Friday News June 5, 2020
Hillcrest Elementary School
Friday News
June 5, 2020
Dear Hillcrest Families,
This school year has been filled with a wide range of challenges and at each one, I have felt a great sense of appreciation for our amazing teachers, students, families and community members. This week, that appreciation has grown as I have engaged in many meaningful conversations with our Hillcrest staff and other community members about the acts of racism and injustice and the protests that are taking place across our country. I have found myself thinking about my personal connection to race and racism in our nation and in our community. As a school leader, it’s essential that I collaborate with our school community to confront racism and social injustice. This involves working to support our students in developing a positive identity, an understanding of diversity and justice, and an ability to take action. As you know, at Hillcrest, we have been working toward these goals for the past few years by studying the Teaching Tolerance Social Justice Standards, developing learning experiences based on those standards and by building our Diverse Books Collection and sharing these books with our students and families as a central component of our teaching. Working toward social justice is lifelong work and it is not easy. As a school, we are here to support you and your children in this work and we want to collaborate with you. Many families are looking for support in how to talk with their children about these issues and I have some great resources to offer within this newsletter:
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Talking about Race A resource from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture
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Teaching Tolerance You’ll find the Social Justice Standards on this site
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Embrace Race Book lists, articles and webinars for parents and educators
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Common Sense Media Book lists, media reviews, movie reviews
Please feel to reach out via phone or email if you’d like additional resources or if you’d simply like to chat.
A few items of note:
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Please be sure to complete the survey about Remote Learning that was sent to you earlier this week by Superintendent Sullivan. You can find the survey here: Remote Learning Parent Survey
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Chromebook Return -- If your family borrowed a Chromebook to use for remote learning, it must be returned to Hillcrest on Tuesday, June 16th between 9:00 and 3:00. Devices that are not returned in the time designated will be suspended and made unusable — a setting that can be placed into effect remotely. Fees for damaged Chromebooks are $10 for repairs of screens and keyboards. The fee for the loss of a Chromebook is $200.
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Thank you to the families who stopped by at school this week to pick up their students’ learning materials and personal belongings. If you still need to gather your children’s things, please call us at 863-9526 or email me at sarah.burstein@gmrsd.org, so that we can make arrangements.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend --
Sarah Burstein, Principal