News for September 14

News for September 14:

Thanks again to everyone for their assistance with last night's Open House. Parents were effusive in their praise of this school and your efforts for all our students As Doug indicated in his email, we would welcome any feedback on how to improve the night, which was, by and large, extremely positive. We will soon be holding Parent-Teacher Conferences, which will be scheduled soon. A procedure for those conferences will be distributed within the next two weeks, and thanks to those staff members who came to discuss Conferences with us this week.

As some of you may have heard, there was a car accident outside of school on Tuesday. Four students were in one vehicle, which was hit by an oncoming truck. All the students were taken by ambulance, but, fortunately, there were no major injuries. We were unaware of the accident until about 90 minutes it happened, which is something we will be working on improving so all of you can be better informed. We will continue to work with Officer Grimes on ways to ensure safety coming and going, particularly during the high traffic hours before and after school.

We also appreciate all the support and energy with study halls, passes, and vigilance in the corridors, as well as with keeping students actively engaged in class. There is an obvious lack of traffic in the halls during class periods - the more you keep them busy and engaged, the less the likelihood of students leaving and wandering! In terms of studies, Ms. Dolan distributed a revised procedure for student sign-in to avoid the bottlenecking of calls going to her the start of each period - that should go into effect next Tuesday/Wednesday, but please be patient as we iron out the hiccups at the beginning! It is also posted to this blog, and you can follow up with Mary as to any questions.

Speaking of revised procedures- we are working with the National Honor Society students on a better process for utilizing the NHS tutoring room to prevent some of the issues that arose last year. We expect to have that up and running within the next two weeks as well. More news to follow.

We had our first Student Assistance Team meeting this week; please, if you have a student who is struggling in your classes, fill out the referral form and communicate with the student's counselor. We want to try and reach as many students as possible - particularly those who would benefit from some specific academic interventions, not solely those students who may seem at-risk based on attendance or behavior. Be on the lookout on an email detailing and reminding about those procedures.

The Guidance Department met with seniors this week on the college planning process, and will be in with sophomores and juniors next week to discuss PSAT's. Ms. Lisk sent an email earlier this week regarding letters of recommendation and Naviance, but feel free to follow up with any questions.

News for activity advisors: please remind students who have signed up for your activities to get online and pay their fees - or to bring you or the office their fees directly, so we can get those processed quickly!

News "from the halls" (or, more specifically, from the returned Hall Duty sheets): so far, the most egregious situation involved a swinging locker door that remained open and two students who obviously took the long way from their study to their intended destination. The halls, so far, have been very clear and almost entirely incident-free - again, a tribute to everyone's work in the classroom. Keep it up!

As a reminder, Doug's blog can be found at medwayhighprincipal.blogspot.com. Our weekly "newspaper" of resources for teaching and learning can be found at http://paper.li/MedwayHSDean/1346850266.

There is no school on Monday due to the observance of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), so enjoy the long weekend!