update from Bernabi
Published on Feb 28, 2020 06:42

Friday, February 28, 2020

Greetings from Bernabi where we are set to transition into March!  Before we do though, I have a few quick notes on what February looked like, supported by a few quick videos for you to enjoy!

First up: I wanted to share that over the last few weeks, our morning announcements have included a daily teach-piece for our students to learn about important black leaders as we celebrated Black History Month.  I loved this approach as it helped to broaden our students’ understanding of the incredible impact so many amazing black heroes have had in areas including civil rights, women’s rights, education, sports, politics, the arts and more!   Click here for an example of our morning announcements from earlier this week to see this approach for yourself!  This week we also hosted a number of high school students from groups such as Student Government, Service Club, Choices, SLIP and in collaboration with the Dash2Change group, who presented a lesson to our fifth grade students on aspects of Black History Month using non-fiction picture books.

Next: a big thanks to YOU the Bernabi community for your tremendous response to this month’s parent survey!  Earlier this week, the Building Planning Team sat down to review your responses and created a list of areas to both celebrate our successes and create a plan to make improvements where needed.  Allow me to offer one example: We can do a better job of communicating specific initiatives, and in general as students move from up through their grade levels.  Whether by increasing communication from the classrooms (newsletters, e-mails or even Instagram), or my own e-news, Bernabi can do more to ensure that parents know about specific things we are implementing here at Bernabi.  The easiest example came from the survey’s first question, which allowed us to see that we haven’t communicated enough about Mr. Shufelt’s weekly classroom visits.  For those who did not know, something new we are doing this year is building students’ awareness of and capacity for social emotional learning.  Mr. Shufelt’s lessons are focused on developing the five social emotional competencies, which are: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making.  Be on the lookout for more specific details coming home from classroom communications, but you should feel confident over any weekend asking your children about what Mr. Shufelt talked with his/her class about that week.  This one example aside, please know that we are grateful for the amazing support we receive from our community.  Praise came pouring in from every angle of this survey, as did partnership, so just know that while you love us at Bernabi, we love you right back!

February also brought us another incredible edition of the Bernabi Broadcast.  Click here to enjoy!

That’s all for now, but I look forward to seeing so many of our Bernabi girls and their sweethearts for tonight’s Winter Wonderland Dance and many more of our community members next week for the biggest week of the year: Bernabi Reads!  Thank you to our Bernabi Parents Association once again for all of your dedication and commitment to offering our community so many incredible opportunities to support learning and make memories!

Sincerely,

David Caiazza
Principal