Principals @ 8:15am
• February 27th: Early Dismissal @ 1:40pm
• March 1st: Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) @ 5:00pm
• March 2nd: Spring Parent Teacher Conferences; 4:00pm-8:00pm
• March 6th: Early Dismissal @ 1:40pm
• March 6th: Spring Parent Teacher Conferences; 4:00pm-8:00pm
• March 10th: Cap and Gown Photos; Preschool, Kindergarten, 8th graders
• March 13th: Early Dismissal @ 1:40pm
• March 13th: After School Skate Party @ Skate City Arvada; 2:00pm-4:00pm
• March 11th-18th: 8th grade International Trip to Costa Rica
• March 20th-24th: Spring Break
• March 27th: Early Dismissal @ 1:40pm
• March 30th: Community Engagement Night--Discipline and Children; Exploring Love and Logic @ 4:30pm
• March 31st: Coffee with the Principals @8:15am

Parents!

Thanks for making our first parent class successful, and a special thanks to Mr. Figueroa for leading a difficult conversation on cyber security with our parents. For our future classes we are going to make sure we have a translator (even if the speaker is bilingual) and we will provide childcare as well.

Our next parent/community engagement night is scheduled for March 30th! Topic for the next meeting will be Discipline & Children--Love & Logic Parenting Styles