The Coalfield School Story continued this week with more challenges but a lot of one heartbeat, perseverant attitude. We had some office staff members out due to medical/sickness reasons. Ms. Sheila Walls and Ms. Hillary Swint Freytag courageously collaborated to hold down the fort. I appreciate their humor and positivity in a difficult situation. It was another One-Heartbeat effort for sure.
We had parent-teacher conferences this week. Thank you to all the parents who made time to come by and visit with us during this dedicated time. Also, thank you to Ms. Shelia Harvey and Ms. Sheila Walls for arranging dinner for our staff as they had a long day with the conferences.
The STEM class is creating a compost bin to provide fertilizer for the garden beds they plan to plant this Spring. Ms. Brianna Massengale and Ms. Whitney Jackson have worked hard to paint a scoreboard/data wall for our elementary students’ benchmarks. This scoreboard does not display names but rather numbers which allow only teachers and admin to identify how our students are progressing after each benchmark quickly. We can quickly determine how many students are proficient in Reading and Math in each grade level and which students still need help to reach proficiency.
We practiced our second fire drill this past week. Ms. Hillary was excited to finally get to pull a fire alarm. We will practice intruder drills this coming week.
Mr. Nathan Ray came to speak to our middle school and high school students about his story, about how he overcame addiction, and about making good decisions.
Ms. Susanne Hitchcock Pemberton was busy setting up the book fair for this coming week. I want to thank Ms. Jennifer Wright Basler for her willingness to mentor a future teacher. Ms. Lauren Risden is an education major at Tennessee Technological University. She has been shadowing Ms. Jennifer for a couple of weeks helping out in kindergarten. Ms. Lauren completed her required lessons this week. We were happy to have Dr. David-Alicia Laffoon, from Tennessee Tech, join us as she observed Ms. Lauren. It’s been great having Ms. Lauren at Coalfield and to share our One-Heartbeat Mission with her.
Our CMS and CHS volleyball ladies both had matches this week. We came up short in those matches but will continue to get better. Our CMS and CHS football teams continue to dominate on the football field. CMS Football beat Oliver Springs 36-0 and our CHS football team steamrolled Greenback 60-0. Our cheerleaders and band were fantastic as well. Our cheerleaders wore red shirts as they cheered in honor of Paizlee Phillips. Mr. David C Snodgrass has done a fantastic job rebuilding our band. It is great to see the band growing in numbers and improving so much. Thank you to Ms. Chris and Brittany Garmon for organizing the SWARM and encouraging them to do good through the effort to honor Paizlee at the game.
Please continue to pray for our students and staff each day.