Tue 5/28: Atlas Pizza Dine & Donate

Fri 5/31: Shrek Movie Night, 6:00pm

Tue 6/11: 8th Grade Promotion, Franklin HS Gym, 5:00pm

Wed 6/12: Last Day of School

Dear Mt. Tabor Families, 

Happy Friday! I hope you have plans to enjoy your three-day weekend. Today is my daughter's sixth birthday, so we'll be traveling to Seattle to see family and friends. 

Remember that big survey I asked you all to complete? (Thank you again, by the way.) The district will be releasing the results of this survey very soon. We will be setting goals as a school based, to a large degree, on these survey results. Here's a quick snapshot from the three surveys:

One immediate strength I see is how our staff views our school. They feel it's a safe place. Our students, too, say that school feels safe to them with regards to bullying and harassment. I feel like our community-building in Homeroom, our Peace Prize, our WEB Leaders--all these things help to build, day by day, this accepting, collectivist culture. 

One immediate area for growth that I see are teacher/student relationships. We pride ourselves on building positive relationships here at Tabor. We call our approach "Relational Learning," a yin and yang of academic skills and social-emotional strength. What, specifically, were our 7th graders thinking when they completed these questions on the survey? It's our job to find out. 

Before the end of this school year we'll meet with a group of 7th graders. (The district only gave the survey to 7th graders.) We'll hear directly from them about their experiences. We will use their voice to help build our action plan and goals for next school year--and we'll share these with all of you. 

One final thing to mention is the stark difference between our families' perceptions of school safety and the staff and students' perceptions of school safety. This is a large gap. It's clear we need to do a better job of communicating the positive to you. We've heard many interesting (and untrue) stories this year from parents who, through no fault of their own, heard something through the grapevine and thought it was representative of the school. 

I encourage any parent or guardian to reach out to me, Pam, or any staff member to verify whether something actually happened as you heard it. Remember the telephone game we played in elementary school? That same phenomenon, I feel, is often at play when information passes from the building to the outside world. This is not fair to you as the parent/guardian. After all, your children are here with us. You need to know that we're caring for them, so it makes sense to think "worse case scenario" when you get the information that you get. Often times, however, this information is not wholly accurate, and many times it's entirely inaccurate. 

Please reach out to us whenever you have a question or concern. I wish you all the very best of Memorial Day weekends! See you Tuesday. 

Sean