Set Yourself Up For Success

Dear Escalante Middle School Community,

January 17th marks the official halfway point of the school year. Please keep your eye out for semester report cards the following week. I also encourage parents to have a discussion with your students this weekend about putting in their maximum efforts next week to set themselves up for success when grades are released.

At the midpoint of the year, we conduct a mid-year review at Escalante to check and adjust our progress toward school goals. On the discipline side this year, we have a few successes that parents should celebrate. Our instances of cyberbullying and social media abuse has decreased dramatically this year. Although it hasn’t been eradicated, I very much appreciate the efforts made by our parents to provide limits and oversight on phones and social media sites.

When we train students at EMS how to handle instances of abusive digital behavior, we encourage them to follow the following four steps.
* Stop the interaction - do not respond.
* Copy or screenshot the abusive behavior.
* Report to a parent or school official
* Block the offender from contacting you.

Thank you for reviewing these guidelines with your children - our kids have done a nice job improving in this area and it’s extremely important that we stay vigilant in having ongoing conversations about appropriate behavior. Essentially, I encourage students to never post anything they wouldn’t want the parents or their principal to see because there is no such thing as privacy in the digital world.

One of the other major disciplinary issues that is plaguing schools across Colorado is the prevalence and availability of marijuana and vape pens. Our discipline statistics in this area have improved slightly, but we clearly have work to do. The district recently contracted with a dog that has been trained specifically for school environments to sniff out tobacco, alcohol, and a wide variety of drugs. The dog will never work directly with students, but it does work to detect substances in lockers and backpacks in our hallways. My hope is that knowledge across our community that our furry friend will be doing random visits to our campus will serve as a deterrent to ensure that our students are making wise decisions about what they bring to school. I appreciate your help as you have preventative and proactive discussions with your children regarding illegal substances.

As always, thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Voss
EMS, Principal

Published January 11, 2019 Print