Every week enrolled families receive a Director’s Update via email. Here is this week’s update. . .
We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves” ~ Galileo Galilei
Dear Parents –
I hope you are all having a great week of home instruction! I enjoyed seeing this quote in our Galileo book last week – often I feel overcome by the responsibility of all I have to make sure my kids learn – but viewing it as a discovery process is freeing to me – I can discover with them and can move them towards discovery. It’s still work, I suppose, but so much more life-giving than cramming kids full of information! I know I am on that journey of discovery in so many areas of life. I take heart in knowing that I have many like you to keep me company!
Here’s our announcements for the week:
Parents
December’s PIE night on December 12th will focus on ‘Changing your attitude’ where we will share specific remedies for anger, impatience, isolation, guilt and a whole host of other roadblocks that we all deal with in order to create the most healthy homeschooling situation. (And you thought you weren’t normal!) Please join us Wednesday, December 12th at 6:30 in room 9 for more laughs and inspiration.Volunteer hours – this trimester, you have the opportunity to earn 3 volunteer hours total for going to either PIE nights or Classroom Connection Meetings. Each night or meeting you attend will be worth 1 hour total (even if you are there longer) but if you attend 3 of them, you may log 3 meetings at 1 hour each. We want to encourage you to take advantage of these great community experiences – parent to parent connection is so helpful on this journey!
Thank you! to the Schrantz family for donating the new (and very comfortable) desk chairs! They’re great, and we appreciate both the chairs and the time and effort it took to get them to us! For others who might know of resources or who are deal-finders, we have a Wish List printed in our outdoor bulletin board. We will keep it updated as needs are met and as they arise. Thanks always for your investment in the school.
Funding – some exciting things are happening in the area of funding.
1. We have our brokerage account set up! This allows people to give via stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc. If interested, please let me know and I
head you in the right direction. Again, thank you for considering the school’s needs as you consider year-end giving.2. Thursday we are kicking off our big picture fundraising plan with a one hour “get to know us” event. If you are interested in finding out how we plan to get the word out about the school or if you are wondering how to pass the word along to someone you think might be interested in donating to the school, you are free to join us at 11 a.m. in our Administration Offices (across from the outdoor bulletin board). We will hold this one hour every 3-4 weeks for several months.
3. We received a $10,000 donation from an anonymous family at the school on Tuesday. These are much needed funds, and we’d like to thank this family from the bottom of our hearts for making this thoughtful and very generous donation!
Overflow – please check the Lost & Found – we will be donating the clothes after our last day before break. Also, please check those family files for overflow as well! There’s lots of paperwork sitting just dying to be read. Thanks!
Education
Important Middle School Parent Meeting – please save the date for Tuesday evening, January 15th at 7:00 p.m. for a mandatory meeting. We will be making some adjustments and improvements in math instruction and they will be laid out at this meeting.
Academy Classes are coming again!
We are putting together our third session of Academy Classes. It will be a 6 week session on Friday afternoons (12:30-3:30) from January 25-February 29. We are going to try this after hearing from you with our survey. We’re excited!
While we are bringing in some classes from the community, WE WOULD LOVE TO OFFER MORE PARENT-LED CLASSES. This is an opportunity for you, as parents (or grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc), to share your interests with some wonderful children. It is a great way to earn volunteer hours and connect more with the school community. If you are interested, but need ideas or a co-leader, we can work something out. If you would be willing to babysit so that someone else can teach a class, you can earn volunteer hours for helping in this way as well.
We also have some specific needs:
We would like 2 more people to help teach (or assist) a History Enrichment Class for Intermediate and Middle School students. This class will be an opportunity to do some of those extra fun projects that are often hard to fit into a school week.
Coming in January, we are hoping to offer music classes for K-Primary on Wednesdays and Thursdays. We have a musical mom putting together a great class, but she needs a babysitter for her children during class time. She will bring her children to your house (SLO on either day or also South County on Weds) and she can bring your school child(ren) home after the class. This job could be for either volunteer hours or a class fee exchange.
Please contact Kateri at [email protected]
Events
T-shirt pick-up will be next Monday and Tuesday the 12th and 13th after school. Thanks for all your orders – we’ll do it again after the holidays!
All right! Have a great week – thanks for all you put into this journey together!
Susie
Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire. – Yeats
