Notes from Eddy

Hello Eddy Families,

I hope that you have had a wonderful and relaxing holiday vacation. In our home, it was filled with a lot of holiday excitement, lots of sledding (on the sleds delivered by Santa), and lots of visits from family and friends from out of town. Whatever illness is going around hit our house very hard, so if that was the case for you too, I hope you were able to use this vacation to rest up and get well!

A reminder that we will continue to follow WeatherBug for the 20℉ “feels like” to determine if recess will be outdoors or indoors. This is different from the Weather app on the iPhone or Weather Channel; Weather Bug links to the wind and temperature on the roof of Stony Brook, whereas other apps can sometimes grab measurements from as far away as Norton. If we have outdoor recess because the "feels like" is 20℉ or above and it is not raining, only students who bring snowpants and boots may play in the snow. Students without snowgear will play on the clear pavement or the playground structure if it is clear of ice and snow.

The Brewster PTO meeting is on Wednesday, January 14 @ 7:00pm at Eddy Elementary. We hope that you can attend in-person or virtually, as your support and involvment in our schools is important for all our students' success, and this is one way you can be involved.

Here's to a great week of learning!

Respectfully,

Steve Guditus

Principal and Lead Learner, Eddy Elementary School

Our Eddy Scripps Spelling Bee finals were held on the Tuesday before the holiday break. Congratulations to all our classroom finalists, who participated on stage to spell words, and as a school we celebrated all things literacy! Our spelling bee finalists who participated were:

• Grade 3: Camille M, Camden F, Anna S, Grant H
• Grade 4: Micah S, Nora P, Joshua E, D'Andre W
• Grade 5: Olivia R, Elena L, Nicholas M, Davis H

Our winner was fifth grader Elena L, and our runner-up was third grader Grant H. A job well done by all! Representing Eddy Elementary School, Elena will take a written qualifying test in January to determine qualification in the regional competition, with the possibility of representing Massachusetts at the Scripps Spelling Bee National Finals in Washington, DC! In the sudden death finals between Grant and Elena, it was a close competition, and the winning word was "prestigious."

If you were able to make it, the power of music was on full display at our winter concert! Our musicians worked hard, were determined, and did their best. Truly, it was a wonderful opportunity to showcase students being Eddy R.E.A.D.Y. A job well done to all our musicians, and a big thank you to Mr. Glancy and Mrs. Faris for their guidance, teaching, conducting, and coordinating. It was amazing!

Spirit days were a success! Thank you for helping to make these fun days a part of our school culture and climate, where we can have fun together while learning too!

See below: adults and kids aged 11+ are invited to a free workshop on Thursday, 1/22/26 at NRMS from 6-7pm. Richard Guerry, an international expert and speaker on digital mindfulness and digital safety will present with tips and information helpful to adults and students age 11+. This is free of change and no registration is required. This is a collaboration between Nauset Regional Public Schools, Children's Cove, and Barnstable County. We hope you can attend!

It’s exciting to see all the bright blues and yellows of new play structures coming together for our new Stony Brook playground! Lots of progress has been made, from removing huge boulders to grading the area for the play equipment.

One of the next steps is to install the poles that will hold up the safety netting. The netting will help protect children in the playground space from stray baseballs during the Whitecaps season on the adjacent field.

The new poured-in-place surface will be installed in the spring, as soon as the temperatures are warm enough. It’s a real improvement that will make the playground fully accessible for all our Brewster children.

With a "safety first" approach, the area will remain closed until the project is fully completed. We greatly appreciate everyone's support as we look forward to May 2nd, our tentative date for the playground ribbon cutting!

- Katie Jacobus, Brewster School Committee Chair

- Marie Enochty, Brewster School Committee Vice-Chair

Believe it or not, we are already starting the transition for fifth graders to become sixth graders in middle school! All Eddy fifth graders will visit Nauset Regional Middle School (NRMS) on Tuesday, January 13, 2026 during the school day. Students will take a bus to NRMS, be paired up with a sixth grade Brewster student, meet with NRMS Principal Dr. Cohen and meet NRMS Guidance Counselor Mr. Saum, who will loop with students starting next year and be their guidance counselor for all three years. Students will attend classes with their sixth grade buddy, and have an opportunity to eat lunch in the cafeteria (at no charge, and students may opt out and bring a lunch from home). There will be additional opportunities to build the bridge between Eddy and NRMS throughout the winter and spring. One big opportunity for families to put on your calendars is the NRMS Parent Information Night, on Wednesday, January 14, 2026 from 6-7pm at NRMS in Orleans.

I've recently started listening to the podcast "Good Inside," hosted by Dr. Becky Kennedy, a clinical psychologist, whose podcast covers a variety of topics focused on supporting kids and parenting, and most recently, she hosted Dr. Jean Twenge, who wrote the book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Teach World. Dr. Twenge is a researcher who has written a book about navigating how to raise and support kids around smartphone use and AI. In the podcast, Dr. Becky and Dr. Jean discussed the importance of clarity and consistency, and establishing simple family rules to help provide healthy ways to use technology in productive ways:

• Keep phones out of bedrooms at night. Removing the temptation to use the phone at night will ensure that kids can truly stay focused on going to sleep and staying asleep. Both Dr. Jean and Dr. Becky say this is the #1 thing you can do to help provide smartphone use structure.
• Delay smartphone ownership until a child truly needs one, which Dr. Jean and Dr. Becky says could be when students get their drivers license or has more independence such as late middle school or early high school when students start making independent plans with friends and may need to call you for a ride. Do so when it makes sense for your family.
• Set predictable daily limits on entertainment screen time. These kinds of routines help kids feel safe, reduce power struggles, and give parent/caregivers confidence about how to respond as technology becomes a bigger part of children’s lives.

Another key takeaway from the conversation is the importance of staying connected with your student, even in homes where adults are also on their devices. Dr. Becky encourages parents to choose small, intentional habits, such as:

• Put phones aside during key moments like dinner or the ride home from school.
• Name it out loud when you do need to use your phone for a specific purpose (“I have to send this one work text, then I’ll be fully with you."
• Create “tech-free pockets” each day when everyone in the family unplugs together.

1. Most kids in 2025 are getting their first cellphone when they are 10 or 11 years old;
2. Unrestricted access to the internet and social media can have significant negative impacts on kids' well-being and mental health.

These small steps model healthy balance and open the door for ongoing conversations about digital safety, responsibility, and independence with kids. Families don’t need to be perfect, they just need to have clear, consistent guidelines that work for their household. Dr. Becky and Dr. Jean suggests that when parents and caregivers are ready to provide a cellphone to your student, don't go straight to the latest iPhone or Samsung model, but instead consider providing a safer model, providing more restrictions to content and social media apps. Here are four suggestions: The 4 Best First Phones for Kids from Wirecutter Magazine and the New York Times.

If you'd like to listen to the entire podcast, you can do so here: https://www.goodinside.com/podcast/15031/raising-kids-in-a-world-of-smartphones-ai/

As we grow our Farm to School programming and initiatives, if you are interested in assisting in some way, please fill out this Farm to School (FTS) Volunteer Interest Form here. If you have any questions, please contact our Nauset Farm to School Coordinator, Natasha Iannuzzi at iannuzzin@nausetschools.org. This past week, we held a staff meeting where we dug in more deeply to our hydroponic garden, coordianted by Nurse Miller, our new outdoor garden with FTS Coordinator Natasha Iannuzzi, and discussed possible curriculum connections in the classroom. As the weather gets warmer in the spring, we will reach out for assistance planting our spring crops!