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Letter from the Principal
Dear EMS Families & Community,
I truly hope that the recent break gave you and your family time to connect and relax, and that you were able to ring in the new year in good spirits. We were excited to welcome students back this week, and are looking forward to helping all learners end the first semester strong on January 20th.
Just two weeks from today, we will cross the halfway point of the school year. Prior to that, I strongly encourage you to review your child’s current grades, looking particularly for missing or late assignments that can still be completed. It’s also a good time to review attendance records. This is a great activity to do together, and provides an opportunity to celebrate what went well, discuss what was challenging, and set goals for the second half of the year. If you have any questions about grades, assignments, or how to best support your child’s success in a specific class, please reach out to that teacher directly; they are here for students and families, and are eager to partner with you!
One of EMS’s goals for the new year is to support students in improving timely attendance of classes and general kindness toward one another. As you may know, EMS has noticed a concerning trend this year, involving frequent or long tardies, class skipping, and rudeness to peers and staff in the hallways. While many of our students come to class on time, stay in class, and are courteous to all, we have been thinking hard about how to best address these issues in our community. Students wandering the halls and being rude to staff and peers cause our school to feel less safe, and it also means that classes are sometimes disrupted and that some students are missing important teaching and learning. We are creating a new program to help address this, which you can read more about below.
In addition to this, we are committed to continuing to identify root causes and unmet needs driving these challenging behaviors in order to consider how to best meet these needs and support learners more proactively. I am grateful to our student and parent advisory group members for being thought partners in that work. We also welcome families checking in routinely with their children to talk about how they feel about school, their sense of the school culture, and how we can best meet their needs. If you or your student have ideas you’d like to share for how we can keep motivation and pride in our school strong, we’d love to hear from you! We all play an important role in keeping our learning community healthy, and will work hard to make sure all members of our community are seen, heard, and valued.
Take care, and I hope that 2023 is a fulfilling, healthy and happy year for you and your family.
In partnership,
Sabrina Westdijk
EMS Principal
