An extraordinary week

In tragedy, we find strength

A tragedy in Boston on Monday, April 15th, sparked a week of extraordinary events. Our hearts go out to the families of the victims who lost their lives and to the injured and their families.

Events such as these remind us of how fragile life is and raise questions about why and about our safety in general. Children, particularly younger children, often have difficulty processing events of this magnitude. The U.S. Department of Education's web site on Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools has a technical assistance site with helpful links for families in how to help children deal with traumatic events. Click here to see the resource links.

Good does come from tragedy - we saw extraordinary strength in those who responded to the injured at the marathon, the law enforcement officials who put in extraordinary time and effort into the investigation and its conclusion on Friday night, and the citizens of Boston, Watertown, and surrounding communities who came together in support of the killed and injured, and to allow law enforcement to do what they needed to do. The heroism and goodness of the human spirit demonstrated last week lives within all of us.

We have been working together in the district to ensure that we do everything in our power to ensure that our schools are safe places in which to work and learn. In the coming weeks, we will be reaching out to the community to help us with this work. This is work we cannot do alone, but we know that this same sense of goodness and coming together is part of our community, and we look forward to engaging with you in this process.

Celebrating literacy - reading and writing

On Friday, April 5th, we tallied the latest numbers in our Million Minutes of Reading challenge and discovered that we exceeded our goal: 1,091,768 minutes read by students and their families, along with patrons of the Clapp Memorial Library! Congratulations to one and all and a big thank-you to everyone who provided support along the way! In celebration of reaching this milestone, Friday, April 12th, was "Dress Like a Millionaire Day" in our elementary schools. Staff and students alike dressed like royalty, in formal attire, like sports stars, and in their finest "bling" for the occasion!

Cold Spring School Principal, Sandra Bremer, Kindergarten Teacher , Brendan McCarthy, and Dr. Houle pose with our "millionaires" in celebration for Reading for a Million Minutes!

On Tuesday, April 9th, the School Committee celebrated students who participated in the New England Outdoor Writers Association initial Youth Writers' Contest. Two Belchertown students won top awards: - Katelyn Clark, BHS student, for First Place in Belchertown in the Senior Division, and Matthew Davidsohn, JBMS student, for First Place in Massachusetts in the Junior Division. Tom Fuller, of the NEOWA, presented awards to the students at the meeting.

NEOWA Youth Context winners pose with Tom Fuller and their teachers in celebration of their work.

Katelyn's work is going to be turned into a children's book with illustrations and the assistance of Clapp Memorial Library's Children's Librarian, Jennifer Whitehead. We are looking forward to seeing the finished product! 

If you have any questions about this post, please feel free to contact me by phone, 413.323.0423, or by email: superintendent@belchertown.org.

Best regards, Dr. Judith Houle, Superintendent of Schools

We did it - a Million Minutes of Reading!

A Million Minutes of Reading Goal Reached!

Back in November, we challenged our students and the entire town to join us in a quest to read for a million minutes and we have reached our goal! As Friday, April 5th, the total number of minutes logged in our schools and at the Clapp Memorial Library totaled 1,091,768! Congratulations to one and all for your participation in this project!

Friday, April 12th had been declared "Dress Like a Millionaire Day" in our elementary schools. Students are encouraged to dress as they think a millionaire would dress or bring their millionaire smiles with them to school! Participants will receive a certificate for their accomplishments!

School Committee to meet on Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The Belchertown School Committee will be meeting on Tuesday, April 9th, starting at 6:30 pm. Please note that the start time is a bit earlier than normal, but the meeting will begin with an Executive Session. The Open Session of the meeting is due to begin at approximately 7:00 pm. Click here to see a copy of the agenda.

Check back toward the end of the week...

I will be posting news of this past weekend's CSSR PTO Family Fun Run/Walk held last Saturday. It was a great event!

If you have any questions or comments about this blog post or any other posts, please feel free to call me at 413.323.0423 or email me at superintendent@belchertown.org.

Best regards, Dr. Judith Houle, Superintendent of Schools

Feeling Like a Million...Almost!

We are almost there!

As of Saturday, March 30th, Belchertown Public Schools students and Clapp Library patrons have logged a total of 952,106 minutes of reading. This week is the final push to reach our goal of 1,000,000 minutes. Help us by reading books, magazines, newspapers, web sites, etc. We believe we can reach this goal by April vacation and we hope to celebrate by having a Millionaires Dress-up Day in our schools! Check our web site for progress toward our goal by the end of this week! You can turn in your minutes to any one of the five schools, the Superintendent's Office, or Clapp Memorial Library to add to our tally.

Belchertown Teachers of Excellence Recognized

On March 4th, I wrote about our Belchertown Teachers of Excellence in this blog. At the March 25th School Committee meeting, they were invited with their families to celebrate their accomplishments! Each teacher of excellence received a certificate and a small bouquet of flowers. After the presentation ceremony, the awardees and their families enjoyed a celebratory moment with some cake while the School Committee took a brief recess. Congratulations to all our teachers of excellence!

Belchertown Teachers of Excellence
Back row, L-R: Karl Quist, Ryan Butler, Brendan McCarthy
Front row, L-R: Louise Levy, Christine Holesovsky, Stephanie Davies

Christine Holesovsky, Stephanie Davies, and Brendan McCarthy are the Pioneer Valley Teachers of Excellence Awardees and will be honored at a ceremony hosted by the Grinspoon Foundation and other partners at the Log Cabin on April 25th. Congratulations these teachers for being honored regionally with their colleagues from Hampshire County!

As always, if you have any questions or comments about this blog, feel free to contact me at 413.323.0423 or email me at superintendent@belchertown.org.

Best regards, Dr. Judith Houle, Superintendent of Schools

Reading Milestone

As of late last week, students and townspeople have logged 241,950 minutes of reading toward our Million Minutes of Reading challenge! We hope to reach our goal by early spring and we need your help! Reading opens the doors to worlds of knowledge, dreams, and creativity. It is the one foundational skill upon which all others are built. Reading lets us reflect on our history, see visions of our future, and allows for the sharing of ideas.

How can you help? Read and keep track of your minutes! We have reading logs for children in grades K-8 that children can get from and turn back in to their teachers. Adult reading logs are available from anyone older than our middle school children through adults. Logs can be obtained from any of our schools, our Central Office, and from Clapp Memorial Library, which has partnered with us on this project.

What counts as reading? Anything! Reading aloud to our younger children counts for both the adult reader and the child hearing the story. Books, newspapers, magazines, even online reading counts! On Sunday night (I confess with one eye on the TV only to watch the Patriots end their season earlier than hoped), I participated in an online Twitter chat with educators primarily from Rhode Island, as well as from Wisconsin and Michigan at #edchatri. We spent an hour exchanging and building off one another's ideas about student-centered learning: what that looks like, how technology is used, and how we can encourage educators to provide those opportunities to our students. The moderator of the chat archived all our posts so we can go back and review them later. Participants posted ideas, links to blog posts on the subject of student-centered learning, and a final post led me to the launch of a new site, http://www.time2changeit.org/, designed to bring people together to stop cyberbullying, the final topic of the night. Needless to say, these initial 60 minutes of reading for me will lead to more reading and learning about the future and the promise of education in the 21st Century.

So stop by one of our schools, our Central Office, or Clapp Memorial Library to pick up a log, or download and printout out the student log or adult log from our web site: www.belchertownps.org and posted in the District Announcements area and use it to log your minutes! When finished, drop it off at any of these locations or email me: superintendent@belchertown.org with your weekly minutes. The goal is ambitious but, working together, we can do it! Feel like a million - read!

If you have any questions or comments about this post, please feel free to call me at 413.323.0423 or email me, using the link above.

Best regards, Dr. Judith Houle, Superintendent of Schools

PS - The School Committee will be meeting on Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 7:00 pm in the library at Swift River Elementary School. Click here to see a copy of the agenda for the meeting.