Letter from the MC Principal
Hello MC families,
As you know, February marks the beginning of Black History Month. We seek to access multiple perspectives when we teach, and we seek to celebrate Black historical figures throughout the year, however we seek to be even more intentional about this work in February. We highlight Black history from past to present during Morning Meetings and during classes, and this culminates with our Black History Month Celebration and Teach-In at the end of the month. I’ll write more about this event in subsequent Courier letters. One other tradition that we are bringing back is our door decorating competition. This year the theme will be Atlanta history. Advisory groups will be given a year in Atlanta history and they will be charged with researching major events in Atlanta history from that particular year. They will use their research to guide their door decorations. I’m looking forward to seeing what the kids come up with!
On Monday and Tuesday of next week we will be doing Data Talks with students. Several years ago we began a process of having one-on-one conversations with students about their MAP and Milestones data so that they could reflect on the connection between their testing data, their performance in class, and how their personal habits and approaches impact all of these things. Every student in the school will have an individual 15-minute conference time set up with an adult who will review their data. Students will be given a pass during Advisory with their appointment time on it, and they will come down to the Media Center on a rolling basis. Data Talks allow students to analyze how things are going, and at the end of the conversation we encourage students to make a plan for improvement or continued growth. These data talks have been very successful in the past (students would come into their final MAP test thinking about the goals they set and hoping to reach them), so we are looking forward to doing this again this year.
As a reminder, MAP scores from the Winter administration of the test have been uploaded to ManageBac (the Fall scores are already there) so you can login to ManageBac to see those. 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 MYP Coordinator at dscott@atlncs.org.
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.
