The Hawk Happenings: Pennoyer Staff Newsletter

Hawk Thoughts & Happenings

Team Pennoyer,

Ok...whether you're a Bob Dylan fan or not, my show for this week on Netflix is Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese. What a cool biopic journey at the height of Dylan's creativity and a time he actually sounded like he could sing.

And if that doesn't do it for you, what about this display of pride... This past Thursday was a very special day for many of our students. “Vyshyvanka Day” is held on the third Thursday of every May and celebrated by wearing traditional Ukrainian embroidered clothes called Vyshyvanka. International Vyshyvanka Day fell on May 18th this year. This international holiday promotes the preservation of the folk tradition of creating and wearing ethnic embroidered Ukrainian clothes called Vyshyvanka, the ultimate symbol of Ukrainian culture. Our students were so proud!

Now I know I don't write lyrics like Bob Dylan, and I'm certainly not as adorable as our Ukrainian students in their cultural garb, but I'm gonna do my best this Saturday playing at the Long Grove Chocolate Festival. The weather looks perfect, so whether you venture out to my neighborhood or not, I hope you have time to get outside, relax, and soak in some sunshine!

Hawk Action Items

Our final safety drills are set for the year unless the weather doesn't cooperate. Feel free to let students know so they're prepared. Reach out to Denise if you need any updated evacuation signs in your classrooms. Please make sure you understand procedures and reach out with any questions.

Fire Drill on Tuesday, May 23rd at 9:30am
Bus Evacuation Drill on Wednesday, May 31st all day
Fire Drill on Monday, June 5th at 1:00pm

Please make sure that next year's stipend, extra duties, leadership opportunities form is filled out for those interested by Friday, May 26th. Reach out to Adam with any questions.

HERE is our SIP day agenda for Friday, May 26th. Most of the time will be spent on grade level vertical articulation, but there's time for other work as well. It should be productive! If rooms I assigned don't work for some reason or you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. We'll be running Periods 1-5 next Friday.

An official checklist will be coming, along with a final day sign up sheet, but as the end of the year gets closer, and you're starting to think about cleaning out your classroom spaces, here are some things to keep in mind when you want to get started...

Put/store things away. All desks, etc will be moved out so the room can be properly cleaned.
Take everything down from the walls so they can be thoroughly deep cleaned
Anything that custodians need to take down could be thrown out
Return Keys to Denise and any staff not returning next year will need to hand in ID/Fob as well to Adam
If teachers need boxes they should put in a work order

Beginning the week of May 29th, our 7th grade Math 1 students will be available for peer leadership opportunities. Check out this doc HERE, and add your name/grade to any days of the week for the last 3 weeks of school. I plan on sharing this with our Math 1 students next week, and we'd love to have more opportunities for them. This would be support anytime from 12:20-1:40pm. If you only need 40 mins. certain days, just make a note of that. It doesn't matter whose names you put information next to at this point. We'll just end up breaking up these groups into probably 2-4 students that will stick together during these three weeks each that we would send to you. You may have different groups of students on different days of the week. If you have special requests, you can note that too. Ideally, we would love to get these students in classes at least 2-3 days a week. The other days they'll be in the LRC doing asynchronous math work on their own. We were thinking this would be a great opportunity for PreK-5th grade classrooms as well as PE and Fine Arts to give these students a leadership role and help out in any way you choose. Reach out to Adam with any questions. Please have this filled out with all of your days and requests by May 25th at the latest...thanks so much!

Interview Update For Next Week - For right now, we have no interviews scheduled, but I'll reach out by the end of the weekend if anything changes. I truly appreciate all of the help and support with interviews over the last month. We're in a good place right now for sure!

Culture the Change Workshop opportunity - Click HERE if you're interested.

Weekly Hawk Playlist/Lyric

"She was physically forgotten then she slipped into my pocket with my car keys..."

Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes by Paul Simon

Hawk Celebrations

Last week we were so fortunate to have an incredible group of students from Ridgewood High School, along with Mr. Tristan Kumor from the STEM department come and visit the 4th graders in Ms. Kopoulos' and Mrs. Kafka's classes. They set up stations and led our 4th graders through some eye opening activities. It was an amazing experience for our Pennoyer students who got to explore the world of STEM through hands on lessons that were so cool! They made ice cream from rock salt, learned how electricity works with circuit boards, constructed architectural designs using toothpicks and marshmallows, and so much more! Seeing our 4th graders collaborate with the high school students and staff from Ridgewood was a sight to see, and we know it sparked the interests of so many that were involved. It was truly high levels of student engagement at its finest!