Dear Teachers:
This past Sunday, we have smoothly made transition from the Daylight savings time to regular time. Here are some notes for you:
1. Mid-term exams: A lot of classes have completed mid-term exam last Sunday. After the exam, it will be good to communicate with parents about the students learning status, especially for the students who need help in the future study. This school year, one of our emphasis is to strengthen the parent-teacher communication. We strongly suggest all teachers to communicate with parents after the mid-term.
2. Grade leader meeting: We had grade leaders meeting on 11/2. Thanks a lot to all grade leaders who spent time attending the meeting. Here we outlined what we have discussed during the meeting:
– Thanksgiving party (11/22), this is the 1st combined teacher appreciation and thanksgiving party. We hope you and your family members will join this event. Please either inform your grade leaders or send email to Yi Tian at pa@newtonchineseschool.org regarding your family head count to attend the party. We need that to plan our dinner.
– We have invited Wang Ruiyun laoshi to update the grade leaders about the feedbacks from the first parent forum held on 10/26. Based on the feedback, we have asked the grade leaders to discuss three topics with their respective grade teachers: 1) Is the homework amount appropriate for our students? 2) With regard to students with different learning abilities, should we consider different homework load? 3) At the end of the school year, should we give parents a recommendation with regard to next level study for all students? We hope to further discuss these topics at the next grade leaders meeting.
– Chinese Teachers In-School Training: This year we will have group trainings instead of everyone training together. Please discuss with your grade leaders regarding some possible topics for the training. We will collect the topics at the end of January. The group training time will be at next March to May.
3. Talent show: Under the leadership of Support Chinese Education Group, Chen Hui laoshi, Liang Nan laoshi, and school Event Committee, as well as great support from teachers, students and parents, the annual talent show was successfully accomplished. It’s worth to mention that two groups from our teacher’s club have given wonderful performances at the talent show. Thanks to all for your great support.
The last thing we would like to address here is Food/Candy Policy :
We have recently received some parent emails regarding candy given in the class as the reward for student behavior. One parent complained that the candy contains nuts and their daughter has nut allergy. In addition, some parent do not want teachers to give candy as reward due to the concern of sweet addiction. We would like to remind all teachers that the school does not allow any nut contained food given out in the class due to food allergy concerns. We have noticed that some teachers gave out nut-free candies as reward to student. We suggest these teachers communicate with parents and obtain permission. In general, we suggest teachers use other means to reward student good behavior other than candy. Last but not least, we would like to remind all teachers that no food would be allowed in the classroom. Families can have food at the first floor cafeteria.
Here is this week’s newsletter to parents: http://blog.newtonchineseschool.org/
Thanks and see you all on Sunday.
Ling and Li