Dear OHS Families,
Thanksgiving week is upon us. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving break with family and friends.
I am thankful this year of our community and all the active, caring people who make it thrive: Our families who give so generously of their time to help with the many PTA committees, school events, and school teams, or who simply support the students and staff and one another throughout the year; Our staff, who make the most of each day and give so much of themselves to our students and community; And our students, our reason for being a community, who come each day with ideas, feelings, and wonderful personalities to share. We are lucky to have one another and Thanksgiving is a good moment to celebrate this!
CARES Assemblies Last Week
This past Tuesday, we had our November CARES Assembly. This was a celebration of the Kindness Challenge work we started in October. In the assembly, we acknowledged the appropriate timing of the celebration, given that Veterans Day had just passed, World Kindness Day was the day prior, and Thanksgiving was so close. Lindsay Gaines, Christine Rollo, and Melissa Salvatore, our parent volunteers on the School Climate Team, constructed a beautiful bulletin board in the APR, with a painted rainbow that is broken up in the middle with grey clouds of negative feelings. The challenge for the month included catching kind acts as they happen and writing them on rainbow-colored sticky notes. At the assembly, we shared some of the kind acts that had taken place and collected the sticky notes. We then covered all the clouds with the sticky notes of kindness to represent what kindness does for our community. Big thanks to Lindsay, Christine, and Melissa for all their time and effort on the culminating bulletin board. It is a beautiful addition to the APR and good reminder for our students of the positive impact kindness has on our community.
Holiday Consideration
As we approach Thanksgiving week, the world around us is becoming heavily centered on the holiday season. With two weeks until the start of Hanukkah and five weeks until Christmas and Kwanzaa, I would ask that we do our best to hold back on too much focus at school on holidays so we can continue to focus on teaching and learning. We will be asking Santa hats and light-up necklaces to stay in backpacks while class is in session. We want this to be a fun season but there is much to teach and learn! Thanks for your help with this.
Lockdown Drill #2 Week of 11/27
We will be having our second lockdown drill of the year sometime early in the week of 11/27. I will send out communication after it is complete to update you.
Wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving,
David
