Dear Parents and Guardians,
I hope everyone is squeezing the fun out of the last few days of summer vacation. I know many of you are very generous and are planning to provide classrooms with supplies such as tissue papers and disinfecting wipes. Quite a few of you asked your students to bring those supplies to school on the first day of school last year. However, your generosity created an unintended problem because the additional luggage the students were carrying created crowded conditions on the buses. Bus drivers also reported that some students – particularly our younger ones – had trouble boarding and disembarking the buses due to the amounts of stuff they were carrying. I also observed many of students felt additional pressure of navigating the hallways of a new school while carrying large amounts of things. Therefore, I ask everyone to do the following in order to alleviate these problems. If you are able to do so, please bring supplies you plan to give to the classrooms (e.g., tissue boxes and disinfecting wipes) to the school before the start of school. Different areas of the gym will be labeled with the twelve team names, World Language, and Exploratory starting tomorrow. I ask you to label your supplies with the teacher’s names and place them in the appropriate areas in the gym. The gym and the building will be open between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm for this purpose.
Please do not fret if you are unable to drop off the supplies this coming week. If that is the case, please ask your students to bring in those supplies after the week of school. This way we can prevent the crowded conditions on the buses. By not asking students to carry large amount of things on the first day of school, it will make the challenge of navigating the buses and McCall hallways more manageable for them. I thank you for your cooperation with this matter.
I would also like to encourage everyone to sign up for the McCall Principal’s Blog by clicking here. I update it weekly during the school year to inform the parent community of McCall happenings. After the first week of school, I will limit direct emails to the parent community to “need to know” information in order to avoid clogging up your inboxes.
Lastly, please mark your calendars with the following events. All of these events are also posted on the school calendar on the school website. You can access it by clicking here.
September 25 – McCall Picture Day
October 8, 7:00-9:00 pm – Sarah Ward Parent Presentation
October 10, 7:00-9:00 pm – McCall Back to School Night for Parents and Guardians
Sarah Ward is a nationally renowned executive functioning coach and educator. I feel very fortunate that we are able to bring her to McCall on October 8 to speak to my faculty about best practices related to teaching students important executive functioning skills. She will also be in the McCall auditorium to present to all of you that evening so you can reinforce the practices we have learned at home. I thank the MPA and Parent to Parent who have generously funded this event. Ms. Ward’s parent presentation is free of charge to the parent community, so I hope all of you will find the time to attend in order to better support our effort to teach students critical executive functioning skills.
I will be sending out more information related to the aforementioned three events as we get close to those dates. I will also reach out again next weekend to give you more logistics regarding the first day of school. Meanwhile, please continue to enjoy the last few days of summer.
Sincerely,
James Lin
Principal
McCall Middle School
