Student-Led Conferences October 25

Dear Escalante Middle School Community, As we approach the end of the first quarter, we are working closely with students to make our Habits of Work, Learning, and Scholarship (HOWLS) ingrained in our student body. Students regularly reflect on HOWLS in Crew, and academic learning targets for daily lessons are often accompanied by a HOWLS learning target. We selected the following HOWLS - collaboration, craftsmanship, perseverance, responsibility, and kindness - because they are character skills that both support excellence in school and, more importantly, in the workforce. As we approach our Student-Led Conferences on the 25th of October, students are preparing a reflection on both their HOWLS and their academic progress. Please remember that you can see your child’s grades anytime by logging into the Infinite Campus Parent Portal (see link below). When you pull up the Grades section in the Portal, you will need to click on the 2nd Quarter tab to see the most updated grades as there is an apparent glitch in the system that has the 1st quarter tab just reporting up to the progress report we issued a few weeks back. We will be distributing Quarter 1 Report Cards at Student-Led Conferences as well as iReady data from this fall and CMAS data from last Spring. Students will be drawing on data from all of these sources as they craft goals for Student-Led Conferences. Please encourage your child to give their all over these next couple of weeks so that they have some stellar reports to share with you soon! If you haven’t already scheduled a conference, please contact your student’s Crew Teacher to do so. Crew Teachers can be reached via email from this Website (escalante.durangoschools.org click on Staff Directory) or you can call the office (247-9490) to leave the teacher a voice mail. If you would like more information about why we choose Student-Led Conferences over traditional conferences, EL Education has some great information by following the link below. Thank you for all of your support. Sincerely, Jeremy Voss EMS, Principal

Escalante Middle School Needs YOU!

Dear Escalante Middle School Community, We’ve had a few parent requests to clarify our district’s process for volunteer applications in our schools. There are three types of volunteers. 1. Classroom guests who will not directly lead students alone: If a parent or community member is going to volunteer in the classroom or on a day trip and will not directly supervise students, you are considered a guest in the classroom for the day and there is no need to fill out paperwork. In that case, volunteers only need to sign in with the main office. 2. Volunteers who will directly supervise students: Volunteers who will be in direct supervisory volunteer roles must complete a volunteer application in the office with Mrs. Jantz. 3. Volunteers who will assist with a regular club/activity or assist with an overnight trip: In order to volunteer in this capacity, you must complete the volunteer application in the front office with Mrs. Jantz. Once approved, the application will be sent to Human Resources and HR will schedule a fingerprint appointment with you. You will need to bring $40.00 on the day of the appointment, which is the district’s cost for processing fingerprints. If you have already submitted fingerprints to the district, then you will not have to repeat this step. However, the application needs to be updated when your child progresses to a new school. In addition, your Crew’s leader will be contacting you soon to set up a student-led conference. We are scheduling those on October 25th. We will be reviewing student work, CMAS performance data, iReady data, and 1st quarter report cards at SLCs this year, and setting goals based on that information. We very much value your attendance and input at these conferences and look forward to seeing you there. On a final note, thank you to all of our volunteer parents and attendees who supported our back to school night. We are extremely grateful for your participation in our community! Please consider coming to our Parent Organization Meetings on the second Wednesday of each month at 8:15 AM. We discuss important topics that affect our school and would appreciate your feedback. Sincerely, Jeremy Voss EMS, Principal

Welcome back with Back To School BBQ Sept. 16th

Dear Escalante Middle School Community, I hope you come join us on Monday, September 16th for our Back-to-School Night community gathering. We kick off the event grilling hot dogs on the field in front of the cafeteria between 5:00 and 5:30. At 5:30, we begin the more formal part of the evening with a large community welcome in the gymnasium. Around 5:45 we will begin a “simulated” day, where parents will walk through their children’s schedules, meet teachers, and get a brief overview of each class. I encourage parents to come to this event with your kids to guide you through. If your child cannot make it, please be sure to know their schedule before arriving. It has been a wonderful start to our school year, and it’s hard to believe we are nearing the halfway point of the first quarter. We will be running a progress report to update parents on your child’s grades around the midpoint of each quarter. Grades will be sent home with students on September 24 or September 25, so please keep an eye out for the update. Backpack mail is notoriously an inefficient messenger in middle school, so if your child’s progress report did not make it home by the end of the day on the 25th, you can also access them online through the Infinite Campus Parent Portal. The link below explains how to access the IC portal: https://www.durangoschools.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=512069&type=d&pREC_ID=1033562 I look forward to seeing you on Monday night for our back-to-school festivities. Sincerely, Jeremy Voss EMS, Principal

Celebration of Learning 2019

Dear Escalante Middle School Community, The last week of school can be a pretty hectic time. One of our strategies to maintain a strong academic purpose this time of year is to host our Celebration of Learning (COL) event on May 30, the eve of the last day of school. Our learning community has been hard at work to prepare, and our expectation is for every child to participate through either a performance or highlighting an artifact of their high-quality work. As a community member, we need you to make this event a success for our students, and we thank you for your active participation. We encourage you to experience as many presentations as possible during your visit. When we set up for the COL, we aspire to turn our school into a museum of high-quality work. Between 4:00 and 7:00 PM, our doors will be open to the community in celebration of our students. A free spaghetti dinner runs between 4:30 to 6:00. Drinks and desserts will be available for purchase from one of several student “businesses,” and there will be a donation jar for community members to support student-driven events such as the COL in the future. When you visit the COL, we have three specific learning targets for our guests. They are: 1. I can support the learning of Escalante students by visiting at least four presentations during the celebration. 2. I can celebrate the learning of Escalante students by providing positive feedback during presentations. 3. I can provide feedback to Escalante staff in order to support the improvement of future COL events. On a final note, please have a QR Code Reader App downloaded to your phone for your visit. A few student presentations and our feedback form use QR code readers. Thank you for supporting our school as we wrap up the year in style. Sincerely, Jeremy Voss Escalante Middle School, Principal

There is a lot of work and learning yet to do this year

Dear Escalante Middle School Community, In a couple of weeks, we will be asking students to complete a form in Crew requesting exploratory classes for next school year. Students make six choices for their classes, and we try our best to fulfill as many of their requests as possible. A major strength of our school is the broad range of choice afforded to our 7th and 8th graders to explore new things or pursue a specific area of passion. Below are some scheduling options for parents to discuss with your child: 1. Our music programs continue to rack up regional and state awards. Whether it’s Choir, Orchestra, Band, Jazz Band or Guitar class, there is a great music option for your child. 2. If your son or daughter is interested in participating in a fall sport next year, we offer fitness classes that can support their athletic pursuits. General PE and Outdoor Education are two other courses that certainly appeal to our students as well. 3. Robotics, Woodworkings, and our technology classes are designed to appeal to our students with interest in building their STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills. 4. Drama, Pottery, and Drawing and Painting are our most requested courses each year. 5. 8th graders who would like to get a jumpstart acquiring high school foreign language credit can take a year-long Spanish 1 class. We also offer semester classes in Spanish, French, and German to build language skills. 6. We started an Agriculture program this year that is taking off. Students can learn about forestry, fire ecology, animal science, or plant science in our Greenhouse class. 7. Many students have a support class during exploratories to build math, reading, or executive function skills as well. We use classroom and testing data to populate these courses. While we are certainly doing a lot of forward thinking, there is also a lot of work and learning yet to do this year. We have two events on the horizon that we are banking on community support. 1. Our Escalante 5K and One Mile Fun Run event is on April 26th. We will have music and food vendors on site. Entries are $10 and EMS students run free. We sent registration forms home with students, and they are also available in the office. 2. The capstone event of the year, our Celebration of Learning, takes place from 4:00 to 7:00 PM on May 30th. This year will be even bigger than last year. We will have a tent out front with information on resources in the community, a $5.00 Spaghetti Dinner will be offered, and every student is expected to participate by highlighting some high quality work that they produced over the year. On a final note, I’d like to share a success story we’ve had this year. We do run a pretty tight ship at EMS, and the cell phone policy we developed this year with parent input has led to very few cell phone discipline issues at school. As the weather warms up, we will need your support for our next area of focus - maintaining our dress code. Last year, our 8th-grade students rewrote our dress code. We are going to be reviewing it in depth with our students on Monday and Tuesday next week, and our enforcement is going to really ramp up on Wednesday. You can really help us out by ensuring that your child’s shorts are at least mid-thigh length, midriffs and underwear are covered, and bandanas are left at home. Many thanks for your support, Jeremy Voss EMS, Principal