Parent Newsletter

It's hard to believe, but we are in the 4th nine weeks of the school year. This week in the newsletter we are going to focus on tools, strategies and ideas to help students be successful and finish the school year strong:

- A look at the Week Ahead

- 50 days of Grit and Growth

- Black History Month Essay Winners

- 4th Nine Weeks expectations

- Developing skills for our students future

- Helping students prepare to finish strong

- Counselor Corner

Thank you for all that you do to support JMS,

Phil Cox, Principal

Chris Layton, Vice Principal

Jenifer Laurendine, Dean of Students

Monday-1

A day

Environmental Club 2:45-4:00

Chess Club 2:45-3:45 Library

Track & Field Meet 4:30 at Anderson County High School

Tuesday-2

B day

Homework help for 5th/6th graders 7:00-7:30-Room 219 (Corrigan)

Interact Club 2:45-4:00-Room 311 (Painter)

Library Club 2:45-3:30

Science Bowl 2:45-4:00-Room 317 (Little)

Homework help for 5th/6th graders 2:45-3:30-Room 319 (Martin)

Homework help for 7th/8th graders 2:45-3:30-Room 301 (Hondorf) Track Practice 2:45-4:30

Wednesday-3

A day

FCA Meeting 7:10-JPAC

7/8 Grade Choir Rehearsal 1:00-2:30-JPAC

Track Practice 12:45-2:30

Thursday-4

B day

Homework help for 5th/6th graders 7:00-7:30-Room 219 (Corrigan)

Math Club Practice 2:45-4:00-Room 203 (Tracey)

Homework help for 5th/6th graders 2:45-3:30-Room 319 (Martin)

Track Meet 4:30 at Lenoir City Middle School

Friday-5

A day

Youth for Christ 7:00-JPAC

Track Practice 2:45-4:30

Saturday-6

7/8 Grade Choir Competition-Atlanta, GA

Just a reminder as the warm weather returns in the coming week to make sure to review the school dress code prior to selecting an outfit for school. We want to make sure students remember to follow and abide by the dress code. Hope you have a great week!

With the start of a new nine weeks, also becomes the beginning for new opportunities to improve. Even if you had an amazing school year to this point and you have seen a great amount of growth there are still goals you can work to achieve. During the 50 school days that remain, we will continue to focus on Grit, Growth Mindset, and Perseverance. We will highlight these skills not only as important for your time in school but also very important your future in the work force.

We have spent a lot of time over the school year discussing Grit, Growth and Perseverance. In the final nine weeks, we will look to continue this theme over the last 50 days of school. We will utilize the newsletters and school TV's along with announcements to help highlight students who are showing grit, growth and perseverance. For many students, there are great challenges in the 4th nine weeks to finish strong and work to improve their skills to finish the school year.

Ms. McCullough

She works each and every day to help support students. Her efforts to work to design, create and model engaging lessons that draw students into a deep level of learning. Ms. McCullough's efforts often take time well beyond the school day and even into weekends. She works to support students in many capacities beyond just academic needs and concerns. She has worked to support her students and facilitate support for her students in many ways. If a student is in need, and Ms. McCullough is aware, she makes efforts to help those students. She works each and every day to generate curiosity and wonder in her classroom. She utilizes instructional strategies each and every day that challenge her students to stretch their 21st century skills and she has worked over the years to try new ideas, innovative strategies, and resources. Ms. McCullough has made her imprint on our campus in several ways, but not just confined to her classroom. Her projects to help teach standards while exploring STEM skills and providing students with real world applications have made a remarkable difference to her students and also our campus. We are proud to present this month’s Leadership In Action to Ms. Julie McCullough.

Mr. Corrigan

Mr. Corrigan is an amazing teacher for several reasons. His efforts to build relationships to connect with students and also to continuously work to grow as a professional have paid huge dividends. His work each and every day and often before and after school to make efforts to help support students and building their skills. Mr. Corrigan works hard to utilize data to help improve student performance. He works with his PLC partner to reflect and review ideas that help support students further. He works to create opportunities to individualize and personalize learning opportunities for their students by utilizing data that helps them reflect on resources, strategies and ideas to increase student engagement and also improve the individual needs for their students. We are proud to present this month’s Leadership In Action to Nicholas Corrigan.

Fundraiser Spotlight: Are you curious about how your fundraiser dollars are being used? Each week, the PTO section of this newsletter will feature a different department or classroom from JMS that was helped with money from our annual direct drive fundraiser! This week the spotlight is on "Good Doing the Right Thing" cards provided to students making great decisions. This idea was sponsored by PTO to help support students doing amazing things and making great decisions in the hallways, in the classroom and in the community. Thanks to PTO, the JMS admin has cards that say "Caught Doing the Right Thing" that can be traded into the cafeteria for either a free cookie or ice cream. This is a great tool to help motivate and reward our amazing students.

If you have questions about how you can get involved with PTO at JMS, please contact Sandy Pelletier sandy@issi.net

1. For many students, the fourth nine weeks symbolizes the end of the school year, but don't be too early to finish the school year. The fourth nine weeks is filled with opportunities to improve your grade from start to finish. If you have a bad start to the nine weeks, it is not wise to simply quit! There are plenty of opportunities to improve your grade throughout the nine weeks.

2. Give your best effort and complete ALL assignments! While completion does not always result in an A or a perfect score, it definitely beats the negatives of receiving a Zero! When students simply do not submit an assignment, it is very difficult to help themselves and their grades.

3. Your effort is the most important factor in your success. To simply not try, not submit, not turn in, or give zero effort is not a reflection of what you can do, but rather a reflection of what you are willing to do.

4. Get Organized! So many hurdles and excuses have been eliminated in terms of your ability to get organized. You are digital natives, provided with a wonderful tool and resource in the laptop issued to you by the Oak Ridge Schools complete with a learning management system in Canvas. Our teachers work hard to update Canvas with weekly announcements, weekly grade updates, resources to help you learn etc. To simply ignore in class instruction, Canvas tools, and your teacher is not wise.

5. Find solutions rather than excuses! Yes, there may be a few reasons why completing your assignments can be challenging. There may even be some reasons that are truly concerning and you may need to reach out for help. However, in many cases, students simply choose to "not complete" something in hopes that either it won't count that much or they can do it later (if they have a teacher willing to take late work).

6. Just like life, late work has consequences. Sometimes it may be a reduction in point and in some cases your teacher may not take it at all. As an adult one day, you will find that being late on your work or paying your bills etc. also has consequences. Get focused, use the tools at your disposal and work to give your best effort and complete your work.

This year, the Youth Council of the Oak Ridge – Anderson County NAACP sponsored its first essay writing contest in observance of Black History Month. Middle schools of Anderson County were invited to participate, and the essay contest theme was An Unsung Hero – Who has Impacted My Life. The contest winners were awarded Tuesday night in a ceremony at the Scarboro Community Center, and all of the winning finalists were Jefferson 5th graders.

Casyn Clark was awarded 4th place ($25 and a gift card) for her essay on Mildred Loving.Isabella VanMeter was awarded 3rd place ($25 and a gift card) for her essay on Henry Ossawa Tanner. Matthew Gilliam was awarded 2nd place ($50 and a gift card) for his essay on Lonnie Johnson. Esmeralda Fuentes won 1st place ($75 and a gift card) for her essay on Toni Stone.

Esmeralda presented her winning essay to the awards ceremony assembly Tuesday night, and the finalists were in attendance to receive their prizes from Mr. Dave Anderson, the President of the NAACP Oak Ridge – Anderson County Branch. Additionally, the Youth Council presented a certificate to the 5th grade students of Jefferson in appreciation for their participation.

We know that all of our students want to achieve success. We know all of our parents, grandparents, guardians etc. want to see success for their students as well. We strongly believe all students can be successful, but also know that students have many challenges with their academics. However, one major challenge for some of our students that we know can be a major factor for change is the lack of submission of their work. More commonly we talk to students about having a "Zero" on their assignments.

We know often conversations are had between students and parents that look like the following:

Parent: What did you do in school today?

Student: Nothing

Or

Parent: Do you have any homework?

Student: No

Well here are the realities to those conversations. First, our students have a huge number of learning opportunities each and every day. With four core classes (English Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, and Science) along with multiple electives our students are often challenged each and every day with projects, assignments, problems, and several learning opportunities.

Second, there may be some nights where students truly have all of their "homework" completed. However, to truly have a growth mindset students should re-evaluate the question. For example:

Parent: What did you do today in school?

Student: We began in math by breaking down the parts to solve an equation and we applied it to a real world example of.....

Parent: Do you have any homework?

Student: I have a few math problems that I missed on my test and my teacher will allow me to correct, so I am going to work to reevaluate the process. Plus I have a test in three days in science and I'd like to review a little bit tonight, tomorrow night and the night before the test

These conversations are our goal through the promotion of grit, perseverance, and promoting a growth mindset. We believe the skills in our classes combined with helping our students learn the necessary attributes for the 21st century will be greatly beneficial to the success of our students.

We live in a world where Amazon is much more than just the longest river in the world, and a tweet is more than a sound made by a bird. Many things have changed in our world and growth of technology has ushered many of those changes. Many of the technological advancements have influenced education. In this week’s newsletter, we will work to highlight some of those changes and provide resources for students, parents, grandparents, guardians etc. in an effort to help understand the use of the tools we provide and they can greatly benefit our student’s education. In addition, we want to communicate to our students, parents, grandparents, guardians etc. not only the skills, resources, strategies for academic success but also for success in the job markets of the future.

This week’s newsletter will focus on the efforts in education to help improve student learning and understanding not only at school, but also at home with tools and technology. This week’s newsletters will highlight the resources, tools and strategies being utilized in our school to help students. The newsletter will also focus on three characteristics we are working to help our students learn for success not only in school, but also in the future in job market of the 21st century. We will focus on grit, perseverance and promoting a growth mindset with our students in an effort to help them reach their academic goals and build a great foundation of skills for the 21st century global job market.

We appreciate the support you give to your student, Jefferson Middle School, and all the efforts you make to help. This week, teachers will spend time working to review students as we prepare for the TN Ready tests. While the TN Ready test often carry pressure, anxiety and apprehension for students and staff, we want to focus on students giving their best effort. We want our students to give their best efforts, we want them to exhibit grit and perseverance when they are challenged and we want our students to take on the challenge of pursuing a growth mindset.

Good Evening from the Counseling office. We hope that you had a great week back from break and are ready to push through for 8 more weeks to finish this school year on a good note.

Now that we all know what “Grit” is and we have begun our “50 days of Grit”, we will focus for the next two weeks 8 activities that we can be involved with that can help build our level of grit and resilience. These three of the eight activities are:

1. Help Your Child Find Purpose

List and discuss your child’s goals for the future and purpose they will play in their lives on a board or on a piece of paper where it can be visible. Then, list the steps that will need to be accomplished in-order for the goals to be achieved. Help your child decorate the board or paper with powerful visuals to add positive mental attitude. Discussing this with your child will bring motivation and will help them perform better academically.

2.Encourage Your Child to Conduct “Grit Interviews”

Children are influenced to think positive or negative about life by the adults that surround them, so providing positive opportunities will help your child to think positive and build grit. Allow your child to interview individuals that you think they respect and have them ask questions about their goals when they were younger and how what were the steps that they took to achieve them. Children need to know that even adults make mistakes and fail, but then they try again and solve the problem to achieve the goal.

3.Share Stories of Gritty Famous People

Share stories of perseverance through failure can lead to great success such as Michael Jordan not making his Varsity team, or J.K. Rowling’s manuscript for Harry Potter being rejected many times. Explain to your child that if famous people didn’t use passion and perseverance to reach long-term goals, often with failures or setbacks along the way they would not be as successful as they are today. Luck” is an illusion; success is about hard work and persistence toward something you’re passionate about.