Letter from the MC Principal
Hello MC families,
A lot happened during our short week last week. On Wednesday we welcomed students back into the building after four days off for them, and a productive work day for our teachers. On Thursday starting the school day amidst the backdrop of the school shooting in Winder was tough. Middle schoolers talk about many topics over the course of the day amongst themselves, and tragedies like this one are often discussed amongst the children the next day at school. That’s part of the reason why we discuss current events and have difficult conversations in Advisory in order to help create a safe space for children to process the information. We remind them to check in with the school counselor or with trusted adults if they need to at any point over the course of the day. On Thursday morning we also reminded students about the various things that we do as a school to help maintain a safe environment at the Middle Campus.
In order to help students stay safe we seek to build relationships with our students and we help students get connected with trusted adults. We seek to build a culture of safety in the building and we tell students that if they see something they need to say something to an adult. We train students on how to use the Say Something anonymous reporting app and we have Officer Corey, an armed security officer, on staff. We also do various drills during the year (Fire, Severe Weather, Earthquake, Lockdown, etc.) as per our requirement to do each type of drill twice over the course of the year in addition to doing fire drills monthly. We will do a Lockdown drill this week. For our Lockdown drills I discuss the drill during Morning Meeting on Monday, we discuss school safety and allow students to process in a safe space during Advisory on Wednesday, and we conduct the drill in Advisory on Thursday. Please check in with your students to see how they are doing. The concept of school shootings can cause anxiety for all of us, myself included. However, being prepared is necessary for us to stay safe, and both creating safe spaces and having the willingness to have difficult conversations helps us to navigate the difficult challenges that life and our fast-changing world present for us.
Switching gears it was great to see so many of you at Meet the School Family Night this past Thursday. Parents really enjoyed putting faces to names and connecting with teachers, and this is always a night that the staff enjoys as well. Meet the School Family Night is a great way for us to build community and connect with parents. If you have not looked at all of the videos yet, the links will remain live for a little while longer. We passed out Milestone scores to those who were in attendance, and we sent the remaining scores home with students on Friday. MAP scores have also been uploaded to ManageBac (https://atlncs.managebac.com/login). Once you login, click “Portfolio” in the bar on the left, and you will see your student’s MAP scores. If you have trouble logging into ManageBac try resetting your password, if you still have trouble after that reach out to Dale Scott, our IB Coordinator at dscott@atlncs.org. If you do not have your MAP or Milestones scores send me an email and cc: Ms. Julia (jknox@atlncs.org) our Office Manager.
Speaking of our IB coordinator, we have an IB information session on Community Project coming up this week for 8th grade parents. Community Project is an 8th grade service learning opportunity in which students find a community that they want to work in, research the needs of that community related to a topic of the student’s interest, and then work towards performing a service action in that community. When we schedule our IB sessions we always schedule a morning session and an evening session in order to help accommodate people’s schedules – each session is the same. There will be a morning session at 9am on Wednesday 9/11 and an evening session at 6pm on Thursday 9/12 – both sessions have the same content so you can attend either one. Each session will be virtual and will be about 30 minutes long. You can RSVP for the sessions using this link.
As always if you have any questions please feel free to reach out.
Kind regards,
Mark
Mark Sanders
Mark Sanders began teaching at ANCS in 2011. Before coming to the school, Mr. Sanders worked in New York City. He spent three years teaching 7th and 8th grade mathematics at Middle School 50 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and two years at Harlem Village Academies teaching Geometry and Algebra 2/Trigonometry. He taught 8th grade Math/Science/Technology at ANCS for five years.
