Letter from the MC Principal
Hello MC families,
It was great seeing many of you at Meet the School Family Night last week. MTSFN is always a great community building event, and many of you took advantage of the opportunity to spend some in-person time with your students’ teachers. If you did not get a chance to look through all of the teacher videos prior to the event, or if you just missed Meet the School Family Night last week, I would still encourage you to check out those videos in order to get a context for who your teachers are and what their classes are like. In addition there are also videos from our Counselor, School Nurse, Media Center Specialist, and Associates and Adjunct teachers so take advantage of viewing that resource. The next opportunity for you to interact with your students’ Advisors will be during student-led conferences which will be coming up the week of October 23rd. I will share more details about conferences in upcoming Courier letters.
Academic Performance & Reporting
In addition to the bi-weekly messages that teachers post in ManageBac (https://atlncs.managebac.com/login) to give you information about what they are teaching in class, teachers are also posting information about your students’ academic performance. As students progress through a unit of study (a unit is a collection of learning experiences that are connected by theme or topic, for example a Math class may have a unit on fractions), they work towards demonstrating their knowledge on a summative assessment. A summative is a culminating assessment in which students demonstrate their knowledge after the completion of a unit. Along the way as students progress through a unit, teachers administer formative assessments which are check-ins to see how each student is doing. Teachers are giving feedback on these formative assessments that let students (and parents, because it is posted in ManageBac) know if the student is making “limited,” “adequate,” or “substantial” progress towards the aims of the unit. The students also get feedback on their formative assessments, and this feedback helps give students direction on how they can improve. You will start seeing formative data posted in ManageBac soon if you have not seen it already.
If your student is at the level of “limited” or “adequate” progress at a given point in time it’s ok! It’s just a check-in and a snapshot of where the student is at that moment. Students can also take that feedback to show improvement as they move towards their summative. We don’t want kids chasing grades anyway – we want them to simply focus on doing their best. We’re all growing! We also all have our individual strengths and weaknesses across subject areas. If you aren’t where you want to be at a given point that’s fine, but formative assessment data helps us to know where we are along the path and it helps us grow. As formative and summative feedback comes in, and as you talk to your kids, hopefully this gives you some context for what you are hearing, and for what you are seeing on ManageBac.
Fall MAP Scores
Fall MAP scores have been uploaded in ManageBac. Once you login to ManageBac you can click the “Portfolio” button in the middle of the screen and scroll down to get to the linked pdf of your student’s Fall MAP scores. Additionally, tomorrow we are sending Milestones scores home with 6th and 8th grade students who were at ANCS last year (either here or at the Elementary Campus). At the end of last school year we sent home score reports for both ELA and Math for our current 7th grade students. If you have any questions about Milestones score reports please feel free to reach out to Kristin Lee at klee@atlncs.org.
Athletics
Outside of the classroom our cross country team has a meet in Grant Park on Wednesday at 7pm, on Friday there’s a flag football game at 5:30pm at Maynard Jackson High School, and Saturday there is a volleyball game at Phoenix Academy (in the building formerly known as Crim High School; 256 Clifton St SE, Atlanta, GA 30317) at 10am.
7th & 8th Grade Overnight Trips
Last year we brought back our 7th and 8th grade overnight trips (6th graders do a day trip in the Spring) and we are glad to be able to continue with those trips this year. The 7th grade will be returning to Jekyll Island (Wednesday, February 28th to Friday, March 1st) where they will explore coastal habitats with the 4-H club. The 8th grade will be returning to Savannah from Tuesday, May 14th – Friday May, 17th, 2024. Our itinerary from last year included Fort Pulaski which was in use during the Civil War, the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, the Jepson Center for the Arts, and learning about the preservation of West African culture through Gullah Geechee heritage. Our registrar Maria McFeeley has been the main organizer of our overnight trips and she is going to be leading information sessions about them in the next couple of weeks. The 7th grade information session about the Jekyll Island trip will take place on Wednesday, September 27th at 6:30 pm in the Media Center. The 8th grade information session about the Savannah trip will be on Wednesday, October 4th at 6:30 pm in the Media Center. Each meeting will run less than an hour.
Health & Safety Reminders
Finally, I am going to close with some health and safety reminders. As a reminder we are a nut free school in consideration of the dangers of nut allergies. Please do not send your students to school with nuts in their lunches and that includes peanut butter as well. Nut allergies are very serious and can result in hospitalization for students – this has happened at our school in the last few years. Last week while I was in the cafeteria I saw that a student had brought pistachios to school in their lunch, so I am following up with this reminder to all of our school community. Separately, if your student is sick (fever, not feeling well, has thrown up, etc.) DO NOT send them to school. This helps to keep your student safe and on the road to recovery. It also helps to keep the rest of the community healthy. If your student is not well, please keep them at home.
As always if you have any questions 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.
