Good Afternoon Parents/Guardians,
It is hard to believe that we are into the month of December already. While the weather becomes cold and the snow begins to fall, GBS continues to move forward into the winter.
I would like to take a quick moment to welcome Judi Bernardi to the GBS team as our new school nurse. She was one of the two full time nurses at ConVal but has joined the GBS team moving forward. Welcome aboard Judi!
We have continued to work with our students here at GBS around "Respect" during the advisory classes. We have had a lot of great feedback and information from our students as they work on thinking of different examples of what respect looks like, ideas about what it doesn't look like, and defining it in their own words. We hope that this will inspire our students to be positive, encouraging, and kind individuals.
We also wanted to make sure that you all know that at any point in time, you can reach out to the school with any concerns regarding respect. We are certainly trying to do our best to help our middle school students as they navigate the sometime tumultuous waters of the middle years. If you have a concern about your student particularly around bullying, please reach out. We want to know and be a help for our students.
We hope that you have a great weekend!
Adam Caragher, Principal ~ GBS
Living the Digital Life
Great Brook School utilizes the Digital Citizenship lessons developed by Commonsense Media to, in their words, “address timely topics and prepare students to take ownership of their digital lives.” The lessons are incorporated into their ELA Library Visits and are grade-specific, age-appropriate, and up-to-date. Students are currently learning about Media Balance and Well-Being.
5th Grade: Finding My Media Balance. Helping kids learn what makes different media choices healthy or not is a good start. But how do we help them actually make responsible choices in the real world?
6th Grade: Finding Balance in a Digital World. We use digital media every day, from texting, streaming TV shows, and gaming all the way to using voice assistants or ordering our food online. For today's kids, it's a lot more than just "screen time." So how can we help students balance their online and offline lives?
7th Grade: My Media Use: A Personal Challenge. Most of us use a lot of digital media in our daily lives -- even when we don't realize it! Having a balance between online and offline time is important, but healthy media balance might look different for everyone.
8th Grade: Digital Media and Your Brain. Sometimes when you're using media, it's hard to stop. Lots of people even say they feel "addicted" to their phones or the apps and games they use. But is digital media actually designed to get you hooked? Students consider the ways different digital media does -- and does not -- help us find healthy media balance.
In addition to in-school lessons, Commonsense Media offers advice for families. Here are some tips to support Media Balance and Well-Being outside of school:
Create screen-free times and zones.
Try parental controls. Or, explore built-in digital well-being tools, such as managing notifications, turning off autoplay, adjusting settings for “downtime”.
Establish clear family rules, and model the behavior you want to see.
Watch and play together.
Help kids identify healthy behaviors.
Understand how tech companies make money (Do they sell ads? Do they sell kids' data? How do they keep kids on their apps?)
Set conditions for a full night’s sleep, for example: avoid using devices about an hour before bedtime, keep devices out of your child’s bedroom, shut off or lock devices at bedtime.
-- submitted by Sarah Hale, GBS Librarian and Technology Integration Specialist
