Encourage Healthy Choices

Dear Escalante Middle School Community, Over the past week, I have held community meetings with each grade level to talk to students about a topic that poses a significant health risk for kids: illegal substances. At EMS we take several steps to prevent students from bringing illegal substances onto campus. I’ve found that clear communication with students about both the health and disciplinary consequences of illegal substances is the most proactive and best possible deterrent, and it is a place that parents really can support us. I encourage you to do some reading online about the health risks of alcohol, vaping and marijuana use on the adolescent brain, and to have follow-up conversations with your kids about those negative impacts. In addition, I also share with our students that distribution of any illegal substance on campus may result in expulsion from school. Because an adolescent’s brain is undergoing significant development, kids are more likely to take risks and not consider the consequences of their actions. Therefore, it is extremely important that students are reminded of these consequences in an effort to protect them from making a costly mistake. In addition to communication and education, our school district also utilizes a drug-detecting dog to conduct random searches of the school. Just recently, the La Plata County Sheriff’s department has added a non-bite drug dog onto their force so that we no longer need to contract with a handler outside of our community. This will both save our school district money and provide a local resource that can be a more frequent deterrent as we strive to keep our schools drug free. In the past, the dog searched lockers and backpacks in the hallway and did not enter classrooms. I’ve learned recently it is a common procedure in area schools to also randomly empty one to two classrooms and search those rooms. Because we have not historically done this practice at Escalante, it did surprise me, a few students, parents and staff when students were asked to leave the classroom to allow for a search of the room. The dog does not conduct body searches of students. I apologize that we did not communicate this change in practice beforehand, and please feel free to contact me if you have concerns as I am currently catching up on how our district’s procedures are shifting with the new dog and handler. If there are additional changes, I will communicate that information throughout our school community. On a much lighter and brighter note, I have been honored to collect compliments about our student body frequently over the past few weeks from community partners who seek me out to praise our students for their use of manners, genuine interest in learning, kindness, and enthusiasm. This is a wonderful school to lead, and I am extremely thankful for each of the 516 students who walk through our doors each day. Sincerely, Jeremy Voss EMS, Principal

Thank you for your support and involvement in our Student-Led Conferences

Dear EMS Community, Thank you for your support and involvement in our Student-Led Conferences. Our goal is to have 100% participation, and many of our Crews have already reached this benchmark. At the conferences, each student set goals drawing on the following information: * Report Cards * Classwork * I-Ready Data * CMAS Data Our staff has also gone through a similar analysis of teaching practices, and at our professional development session Monday, we spent time analyzing data, studying lesson design, and implementing some core practices that we will monitor over the next quarter for impact on student learning. Parents also have an important role to play, and there is a great body of research that can inform the most important actions we can take to support our kids’ education. According to John Hattie’s research, two parenting practices have the greatest effect size on student learning: 1. Parents listening to student reading and creating expectations for reading at home. 54% of students in the US read less than 15 minutes per day on average. Parents can give their kids a great educational advantage by setting up expectations in the home to read a minimum of 15 minutes per day. 2. Regularly communicate high expectations to your child for student achievement Public health experts and psychologists have the following suggestions for parents raising young adolescents: 1. Help your child build healthy eating habits and a healthy body image. Serve balanced meals, and keep lots of fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods in the house. Be a model of good eating and exercise habits for your child. It is also important for families to share meals together. Research shows that just 40% of families in the United States eat more than 6 meals together a week. Healthy dietary habits increase and unhealthy habits such as substance abuse decrease when families regularly eat together. 2. Urge your child to get some exercise every day. 3. Help your adolescent get enough rest (teenagers need nine hours per night). Also, set limits on phone, computer, and TV use after a set evening hour. In a recent national survey, 34% of 8th graders reported that their parents put limits on screen time. Another survey indicated that middle school students spend about four and a half hours of free time on a screen - over twice the recommended amount. As a parent of a current middle schooler, I’ve decided to set some goals for myself based on this information. I am going to eat at least seven meals per week with my kids this quarter, ensure that they are reading books more than looking at screens, and find some time to exercise with them each week. Given that almost 100% of EMS parents showed up for SLCs, it is clear that we have an extremely supportive community, and I hope that this information is helpful in guiding our kids to succeed in school. Sincerely, Jeremy Voss EMS, Principal

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