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Author: Foothill Montessori

Educate a Girl, Empower a Nation: A COEEF Event

Montessori Community School sponsors 4 girls through the Children of Ethiopia Education Fund, COEEF. We wanted to share an event you might be interested in! This is another way that we can lend our support to the organization that supports the education of many girls who would otherwise not have the opportunity to attend school.

Friday, September 22, 2017, COEEF will be holding an event including Ethiopian food, memorabilia, music, and a huge silent auction.

This event will take place at the Holladay City Hall Pavilion from 6 – 9 pm.

Fun Run – September 28th

On Thursday September 28th, MCS students will be participating in our 11th annual Montessori Community School Fun Run! Our bouncy house obstacle course is becoming a fun tradition and we are excited to be bringing it back for this year’s Fun Run! Our returning families may notice the Fun Run is much earlier this year than in year’s past. Our PSA and administration agreed on an earlier date to help us ensure agreeable weather (spring time usually finds us considering alternative plans in case of rain) and because the Navajo Rug Show is coming up in early November! The Fun Run will coincide with a drive for supplies so keep checking back for more info about our drive and stay tuned to see how our fundraising efforts turn out! We look forward to sharing this fun opportunity with you.


What is the Fun Run and how can your family participate?

Each year our students have the opportunity to raise pledges for our two Service Learning Projects:

1) The Children of Ethiopia Education Fund (COEEF)
Specifically, the COEEF program will give vital financial support so the six girls our MCS students sponsor can attend school in Ethiopia. The Children of Ethiopia who are living in impoverished circumstances to have a quality, private education through generous sponsors and donors. Without this assistance many of these girls would not have the opportunity to attend any school. We feel that supporting girls in this way will have such a far reaching effect: “To educate a girl is to educate a village (nation).”

Check out this video from Bethlehem Eyob, one of the girls sponsored by MCS.

2) For more than 20 years our school has been involved in the Adopt-A-Native-Elder Program. The Adopt-A-Native-Elder Program exists to create a bridge of hope between Native Americans and other cultures. It allows us to reach out to one another, share our gifts, and mend the broken circle of our relationship with the Land and the Native Americans who hold it in sacred trust.

We originally adopted three grandmothers- Grandmother Roseline Jackson who died two years ago, Grandmother Emma Bahe who died this year, and Grandmother Elvira Horseherder to whom we are still committed. Recently we chose to adopt another grandmother whose name is Grandmother Anita Jackson, a relative of Grandmother Roseline. We are delighted to have this opportunity to become part of the life of Grandmother Anita. We anticipate having regular communication with her as we do with Grandmother Elvira.

The money raised by our students will be used to support our girls in Ethiopia and to provide our adopted Navajo Grandmothers with much-needed items such as food, firewood, clothing, and gardening tools as well as yarn to weave the beautiful rugs they sell to earn a living.

Service Learning is an important component of our Montessori program. It teaches students about the joy and value of contributing to their community, society, and world. We encourage you to join with us in supporting your child in service learning. You can do this by:

  1. Helping your child to set a goal to raise a certain amount.
  2. Helping your child talk to family and friends about the Fun Run. You would be surprised how many friends, neighbors, and grandparents are eager to support such a worthwhile event.
  3. Attending the event and join with them as they run their laps or cheer them on from the sidelines.
  4. Volunteering to help at the event. Please sign up in the lobby or email psa@mcsslc.com for details.

A YouCaring website will be established and emailed to families next week and donations can be made there or checks delivered to the MCS office. Please write all donations to MEF (Montessori Education Foundation.)

Our goal this year is to raise at least $7,000.00 total, with 80% family participation.

We look forward to this exciting Service Learning experience and hope all of our families will participate with enthusiasm.

Sincerely,

MCS Parent School Alliance

2017 – 2018 MCS Parent School Alliance

Montessori Community School Parent School Alliance
(PSA)

L-R: Gaea Rindflesh, Teresa Nelson, Jordan Stein, Jeannette Shaffer,
Dave Quisenberry, Jaymison Peterson and (below) Jen Zivkovic

The MCS Administration is delighted to introduce you to our 2017 – 2018 Parent Student Alliance (PSA). We are pleased to have a larger number of PSA representatives than ever before. We appreciate Jeannette, Dave, Jaymison and Jen for joining us again this year as our veteran PSA and we thank Gaea, Teresa, and Jordan for joining the team!

The PSA is already looking forward to and has a jumpstart on planning many PSA sponsored activities this year. We anticiapte seeing many of you at the upcoming Welcome Picnics where you can meet members of the PSA and will be introduced to the Community Builders from your child(ren)s class.

We are also looking forward to our first Coffee Thursday, this coming week September 7th, from 8:30am-9:30am in the lobby. Don’t forget to bring your cash because the Uinta (Upper Elementary) Class will be hosting their first Montessori Market of the year. Montessori Market is a quaint student-hosted event where hand made items are sold for reasonable prices. Baked goods are among the items you can expect to see at each market. All proceeds from the market go towards the Uinta class Adventure (read about last year’s adventure here.)

Along with your delicious baked goods, be sure to enjoy a complementary cup of coffee, tea or hot chocolate while enjoying the company of fellow MCS parents. Coffee provided by Hub and Spoke Diner 1291 1100 E, Salt Lake City, UT 84105.

Welcome to 2017-2018 from MCS Admin

Dear Montessori Community  School Families,

Each year as we welcome back our returning students and families and welcome our new students and their families to our school community we feel such a sense of anticipation for all the experiences we will enjoy together during the academic year.
By the time that the children  arrive the teachers have worked tirelessly for 7 days to prepare their  beautiful environments for the arrival of their students. There is such a buzz of anticipation that is infectious. Everyone is so excited about all the possibilities of the new school year. And finally the children are here and the year begins. It is always such a special time for all of us.
As we move forward this year we want you all to know that we are grateful to all families who have entrusted their beautiful children into our care. We are dedicated to “following each child” to  best support their optimum growth emotionally, socially and academically. We look forward to building partnerships with each of you so as to afford your child/ren the best possible experience.
Please know that we will always make ourselves available to answer questions or respond to comments. Our doors are usually open and we invite you to stop in. We appreciate the opportunities to further develop our relationships.
Thanks to those of you who were able to join us for the New Student Orientation on Tuesday morning and the Back To School Night for Toddlers and Early Childhood families that evening.  We look forward to getting to know you better at such events as our Welcome Picnics and ongoing community events.
We are grateful for our dedicated and caring teachers and all of our families and look forward to an incredible year.
Best wishes,
Robyn, Ramira and Britney

Elevation Catering at MCS

MCS will continue to partner with Elevation Catering to provide lunches to our students, Monday through Thursday. Elevation Catering has been serving private schools in Utah since 2007. Elevation has made ordering as convenient as possible by providing an online ordering system. You may order as many lunches as you would like, as long as you meet their $8.70 order minimum. You may also add, change, or cancel your lunch orders easily through their website, elevationcatering.com. Elevation Catering also has “emergency” lunches available. If you forget your child’s lunch you may call and place a last minute order for $5. Please keep in mind when ordering an emergency lunch that they do have limited option, the order must be called in before 10 AM, and the cost is $5 per meal that must be paid when the order is placed.

Please note that families are responsible for ordering and managing their own accounts. MCS is not able to make any changes on your behalf.

Please see here for this August and September’s menu.

Please see here for Terms and Conditions.

Becoming Familiar with MCS Safety Policies and Procedures

In an effort to help you get started on the right foot we would like to remind you about some of our safety procedures here at MCS. We ask that you remain mindful of them as they play a very important role in keeping our students safe and accounted for at all times.  These policies and more can be found in our Toddler/Early Childhood Parent Handbook and our Elementary Parent Handbook.

Sign-In and Pick-Up
For safety measures, all students need to be signed in and out each day. Sign-in/out sheets are located outside of each classroom. We ask that you park, enter the school, sign in/out your child and check your child’s bulletin board for special announcements. Only parents or persons with written authorization (either listed in the child’s Emergency Medical Release form or through the Alternate Pickup form) may pick up a child.

The sign-in and out sheets not only tell us who dropped off and picked up on a given day; they also tell us which students are in the building in the case of an emergency.
If your child has an appointment during the school day and will be picked up and then returned to school, please sign her/him out and back in at the Office front desk.

Alternate Pickup Procedures
If someone other than the parent/guardian will be picking up your child, please fill out an Alternative Pickup Form for authorization. These forms are available in the Administrative Office. A staff member will ask the person you have designated to pick up your child to provide identification (i.e. driver’s license) if that person is
not recognized. The safety of your children is our highest priority.

School Closures due to Severe Weather or Emergencies
The start of school may be delayed due to a temporary loss of heating, water or electrical power or severe weather such as heavy early morning snow. School may also be canceled before the scheduled end of the school day for the same reasons. MCS follows the Salt Lake City school district’s decisions unless our needs dictate measures beyond their decision. The Head of School will decide whether we will have a late start, early closure, or school closure after consulting with Facilities. If the Head of School is not reachable, a member of Facilities and a member of Administration will make the decision. In the event of an emergency or when MCS is closed or its opening is delayed by an unusual situation, notification will be made through School Messenger. School Messenger will use one or more of the following methods for notification: email, text messaging, and/or voice mail.

Safety Procedures
While the Montessori philosophy allows for “freedom within limits,” and we want to encourage students to feel comfortable and able to explore in their environment, we keep the safety of our students foremost in mind at MCS. We have a number of procedures in place to ensure that safety:

  • Outside doors are only unlocked during arrival and dismissal times and are locked at all other times.
  • We have a sign-in and sign-out procedure for parents dropping off and picking up students. We also have a signout sheet in the office for families taking their students out for an appointment in the middle of the day with plans to return later. This procedure ensures that the correct person is picking up the student in the afternoon and also gives us a sense of which students are in the building at any given time.
  • We ask all staff to be vigilant and watch for people we do not recognize and to ask anyone we do not recognize how we can help them.
  • We have a required check-in for visitors at the front office, where they sign in and wear a badge notifying our staff of their visitor status.
  • Every classroom has an emergency evacuation plan posted. We practice emergency evacuations once a month, either in classrooms or schoolwide with an alarm.
  • We utilize a texting emergency notifications system in the event of a schoolwide emergency or unannounced school closure.
  • We have phones in every classroom by which the office can issue a schoolwide page in the event of an emergency and with which each classroom can contact the office immediately in the event of an emergency.
  • We have placed buzzers on all upstairs outside access doors that notify us when the doors are opened. Our IT department is currently in the process of designing a more sophisticated entry and exit tracking system through the doors.
  • We have various surveillance cameras placed throughout the school and school grounds.
  • Our teachers are required to be First Aid/CPR certified.
  • At the beginning of the year students receive lessons including a tour of school and general safety guidelines. These lessons will be reviewed as needed.
  • We utilize head counts at various times throughout the school day, particularly when children are in transition (i.e., when children leave the playground and once they arrive back in class).
  • Children check in to use the bathroom. If a child does not return within a reasonable time (age dependent) a teacher will check on them.
  • We often implement a buddy system (pairing younger students with older, more experienced students) for times students are in line, traveling or transitioning. We also place one teacher at the front of the line and one at the back of the line when processing. In elementary classes these precautions are taken at varying levels, depending on the ages and needs of the students.
  • Our most recent Loss Prevention evaluation was performed in July 2016.

Emergency Notifications and School Messenger

Our school has an Emergency Action Plan, which includes procedures for reporting emergencies and evacuating the facility. This document details for the staff the procedures to be followed in case of fire, earthquake, power outage, etc. Evacuation plans are posted in prominent locations in each room or area of the building. The Montessori Community School holds monthly fire drills and semi-annual disaster drills which are documented.

If there is an emergency or disaster that requires us to leave the school building, we will evacuate to the MCS field. If we are unable to access our field, our back up evacuation site will be All Saints Episcopal Church, which is located directly east of our building, or Hillside Middle School, southwest of our building. Each classroom has emergency contact information, medical releases, and an emergency backpack with a first aid kit. The teachers are trained to take those items with them during an evacuation. In the event of an evacuation, MCS will use our emergency text notification system to communicate with parents. The children will remain with and be accompanied by their classroom teachers at all times and we will maintain required ratios to the best of our ability. No child will be left alone or unsupervised. The shed on the MCS field contains stored water, snacks, emergency supplies such as blankets and diaper changing supplies (for Toddlers), and blankets.

MCS uses School Messenger as our emergency notification system. School Messenger has multiple data centers in different regions; they employ a variety of delivery methods (email, text messaging, and voicemail); they have a solid infrastructure to eliminate any single point of failure in communication. They are used to delivering millions of messages quickly, with over 4000 customers throughout the U.S., including various school districts in Salt Lake City, and a customer renewal rate of 98%.

Families will automatically be opted in to receive these notifications via email, text, and voicemail, and can opt themselves out should they choose not to receive them, though School Messenger will be our primary form of communication in the event of an emergency. We encourage families to include at least one out of state emergency contact in their list. Emergency contacts will only be included in communications concerning incidents that affect the greater community in the case that parents are unavailable to receive them themselves. In order to ensure that we have the most current contact information in School Messenger and the most effective communication, please inform the Office any time there is a change in your emergency contacts names and/or phone numbers, or when you have made a change to your own contact information in Montessori Compass.

2017 Uinta Adventure

Last week our Upper Elementary students, the Uinta class, set adrift for an amazing Adventure to Split Mountain, Vernal. They enjoyed three days of fun, learning, and life experiences. Despite the inclement weather they adventured to the max and had a blast. They are made of stern stuff!   Students, teachers and parent chaperones did a service learning project at Josie’s Cabin, rafted the Green River (in the snow!), enjoyed a beautiful hike in the area and visited the Dinosaur Quarry.

Students spent the year earning funds for their adventure through the Montessori Market and preparing for their rafting trip with their in-depth GO studies of the water shed. This adventure was a culmination of many important Upper Elementary lessons; from planning and executing a trip to in-depth follow up to their outdoor studies and many things in between.

Thank you to everyone who shopped the Market and supported their other business ventures for making this possible.   Below find some fun quotes from parent chaperones and a handful of photos documenting this amazing adventure!

The children were in full on camping mode. The cold rain and snow did not deter, or steer them off course from their planned itinerary. It was obvious that they worked hard to prepare before the trip, as many duties fell into place.
They braved the big, cold waters of the Green River, in winter conditions. They hiked the trails of Dinosaur Nation Park. They explored the quarry and represented The Montessori Community School at its best. Well done children!

Aaron Rashaw

The Ultimate Adventure!

With Jude graduating from the sixth grade, this will be my last opportunity to chaperone at MCS. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience! I’ve never been to Dinosaur National Monument; so to go with nineteen of the most adventurous ten to twelve year olds ever, made the outing that much more enjoyable. Believe me: they braved the elements that only a Utah spring can muster; and they did so with respect of nature and stoic resolve. There was nothing that could have dampened their enthusiasm. I know the students learned a great deal about the hydrologic system of the Green River, but I seemed to be their student as they embraced the desert and embraced life!

Thanks again for the wonderful opportunity!
Gregg Wood

Graduating Alumni- Class of 2017

Within the past few weeks we have received High School Graduation notices from some of our amazing Alumni. We send our love, best wishes and congratulations to Elise Vandamme, Camilla Uphill, Amelia Lewis, and Allyson Jones. Best wishes to all of you as you begin university in the fall. You have such exciting adventures ahead. Savour all of them. And please keep in touch.

With Love,

Robyn Eriwata-Buchanan
Head of School

2016 – 2017 Fun Run Update

This past Monday, May 22nd each student had the opportunity to run laps through an obstacle course. Laps were tallied and pledges made. Pledges and donations are still coming in but as of today, we are at $3,900.00! A huge thank you to all those who came out to help and cheer the students on!

Also, thank you for keeping Service Learning a major part of your child’s life in supporting these wonderful causes and rallying to keep kindness, compassion, charity in your hearts. We will continue to take pledges and donations until the end of the school year. Please continue to share this cause with all.

Every little bit does make a direct difference. It has been wonderful to watch the growth of the girls we support through the COEEF Program and to be apart of the Adopt-A-Native-Elder Program and see Grandmother Elvira each year at the Rug Show.

 

Farewell from Robyn – MCS Head of School

Dear MCS Families,

As the 2016-2017 year draws to a close I feel such gratitude for all the members of our school community. It is a true pleasure to be working with such amazing co-workers. I am delighted by our children/students and love the opportunities to spend time with them. In addition I feel such strong support from our families.

This year I have been away from school more often than in previous years, mostly because of my mother’s health challenges. She is now 91 years old and had had a form of Parkinsons for many years as well as some heart problems. It is increasingly difficult for her to walk and that is very hard for her. She insists on continuing to live in her home and we are so fortunate that the New Zealand government offers free services that include having “helpers” come into her home each morning and evening and also to do her housework and gardening but as my sister and I live in the States and my brother in Australia she does not have any of her children nearby to provide direct support. My sister and I have been going home regularly to assist her. She is most fortunate to have several friends and a few relatives who are also supportive. Anyway because of my more frequent absences during those times many of my responsibilities have fallen on Ramira and Britney. It is difficult to adequately express how much I appreciate everything they do. Of course I am also so appreciative of all the other staff members for their support as well.

Once again we have had an amazing group of parents serving on the PSA this year and because of them and many other parents who have served on committees and in many capacities so many exciting events have happened. I would like to give special thanks to Annie Guerrero who has served on the PSA since she arrived at our school with her son Owen 11 years ago and in the leadership position for many years. She has been unwavering in her enthusiasm and support of our school and it would be impossible to calculate how many hours she has devoted. Owen will be graduating from 6th grade this year and therefore he and his parents Annie and Ryan will be moving on. They will surely be missed and I will be forever grateful to them for all their contributions.

Some exciting news to report is that this year the following staff members have graduated from university:

  • Diana Haro Reynolds with her Masters Degree in Montessori Education
  • Annie (Cassandra) Hayes with her Bachelors Degree in Early Education
  • Kim Brown with her Bachelors Degree in Business and Accounting with an emphasis in HR
  • Amanda Haws with her Masters Degree in Industrial Organizational Psychology

We are also delighted to advise that Jennifer Carrino and Fernanda Roesevear will be completing their Toddler Montessori certifications during the Summer. Lindsay will be completing her certification once she returns from maternity leave. In addition, we currently have Candace Leikam and Annie Hayes working on their Early Childhood Montessori Certification through CGMS and Anita Ermish will begin her studies for her Masters Degree in Montessori Education at Westminster College this summer. Also,  Austin Bull, Sage Wegner and Carley Hines will begin their Montessori Toddler training this summer. We are thrilled to have so many of our non-certified staff committing to becoming certified Montessori teachers. This is a special gift to their students.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to those of our staff who will be leaving this year- Evi Bybee, Kenzee Kubilius, Kate Savage, Whitney Franck, Corey Day. Liz Spor, Christine Burningham, Aly Delanty and Amanda Haws. Each of these teachers has played a huge role in the lives of all of our children. Through their observations they have developed a meticulous knowledge of each child, have found their beauty and talents and encouraged them in their growth and also been able to recognize their challenges and been able to guide and support each of them in these areas. They have always been truly committed and have offered so much of themselves to their students and co-workers. What each teacher brings to their students is unique and wonderful and their many co-workers, students and their families will really miss all of them but as the Head of School I fully support them in following their dreams and taking a new direction in their lives. I have hope that sometime in the future some of them may return.

For those families who are leaving us I thank you for the privilege of being able to partner with you in guiding your children in their growth and development. I wish you and your children all the best as you embark upon new adventures. For those who are staying I am delighted and look forward to many more special experiences together.

Have a wonderful, full-filled and safe summer.

Warmly,

Robyn