Weekly Update
August 8th, 2023
Student Led Conferences will be coming up on February 19th, this is a time where your student will talk to you with their Advisory teacher on different aspects of their school day and year. It is important that students and their parents attend this conference to learn more about your child's grades, benchmark scores, their goals for the end of the year, their strengths and struggles in school as well as their career information from Mrs. Schrader's SEL lessons. Advisory teachers will be sending out sign ups next week. We are doing a contest to see which advisory's can get 90% of the students and parents to attend.
We have had strep and GI issues going through the school this week. Please make sure your students are staying hydrated, washing their hands with soap and water, eating healthy foods with vitamin C and are getting a good nights sleep to help keep them healthy and in school. We have lots of information and items to cover in the classroom for the year, it is important that kids are in attendance regularly so they do not get far behind. If they are sick please call them in and make a plan to come to the school to get their work so they can work on things at home. As a reminder if a kid is out sick for 3 consecutive school days they will need to have a doctors note in order for their absences to be excused.
This week is National School Counselor Week! We at Jefferson West Middle School are blessed with one of the BEST Counselors. Mrs. Schrader gives her all for students, staff and families. She works one on one with students to help them with missing assignments, studying for tests and all things academically related, she also works with students on different stresses and anxieties they might have because middle school can be tough. Mrs. Schrader takes the time to build relationships with her students so she can help them be their best selves inside and outside of school.
Please take a moment this week and reflect on how Mrs. Schrader has helped your family, your child, our community and school. If you could take the time and write her a note or send a quick email that would be great. I would love for her to know just how much everyone appreciates her work at JWMS.
Here is a great resource I came across this week that talks about Teens and Stress Management. I would encourage you to take a look at it. If you feel like your student could you some extra support, please don't hesitate to reach out to me.
5th Grade
This week, we completed one of my favorite activities with 5th grade! We started to look at career clusters! While we haven't exactly called them that yet, the students go to do a fun activity where they started to see what career cluster their interests and abilities might place them into! If your student hasn't already shared, ask them what their "color" was and what different characteristics were unique about their color. Over the next few weeks, we will be learning about six different career clusters and what makes each unique!
6th, 7th, 8th Grade
Because we had Monthly Celebration on Thursday, students didn't participate in an SECD (Social Emotional Character Development) lesson. However, we are still in our Career Unit. If you haven't already, have a conversation with your student about what you do for a living and your journey to get there. I would also encourage you to talk about some of the different careers that different members of your family have. At this age, it's all about exposing kids to as many careers as possible so eventually they can choose a career that is best for them!
8th Grade Job Shadowing Experience
Our 8th Graders get to do something unique as part of their Career Unit. Each 8th grader will have the opportunity to go and shadow a career of their choice on the morning of Wednesday, March 6th. We are asking that some parents transport their student to and from their job shadow location, so please make sure that, if you can, avoid making appointments for your student this morning. More information about this cool experience will be coming out later. For now though, you can ask your student what career they chose to go shadow!
Boys Basketball- Monday basketball at Nemaha Central. Games are played at Nemaha Central High School. 8th will be in the main gym with 7th in the Secondary gym. They do have construction going on so please pay attention to parking.
Wednesday will be the makeup game at Holton, 7th will be at Holton Elementary and 8th will be at the Middle School games start at 4:30pm
Thursday basketball at Home against Royal Valley
Knowledge Bowl- Monday practice at 3:30pm
Tuesday practice at 6:30 am or 3:30pm
Thursday practice at 6:30am or 3:30pm
