Happy New Year! We have some exciting updates for you as we begin the new year, including highlights from December and January!
Before winter break, we hosted our first Showcase Event for students and parents. This was a wonderful opportunity for students to present the projects they’ve worked on during the first semester. We saw an incredible array of artwork, music, animation, photography, costume design, gaming, and more! Our next Showcase Event will be in May, giving our community another chance to share new and creative projects.
Photos: Student work shared during our Winter Showcase
We also held our fourth and fifth Parent Circle meetings in December and January. Last month’s discussion focused on personal and educational values. This topic came from a recent motion during school meeting about implementing a community values-setting process. The process will occur twice a year, providing an opportunity for both staff and students to come together and discuss the values that define our school community. This new addition will help us clarify the type of space we want to create and sustain.
As mentioned in previous updates, our staff regularly hold “Staff Values” discussions, where we focus on one key topic each month. Last month’s discussion centered around student responsibility and the balance between a student taking full ownership of their actions/decisions and the role of staff in guiding and leading. With this new community values-setting process, our students will also have the opportunity to engage in discussions similar to our “Staff Values” conversations.
At the end of January we began our second session of offerings! Offerings are our six-week long classes that students have the opportunity to lead and/or participate in. Some of the classes that will be occurring this session are Astronomy, Electronic Music Making, Figure Drawing, ASL, Pop Culture Philosophy, Radical American History and many more. We can’t wait to see what our students will learn and take away from this experience!
Photos: Student School Meeting Clerk, Virtual Community Development Committee Meeting
Additionally, we held our second round of elections the week we returned from winter break! During elections, both staff and students nominate themselves to serve as members or chairs of various committees. This is an excellent opportunity for students who want to take an active role in helping run the school. This semester, we’ve seen many students step into leadership positions as committee chairs. We have a wide variety of committees, each serving a unique purpose in shaping and running the school. To name just a few, we have the Yearbook Committee, Virtual Community Development Committee, Business Committee, Conflict Resolution Committee, Newsletter Committee, and many more.
And that’s a wrap on our monthly update! See you next month!
