Rice Creek Classroom: Rice Creek Newsletter

Hello Rice Creek Families,

I wish you warmth and adventure as we head into this snowy winter weekend. We have enjoyed a cozy few weeks here at school. We were honored to have Joanna Chao and Grace share the traditions, stories, and foods of Chinese New Year. The sharing of stories and traditions enrich our experiences and boaden our understandings. We are grateful for the opportunities to celebrate the richness of our community together. We had a great time at Dodge Nature Center as well, finding ourselves in appreciation of time to get out of the classroom together. We hope you were able to enjoy time together as a family on Thursday and Friday.

Staff and faculty took this time to invest in the valuable work of connecting as a community and thinking critically about how we can best invest in our work as educators. As adults, the process of working and growing together is dynamic, requires listing and compromise, and brings to light our shared and varied goals and needs. This is true for our children in the classroom as well. Children striving to work together in our classroom community looks like: compromise, honesty, listening, advocating for needs,and sometimes disagreements or conflict. Lower Elementary children are doing the hard work of balancing their own desires, needs, and perspectives with those of the community. They are deeply invested in their friendships, hold bold and inventive ideas for their work, and are discovering who and how they are in a community of their peers. This type of work is fundamental to their development, but can also get messy and difficult (just like when they were learning to feed themselves). Children often recognize or define discomfort or conflict in social interactions as a friend being "mean" or "not my friend"; and, indeed, children are sometimes unkind or make mistakes in the face of conflict or heartache. Recognition of this is not to say, however, that we as adults should ignore or accept unkindness, but instead, use it as an opportunity to teach and build skills. This type of support guides our children in navigating difficulty social interactions, and is different than how we advocate for them in situations of abuse or bulling. I have attached an article here that highlights some of the manifestations of this difficult, important work and what we can do as parents to guide our children. I hope it can be of some use to you and your family.

There is so much work happening and I have included some photos from the past weeks for you to enjoy.

Notes and Reminders:

MCA practice testing - 3rd grade students will get a chance to take a practice MCA test on Monday, February 26th. The purpose is to give opportunity to familiarize themselves with the computer system, process, and testing language. There is no need to plan differently for this day. They will spend a little over an hour on this with the guidance of GRS staff and myself.

Noon Dismissal - Wednesday March 14th. Look for transportation details to come from GRS Announcements.

Conferences - Thursday and Friday, March 15th and 16th. Look for details on how to sign up to come from GRS Announcements.

Sheridan Story - A lime-green flier came home in your child's folder yesterday. Below is a message from Saleha Erdmann, or amazing elementary social worker, regarding this flier and how GRS is partnering with Sheridan Story.