Our Coalfield School Story continued to roll on this week with a much-needed break from the seriousness that accompanies most school days. Our staff and students enjoyed participating in homecoming activities. We had many students and staff who dressed up for each day and who joyfully participated in the competitions between students and staff that we had each day. I want to thank Coach Jessica Beck Stubbs for all the extra time and effort she has put into organizing these activities for homecoming so that our students and staff could enjoy some time to be silly and build stronger relationships with one another. It was a lot of fun for all of us.
We did, however, continue to do school along with the homecoming activities. I am proud of our students for their overall attendance thus far. The Director’s Monthly Membership/Attendance Report for the first quarter shows that we had an overall attendance rate of 97.77%. We were edged out of the top spot by Oakdale who had a 97.80% attendance rate. Great job to our staff, parents, and students for this accomplishment. Showing up provides a huge chance for success. It takes a village.
I was able to get into some classrooms and do some observations this week. I observed Ms. Beth Jones Roberts 8th grade ELA class. Students were learning to extract information from written text and use a story triangle to organize the information to better comprehend what the text wanted the audience to understand. I also joined Ms. Shasta Murphy and her 1st graders as they were learning about that “sneaky e” and how it changes the sound of vowels. I was impressed with how well those little guys' ability to use what they have learned from the “Sounds First” curriculum to read words.
Ms. Paula Jones Melhorn class practiced making bar graphs from the data they collected eating different types of apples. This was done in conjunction with Johnny Appleseed Day.
I was able to observe some of our SEL (Social Emotional Learning) classes this week. This is a class we have implemented during our middle school special time. We have five different staff members who work to teach these classes. Mrs. Tiffany Deanne Thompson, our guidance counselor, teaches one of the 6th-grade classes on Monday, Mrs. Shelia Harvey, our Vice-Principal, teaches a 7th-grade class on Tuesday, Mrs. Melissa Morales, our Communities in Schools person, teaches a 6thgrade class on Wednesday, Mrs. Bethany Bunch, our School Psychologist Liason with Ridgeview, teaches a 7th-grade class on Friday, and I teach our entire 8th grade on Friday as well. During this class, we talk to students about things like character education, bullying and harassment, appropriate/safe use of technology, and etc. This week we had a guest speaker from, Rock of Ages Ministries, come in on Wednesday during the class and do a character education presentation. Also, Ms. Tiffany discussed a presentation on bullying and harassment with students.
We also implemented career exploration into our middle school special time this year. Mrs. Susanne Hitchcock Pemberton, our media specialist, and Mrs. Erin Walls Miller, our Career Coach, have worked together to create opportunities for our students to discover and explore careers through a program called Major Clarity. Our students are so lucky to have these ladies provide such a great opportunity for our middle school students.
Mrs. Jenice Pearson comes up from 3rd grade to teach our 8th graders computer applications/computer science on Mondays and Tuesdays during special time and Mrs. Whitney Jackson teaches 3rd grade RTI during those times so Ms. Jenice, who as the computer science credentials, can do this for our middle school students. Coach Kristan Conlon Headrick and Coach Shawn Basler are such great team players as they sacrifice their subjects’ time to help create more time for ELA and Math. These two phenomenal team players also took on an extra class, Intro to Social Health, to give students more opportunities to learn about character and their health. Mrs. Lana Hensley is another teacher who sacrificed her subject’s time to expose our 5th-grade students to Intro to Social Health and allow more time for ELA and Math instruction.
I also want to thank students, staff, family members, businesses, and anyone else who has gone above and beyond to support our wonderful homecoming queen candidates. These folks have worked themselves to the point of exhaustion to help create memories and to help fund the high school prom, middle school enrichment, the TCAP reward trip, and the hopes of a new school sign.
I want to close out by also saying thank you to Coach Josh Wright for using his equipment and supplies to clean the outside of our elementary entrance. Coach Wright has a business cleaning exterior surfaces and had some material left over from a job so he used it to clean a portion of our school that needed it badly. Folks, you cannot place a value on people who will graciously accept change, sacrifice their comfort and time, and take on extra responsibilities for the betterment of the students and the school. Our people are valuable to me…One-Heartbeat!
Please continue to pray for our school, our staff, and our students.