Greetings, GreenMount Community,
It
has been an interesting week, and I expect that we will see similar weather
circumstances as the school year progresses.
It appears that nearly everyone received notification about our delay on
Monday and the closing yesterday. So the
system is working, thanks to you. I hope
that most of you took advantage of the app for your phone or the email
capability with WBAL. Remember, you can
access this service on their web site.
Yesterday
was tricky because the snow didn’t start until later in the morning (like you
didn’t notice). But I think it was a
good call to close yesterday. For one
thing, I got so much grief from the students on Monday for not closing that I
didn’t want to disappoint them again.
They had worked so hard doing snow dances and sleeping with their PJs
inside out! I tried to explain to them
that by using our snow days up we would not be moving the end of school back
from June 6. I asked them if they would
rather have an extra day of summer or a day off in the winter with slush and
cold. The outcry was unanimous – they
want it now! It must be that instant
gratification thing.
Speaking
of snow days, we have built in five days this year and now we are left with
four. If we do not use all of those days
we will roll back the end of the year using a complicated mathematical formula
that only Mr. Luca can explain. If we
exceed our snow days, we will add days past June 6 using a similar algorithm.
This process is necessary because we are required as an independent school to
have 170 days of school, which can include half-days.
Evaluation Reports:
Because
of our weather events and some computer issues, our teachers have not had the
appropriate time to complete the evaluation reports in time for adequate review
and editing. Therefore, the reports will
be distributed on Monday. We apologize
for the wait.
Theme 2:
We
are well into our second theme, which focuses on history between1876 and 1917. This was the period of international
expansion for the United States and fits nicely with the theme just completed,
since many islands and island groups were annexed by the U.S. during that
time. We will devote a lot of time to WWI
and other events such as the women’s suffrage movement. Ms. Catherine has some interesting original
sheet music from the time that belonged to her grandmother. The middle school students have selected some
very interesting songs for the theme event.
Did you know that there are actually words to “Stars and Stripes
Forever”? Please make sure to mark your
calendar for the theme event, which will take place on February 21 from 9:00 to
noon.
Cheers,
Steve
