July 9, 2010

Dear Parents, 
  
For those of you receiving this for the first time, welcome to St. Richard's School!  We are thrilled to have you join our community and look forward to the upcoming school year to get to know your children.

We have been hard at work preparing for the 2010-2011 school year. You should receive a packet by the beginning of next week that will contain various forms, calendars, and other start of school information. If you do not receive this packet, please contact the front desk. Please see the newly posted condensed calendar on our web page under calendars or http://www.strichardsschool.org/condensed.shtml.  In addition, please see http://www.strichardsschool.org/SummerReadingsandsupplylist.shtml for summer reading and class supply lists. If you are intending on purchasing a backpack, please note that we have new lockers. Please keep in mind that the backpack will need to fit in a locker with the following dimensions: 12"wide, 18" deep, and 60" tall. We also discourage parents from purchasing backpacks with wheels on them as they typically do not fit well in the lockers, and they often cause collisions in the hallways.

I am excited to introduce our new French teacher for grades 2-5.  There were over 20 highly qualified applicants, and we interviewed seven candidates. The final four candidates taught classes in various classrooms, and it was clear that Mr. Bikangwa would be an excellent addition to our staff. Mr. Bikangwa attended a University in France and Harvard University School of Education. He participated in various teaching workshops in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.  His teaching experience spans the continents with experience teaching not only in Indianapolis but also in Uganda.  He brings a passion for the French language and a joy of the teaching/learning process. Mr. Bikangwa is married to Nichol Francis who is joining the International School of Indiana as a Grade 4 teacher. They are proud parents to their daughter, Eliana Nathalie. Please stop by and meet Mr. Bikangwa at the ice-cream social. He is currently studying and traveling abroad and will return later this month.

Grade 3 and 4 parents should have recently received ERB scores from our tests held in the spring.  I will be spending time analyzing these scores and am happy to schedule a meeting with you the second week of August to discuss any questions or concerns. I am hopeful that the parent information meetings with our ERB consultant held last fall should help in your interpretation of the scores, but I certainly understand time has passed since then. 

I recently held a mini-retreat for our Early Childhood teachers, and we accomplished a great deal of work. In addition to our Early Childhood students occasionally attending All School assemblies, they will also have Early Childhood Mini Assemblies during the 2010-2011 school year. Each teacher will plan an exciting and developmentally appropriate topic, speaker or presentation for all of the children. In addition, we are tweaking our curriculum by having a Global Readiness Theme incorporated into each grade level as currently seen with our kindergarten Around the World trip. After learning about different types of families and what it means to be in a family, we will also have "Family Fridays" once a month. Students will be placed in a group of students from various classes, and they will rotate through a series of activities and learning experiences. More information will be forthcoming about these exciting enhancements to our existing program, and we will also provide information about an upcoming information session regarding the Envision Math program and updates from our Civic Responsibility Committee.
When you return for the ice-cream social, you will notice that some room changes occurred during the summer. Miss Read will be teaching Junior Kindergarten in Mrs. Berak's prior classroom, and Mrs. Hopkinson will continue to have the large downstairs room. Mrs. Cheesebourough will serve as an assistant to both of these classrooms and will often help coordinate joint classroom projects and activities. Mrs. Kubica will assist Mrs. Guess in the newly painted Pre-Kindergarten classroom. Mrs. Berak will be located directly across from Mrs. Rushing's class, and they will both be teaching Grade 1. Miss Graber will be located directly across from Ms. Napier's classroom, and they will continue to teach Grade 2 together. Finally, Mrs. Rhoades will be moving across the hallway from her prior classroom with her newly purchased technology.  While this sounds complicated, all of the moves were very strategic and will easily fall into place by the time the first bell rings on the first day of school.

I hope these informal periodic messages help communicate important events and issues and answer any questions you might have. While this is a joint message, I will often have separate information intended only for our Early Childhood (Pk-K) or Lower Division (grades 1-4) students and families. We are returning to this separation in titles for communication purposes rather than including Pk-Grade 4 as one division. I will continue serving as the Division Head for grades PK-4 but will now have the title of Early Childhood and Lower Division Head.
Please feel free to contact me by phone (926-0425 ext 109) or e-mail throughout the summer. I will be checking messages on a weekly basis during the remaining part of July, but please feel free to contact me through the front desk if it is of an urgent nature.

Make it a great summer!

Abby Williams
Early Childhood and Lower Division Head
 

St. Richard's School Awards list 2010