Message from Administration
January 2012
As we enter 2012, we would like to give everyone an update about the first half of this school year and highlight a few things that are coming up in the next few months. Our team has been very busy this year with transitions, referrals, visits and 14 new students and families joining the The Providence Center School (TPCS) community.
Our annual initiative for this year is “Think before You Bully.” We hope to educate students, staff and families about ways to reduce all types of bullying in order to create a positive and safe learning environment. As part of this campaign we have: discussed facts about this issue at our monthly staff meetings and included them in our PBIS newsletters; invited a state trooper to come to TPCS and speak to our middle and high school students about the legal and criminal issues of ‘cyber’ bullying; the family support team offered parent groups this fall focused on bully prevention; we have increased efforts to recognize behaviors that are supportive of others and have implemented a notification system to keep families informed if their child is being bullied or is targeting others; and have also had a bully dramatization by our own “TPCS Staff Players” at a student assembly.
Schools across the country are attempting to find ways to cope with negative peer interactions defined as bullying. These social issues are often compounded by the use of social media (ex: text messaging, Facebook). We have heard from many parents and students about their frustration with the far reaching negative impact Facebook can have when it is used to target and hurt others. We will continue to work on helping our students and families cope with the potential stress created by social interactions over the internet. Our goal to create a positive and safe learning environment remains the same. If we all work together, we can do it!!!
In the spirit of building a positive school community, we make it a priority to have at least one school community event every month. During the past five months we have had: a Saturday at School Open House in September, Trick or Treating for our younger students and fun movies for the older students in October, a Thanksgiving Feast with all the trimmings in November (thank you, Mitch), and an all-school holiday sing- along in December that included a special visit from Santa, and the treat of hot chocolate. January brought the all time favorite, The Ice Cream Social…everyone was able to choose from a huge array of fixings to build a sundae fit for royalty.
We look forward to the next wave of community events over the next five months: Valentine’s Day Activity, The Annual Talent Show (parents invited), International Lunch, May Breakfast and All American Day…hot dogs and apple pie outdoors to ring in the summer months! Other activities we look forward to this spring semester include a special science program on May 11 brought to us from The Boston Museum of Science in two parts. Part one focuses on the topic of Motor-Speed-Velocity and Acceleration for grades six through 12, while part two, a Windmill Workshop, is created for our fourth through eighth graders. All of these activities bring us closer to the best day of the school year…high school graduation. We currently have seven seniors preparing for their big day in June.
On another note, we were sad to lose Joel as our music teacher this fall. Joel raised awareness regarding the power of music in our program, and made many positive connections with students across the school. Although Joel leaving was a big loss, we are excited to announce that a new music teacher, Matt, joined us in December.
As always, we look forward to supporting positive change that improves the education experience for students entrusted to our care. Please contact us if you have any questions or would like more information.