We Are In This Together!

Hello Everyone,

We are hoping that you have noticed that we are in the process of updating the website. There is so much information there that we have to overhaul it from time to time to be sure that it is the correct information and is easily found on the site. We would be very appreciative if you would take a few moments to look it over and share your feedback with us.

We would also like to ask that you take a moment to stop and look over the new information on the bulletin board at the Waterstone Campus. The staff is busily reading through the second chapter of Conscious Discipline on encouragement and some of our ideas and accomplishments are being recorded there. We would especially love it of you would share some of your own CD successes while you are there. Some positive statements that you should be hearing school-wide are:

You Did It!
We Are In This Together!
You Can Do It!

We will continue to work on our breathing using the STAR and Drain and Balloon techniques. Please see any member of the staff for more information if you don't know what these techniques are.

In the days to come you will be receiving some information from us about our upcoming November events. Please be sure to let us know if you have any suggestions or encouragement to offer!
We hope that you have a fantastic week!
Christa and Jennifer.

Conscious Discipline

Four of us attended a workshop this week on Conscious Discipline. It was very powerful and we came back with many ideas and lots of energy for taking the next step as a school on the path to being a Conscious Discipline school.

In the days to come you will see the beginnings of "Safe Spaces" throughout the school. There are many reasons to create these spaces, some of which will be shared with you at Back to School Night on September 30th from 7:00-8:30. We will also be emailing you information this week about some of the ways that you can support the teachers in creating these spaces.

For those of you reading along with us, we have decided to spend another month as a staff on the first chapter of the workbook, Conscious Discipline, called Composure. There is information about Composure on the main school bulletin board that is for you to take home and read. For those of you not yet familiar with Conscious Discipline, it is the work of Dr. Becky Bailey and you can order a copy of the book from either Amazon, or from us directly.

As you know, Monday begins picture week. Many of you have asked us questions about Big Star Studios and their policies and procedures. Rather than try to answer them ourselves, we asked Garry and Emily to compile a Q & A for you.

Q and A from Big Star Studios

We hope that you all have a wonderful week!
Christa and Jennifer

News of the Week

Hello Everyone!
We had a great week this week! There are a lot of updates for you. We are going to make a list for brevity's sake.

1. New Building Construction:
We have officially began the construction that will complete our last two buildings. Our new contractors are wonderful. We feel like they are going to do a great job for us. We will keep you posted on our progress each Friday.

2. School Calendar:
A parent suggested a school calendar with monthly events posted in the main hallways. We think it is a great idea and we are going to put it in place next week. Are there specific things that you would like to see included?

3. Bulletin Boards:
We have added information about Conscious Discipline on the bulletin board at Waterstone and the hall door at Davis. We hope that you will take some time to stop and visit them so that you can read about our focus this month: Composure. We want to remind you that you can order books from us if you are interested in reading along with the staff.

4. Transitions:
We spent the whole day today talking about ways to improve our transition process. We will be meeting with our lead teachers to discuss an improved process for children moving up. We would love your feedback. What can we do to improve this process for your family?

5. School Pictures:
We want to remind you that you can pre-pay for your Big Star package and receive a 10% discount before the shoots. Some parents have asked what will happen if you pre-pay and then are unhappy with your photos. The folks at Big Star have assured us that they will re-shoot any photos that you are not completely satisfied with. Reminder that school pictures will begin on Monday, September 20th. We will post class schedules at both schools on September 13th.

We hope that you all have a wonderful weekend!

Jennifer and Christa

Staff Meetings

We changed the format of our staff meetings in July. Instead of having us present to the staff housekeeping issues, we printed the housekeeping stuff on a sheet of paper that was handed out and we spent the meeting time in small groups where the leadership team listened and took notes while the staff talked about how we can improve our school. It was a huge success. For that first meeting we discussed communication in three areas:

1. Among the whole staff
2. From the Teaching Team to the Leadership Team
3. And from the Teaching Team to the Families

We came up with a number of suggestions that have been implemented- including this blog. It was a huge success.

We had our second staff meeting with the new structure tonight. We used the same format and we discussed the 4 Big Ideas of the school. We asked 4 questions about each of the 4 Big Ideas. For those of you who haven't read them in awhile, they are on the school website with their own tab. Just to remind you, they are:

1. Observation/Portfolio
2. Natural Play
3. Conscious Discipline
4. Reggio Emilia

We asked the staff these 4 questions:

1. What do you know about this idea?
2. How are we implementing this topic in your classroom?
3. What are we doing well/need to improve?
4. How can we carry this idea to the parent community?

The feedback was WONDERFUL. The teaching team is incredibly optimistic and committed to growing individually, as teams, and as a school. We are so fortunate.

One of the immediately obvious things that came out of the discussion is that we can do a much better job telling all of you about the ways that we are growing. We will begin to use the community board in the Waterstone main hallway and the Davis main hallway to post information about our focus area. You can expect to find your hallway waiting for you when you arrive on Monday.

We are starting an in-depth study of Conscious Discipline. This study will last for the next 7 staff meetings. We are starting with chapter 1 of Becky Bailey's books Conscious Discipline and Easy to Love Difficult to Discipline. For those of you who want to read along with us you can order copies of these books by writing to Christa at christaniven@thelittleschool.net. The cost of the books is $25 for Conscious Discipline and $15 for Easy to Love Difficult to Discipline. We would LOVE it if you decided to read along with us. These books and Becky's work in general are overarching themes to most of our interactions with your children. We welcome your participation and hope that you will get creative about how you could become a part of the process with us.... MAYBE even the formation of a formal parent book club- gasp! We welcome you to be a part of this with us.

We want to also remind you that it is time to pre-order your packages from Big Star Studios. They will be on-site the weeks of September 20th and 27th. The classroom schedule will be posted in the weeks to come.

Christa Niven