Greetings Marvista Families,
Although the weather is not cooperating, I see evidence of spring throughout our school. Students wearing their sports jerseys, classrooms preparing for field trips, groups practicing for the upcoming music concert, and every student engaging in learning! Just this week I had the opportunity to observe fourth graders in Mrs. Shafer’s library classroom participating in a lesson on Digital Citizenship. This important topic included discussions on cyberbullying and sharing of personal content online. Our fourth graders were very curious and had many questions and many experiences to share. Because so much communication, socialization, and education is happening virtually, Digital Citizenship is a topic that we all must support.
Every summer our teachers engage in the detailed process of placing students into their move-up classrooms. This is an intentional process that involves identifying individual student strengths and needs and then creating a balanced cohort. This can be tricky because each summer we expectantly say goodbye to about 50 students and we welcome about 50 new students. To further complicate the puzzle, we never know the ages of the students who are coming or going and sometimes we also have unexpected staffing changes. Because of all these factors, we do not finalize our class lists until a few days before the start of school. This year, we are planning to have this information completed by Thursday, August 31. Once our lists are solidified, we will send a message to our community to let everyone know.
To help us gather information on individual student strength and need, we invite you to fill out the optional 2023 Parent Input Form. The information you share about your child will help us to know even more about their unique needs and talents. We will then use this information, along with the social, emotional, and academic information that we have collected to create a balanced grade level cohort.
As a parent myself, I know the anticipation throughout the summer of classroom teacher assignment can be full of emotions. My son, Henry, always had big feelings of hope, wanting a certain teacher or his best friend to be in his class. Then when we learned the news, he experienced either great elation or great disappointment. I am here to say that he survived, but not without some coaching! We focused our conversations on opportunities to make new friends, reminding ourselves that we can see our best friends at recess, and that all teachers at his school are awesome. This is the same for Marvista—all teachers here are awesome and work so hard to help our students feel safe and welcome!
We look forward to your completion of the 2023 Parent Input Form, as we love to know even more about our students. Thank you for all that you do and all that you continue to do to keep our school systems running smoothly. If you have any questions, you are always welcome to call our main office at 206-631-4200. Our team will work to connect you with the appropriate support staff.
Sincerely,
Maggie Heater
Principal
Marvista Elementary