written by David Núñez, Interim Head of School
Dear GRS community,
March is Women’s History Month. As always we encourage the celebration and centering of underrepresented voices at all times at Great River. However, Women’s History Month is a time to celebrate the vital role of women in American history and highlight the accomplishments of people who identify as women!
As part of that celebration, I am sharing resources weekly with staff to help us focus our lens more keenly. Here are just a few examples of those resources:
Celebrate WHM by reading bell hook’s classic Feminism is for Everybody. This is a quick read and is written in a very accessible academic language.
For more books, this is a great start for a women's history month reading list.
This Edutopia article speaks to how gender bias shows up in the classroom.
Learning for Justice has a great article on teaching womens’ history in K-8 classrooms.
March is also testing season in the state of Minnesota and we have begun MCA testing this week at GRS. I know many of you have some strong feelings about standardized testing (as I do as an educator), but we should keep in mind that this test is just a single snapshot of how kids are doing at certain skills at a time when, because of a worldwide pandemic, we are sorely missing data. Between that and the impacts on the school’s long-range finances, we do encourage students to take the test and to try their very best.
You should have gotten report cards in the last week or so. We’ve gotten a number of questions about why our report cards look the way they do. In the elementary, we offer full narratives on your students' progress. In adolescent, we have a 7 point rubric for grading, it can be found linked here, and we also offer a simple form of rating for Skills of Effective Learning. This document shows you the details of each rubric ranking.
If you missed it last week, I sent out a communication about the work GRS is doing as a school around Russia’s reprehensible attack on Ukraine. We are seeking to support all of our community through this terrible series of events and are dedicated to continuing this work as a peacemaking community.
I also wanted to remind you all that the Blue Heron Bash is coming up! I, for one, am excited about my first Blue Heron Bash. This is Great River’s biggest fundraiser of the year and will be our first in-person Blue Heron Bash since 2019. This year's Blue Heron Bash is a fun outdoor event with games, food & drinks. Even if you can’t make it, everyone can enjoy friendly bidding on great gatherings, and amazing items in our online auction. The money raised by the Blue Heron Bash is used to support all of the amazing programs that make GRS so special. To see more details, check out the BHB website. We hope to see you there!
Finally, there are lots of upcoming opportunities to volunteer with the Parent Engagement Group! As a community-centered school, Great River asks that each family volunteers 20 hours of their time each school year to help support our programming. Caregivers can find all the current PEG volunteer needs by going to the PEG website.
Again, Happy Women’s History Month!
Peace,
David