Middle
Matters

Provided by your secretary, Chris C.

ASB on Wednesday in the 5th/6th grade center! Don’t forget!

National Blah-Blah-Blah day is today!

The Green and Gold word count score is currently Green 1,774,517; Gold 1,218,125! The last day to read books for the word count is today, and the last day to turn in the word count forms (found in the gym, the library, and online) is on Monday.

Artfest is on May 1st! There will be shows, food, art, dance, improv, and your art!

Girls MS LAX have a game Saturday at Forest Ridge, 1:00!

Rodden HR will be having a bake sale with proceeds for Share our Strength! See Rodden HR for more details!

Boys MS LAX have a game on Saturday at Skyline! The time is on the website!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MRS. RENNO!!!

Ultimate White Team have two games, both on Saturday at Magnuson Park Field 4 around 1:00! Remember to support!

1000 miles: Omar!!!!!!!! Great work Omar!

Theatre Sports have meetings today and Thursday!

Ultimate Green Team have a game on Saturday, 11:30 in the morning at Magnuson!

GREEN AND GOLD!! Green: 2685 Gold: 2336

• ASB on Wednesday! Don’t forget!
• MS Ultimate Frisbee White Team have 2 games on Saturday at Magnuson Park in Seattle, at 2:00 and 4:30. Remember to support!
• The Overlake Schools is the only Green Ribbon private school in Washington! Great work!
• MS Ultimate Frisbee Green Team also have 2 games on Saturday at Magnuson Park at 9:30 and 11:00! Don’t forget!
• Mrs. Hunt is looking for a black zipper bag about the size of a large note card and about one inch (2.54 centimeters) deep. It is very important, so if found, please return it to Mrs. Hunt!
• There will be HUNGER GAMES activities during lunch for this week! On Tuesday and Wednesday, there will be Jeopardy in the Library Lab. There is a maximum of 24 people, so sign up now! On Thursday and Friday, there will be HUNGER GAMES trivia, with no limit of people, in the Campus Center!
• The Faculty/Staff have made many great pieces of artwork in the Fulton, so remember to look and tell the faculty how much you appreciate them!
• MS Girls Lacrosse have a game at 11:00 Saturday at Overlake!
• MS Boys Lacrosse have a game at 9:00 on Saturday at the Lower Fields!
• Some of the varsity baseball team will be going to the Dominican Republic to give baseball lessons to the children there! Please support by bringing in new or slightly used baseball gear to boxes in the Campus Center!
• There is a Theatre Sports meeting at 11:45 on Thursday! Don’t forget!
• GREEN AND GOLD! Green: 2237 Gold: 2004

Provided by your secretary, Chris C.

      ASB for the service committee only on Wednesday!

      MS Boys LAX have a game Saturday at the Overlake Turf Field 1, playing Bellevue! See the team for the time, and remember to go out and support!

      MS Girls LAX have a tournament Saturday at Lakeside at 1:00! Try to come if you can and show school spirit!

      For the 100 mile club!
100 milers: Nelson Ngouenet, Nolan Michaels, and Ryan Long, all in 7^th grade!
300 milers: Betsy Campbell
Great work!

      There is a project week meeting on Friday from 9:35 to 9:55! Remember to bring your forms if you need to!

      For Green and Gold, theatre sports is coming up! You can sign up at the call-board in the Fulton, and you MUST be committed to your team. You can get Green and Gold points for this!

      GREEN AND GOLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Green: 2237           Gold: 2004

Green, good work! Gold, catch up!

Chris, our Middle School ASB Secretary, will now be posting minutes from each week of announcements.  This move comes after feedback from students that there are too many things to remember every week.

As a natural next step, I will post the minutes here so that parents can get a glimpse into what’s happening in the Middle School each week.  I will post them as they have been written, so some of the events may have passed by the time you read it.

Here are the announcements from February 14th!

Announcments 2/14
Provided by your secretary, Chris

In honor of the spelling bee, can you find three spelling errors in the minutes?

• ASB on Wednesday! Don’t forget!
• The Tuesday after break is Mardi Gra, which translates to Fat Tuesday. Remember to dress in purple, green, and gold!
• The winner of the fifth grade Battle of the Books is Team 6: Gold! The people on that team were Toby, Aylin, Megan, Andrew, and Vivian! Good work! The
  overall score for this was Green 48 and Gold 51!
• There is a project week meeting on Wednesday! Signs are posted on Campus, so check them out and get to them at 9:35!
• MS White Basketball has a game on Wednesday at 4:45 at the field house against U-Prep, so remember to support!
• At the beginning of school, we wrote letters of appreciation to veterans. One veteran wrote back, giving us a watercolor of his life as a soldier and expressing his gratitude for our note. This watercolor art will be on permanent display in the library.
• MS Green Basketball has a game on Wednesday at 3:30 at U-Prep, so don’t forget to go and support!
• This is the last week for green and gold Box Tops, and the drive ends on Friday!
• 7th-8th graders interested in snow camping have an opportunity to do so on March 24-25, and everyone interested in rock climbing can go to a trip on May 12-13! Summer trips are also out! Remember, in summer trips, you are considered to be in the grade you are going into. See Mr. Renno if you are interested!
• MS Lacrosse practice starts on the 27th! There are cool socks, but they need more people, so sign up!
• GREEN AND GOLD!!!!!!!!!! Green: 1752 Gold: 1528 – Green, good work! But, Gold is cathing up fast!

The question of whether or not to make resolutions for the new year is always one that inspires great debate.  Some people feel that the start of the new calendar year offers a perfect time to try to reach a goal, especially if it’s one that has been hard to attain in the past.  Some people feel that it is a contrived timeline that isn’t as effective as starting when you are truly motivated.

My personal opinion is that taking any opportunity to be reflective about what we want to experience in life is valuable.  However, I feel that we use resolutions in the wrong way.  Most people set goals that focus on outcomes, like losing weight or stopping a habit or getting a better grade.  I believe that we would all be more successful with our resolutions if we focused on process. 

Instead of deciding on a specific number of pounds to lose, I suggest focusing on eating one extra piece of fruit every day (or drinking 8oz more of water or walking for 10 minutes, etc).  Instead of thinking about getting a higher grade, try thinking about turning in every assignment on time or meeting with teachers before every major test to go over questions. By focusing on the process instead of the outcome, we set smaller goals that tend to be more measurable and more quickly attainable.  

So, go ahead and make resolutions!  I encourage families to sit down together to reflect on life as individuals and life as a family.  However, instead of focusing on the outcome, focus on the process.  In my experience, that always yields more success in the end.

We are almost finished with our annual ritual of gathering in the gym for short conversations between parents and teachers.  The room is humming with thoughtful discussion about the best ways to help each of our students engage fully in the educational experience that Overlake provides.  We all have the same goal: to challenge our students to be their best selves!

The ten minutes that teachers and parents spend talking on conference day is vital to building a strong partnership between school and home.  For many parents, Back to School Night and Parent/Teacher Conference Day are the only times they have face-to-face conversation swith their child’s teachers.  But our hope is that these programs are the start of a conversation, not the only conversation.  Regardless of your child’s performance, regular interaction with teachers and advisors helps us to work together in our support of each child’s development.  Although teachers know each child best as a student, parents know each child best overall.  Without frequent conversations to bring all of our knowledge together, we are working with an incomplete picture.

So call, email or stop by to check in with teachers about your kids.  A few minutes of contact here and there throughout the year can make a huge difference!

One of the most common questions that parents ask me is how to get their children to share more information about what’s going on in school.  The typical lament is that parents ask how things are going and kids respond with a half-hearted “fine.”  Here a few strategies that have worked for me and Ryan Burke (our Upper School  Dean of Students) to get more information from students:

1. Share why you want to know.  Kids feel so much pressure to excel in all that they do.  Although, we tell them that it’s ok to fail if they work hard, they often get the opposite message when failure actually happens.  Let your kids know why you ask them what’s going on in school: to be a support and a cheerleader and because you love them would be my recommended reasons. 
2. Give them a number.  When you ask the question, give a number to let kids know that “fine” is not good enough as an answer.  Tell them that you want to know two (2) things that they learned in school today, for example.  That makes it clear that you want more detailed information.
3. Don’t make them do all the work.  Take a look on faculty websites to get a sense of what’s going on.  Ask a specific question related to what you see.  Also, instead of asking them about their day tell them about your day.  This provides a model for what it looks like to tell someone about your day.  Seems like a small thing, but kids often don’t know what an answer to that question would look like as it is not how their social network functions.  Kids don’t ask each other about how school was today.  Given that developmentally kids are in a place where the world revolves around them, when they hear about your day, they will often be triggered to interject something that happened to them.  Mission accomplished. 
4. Ask them to rate their day on a scale of 1 to 4 or any other scale that does not include a middle.   This makes them choose a slightly positive or slightly negative answer giving you information about whether or not their day was good or bad.  
5. Ask the question, “What does fine mean.”  Or tell them that you have no idea what fine means, and that you are curious to know what they mean by that.
6. Don’t force them if they just aren’t interested.  The goal is to open dialogue.  The worst way to do that is to demand information that kids don’t want to share.  As we encourage them to be independent thinkers and self-advocates, we have to allow them the space to practice those skills with us. 

My strongest recommendation is to keep on asking! Kids want to know that the adults in their lives care enough to ask what’s going on even if they (the students) don’t always feel like answering.

The energy around campus last week was sky high!  Students were excited to see their classmates and meet new teachers, while faculty and staff were eager to greet students and get another year of learning and growth underway.  With retreats scheduled for the end of the first week, the sense of anticipation continued to build to the point where we could probably have lit a match with the sparks that were flying from all of the positive spirit on campus.  All of the retreats were fun and engaging, going off without a hitch.  And then to top things off, we got a long weekend with wonderful Pacific Northwest weather.  Ahhhhhhhh…

So now that the first week of school has come and gone, we are set to begin the day-to-day life of school: the routine.

Routine is often considered a bad word.  In fact, the thesaurus gives the words monotonous, dull and tedious as synonyms for it.  In my opinion, it has had a bad rap and should be reconsidered for the positive things that it brings to our lives.  Human beings are naturally averse to change.  So, routine allows us to comfortably function within our lives and our communities.  We are more consistent when we know what to expect on any given day, and the routine nature of school can bring calm to adolescents who are in a constant state of flux within their personal and social lives.

I encourage you to set up routines for your student’s life at home, as well.  Whether it’s setting clothes out every night, doing homework in the same spot or having breakfast at the same time, a routine can help reduce stress and chaos. 

That is not to say that one shouldn’t be flexible, as unexpected issues and/or spontaneous opportunities present themselves all the time.  Still, I say embrace the routine as a strategy to help your child establish good habits that will carry them successfully through the school year, particularly in those moments when high energy and positive sparks are hard to come by.

The title of this post is a reminder to myself that I extend to all of you to use the tools that you have at hand that help your lives in positive ways.  This blog is such a tool, and I have not used it as much as I could have over the course of this school year.  I hereby resolve to blog more often!

There are also many tools available for students and parents in our school community.  I urge you to reach out, take hold and use the resources that are at hand.  Over the next six weeks, there will be many busy moments.  As the end of the year approaches, the multitude of culminating activities both within the classroom and in the larger community, can make life seem quite hectic.

Reach out to teachers with questions!

Encourage your child to schedule a meeting with the learning specialist if s/he is feeling overwhelmed by school work!

Check Owlnet for the latest information on events!

The key to thriving under stress is to stay organized and calm.  And, there are many tools available to help.  I am also available as an ear to listen and a brain to problem solve.  Feel free to call or email at any time.  I am here to help.

Although I have only recently joined the Overlake staff, I have already learned a number of things about the community: our kids are amazing – thoughtful, welcoming, active in everything from the arts to athletics; our faculty are not only knowledgeable, but they are caring and dedicated beyond belief; and the only thing more important than Gola and Green/Gold to an Overlake middle school student is basking in the glow of the trust and personal responsibility that they are given as members of the community.  I’ve seen that sense of trust and responsibility come to life in everything from being on top of one’s own academic life to student-driven clubs, events and service activities.  Students here take those things seriously.  And, they are not afraid to say that to anyone, including their new Middle School Head.

That conversation happened recently after I talked with the 7th & 8th grade students about expectations for their use of study hall time.  Unlike in Upper School, study hall is not a free block where students can decide if they want to study or not.  In Middle School, the time is given so that they can study, connect with a teacher, get support from our learning specialist, or use resources that are available at school – such as the library.  After sharing some of the new processes that the teachers and I had decided to employ, a few students hung back to talk to me.

“Why do we need to check in with teachers?  We aren’t doing anything wrong during that time.” 

“Why are you limiting the number of students who can go to the library at one time?  Do you think we are just fooling around?”

“We feel like you don’t trust us.”

After thanking the students for having the courage to ask those questions and make those statements (See what I mean about the quality of our students!), I worked to reassure them that structure is not always about a lack of trust.  In this case, it’s first and foremost about safety and about managing a massive system of 140 middle school students in study hall with different needs.

I explained that teachers are responsible for the safety of students while they are at school.  The first step to ensuring that safety is knowing where students are.  So, a system where students only come to study hall when they don’t have anywhere else to go just doesn’t work.  Students need to start in study hall and then leave to meet with adults or use resources.  That way, study hall proctors can know where all of their students are, even when they are not in the same room.

Likewise, given the fact that both MS and US students have overlapping activities, sending an unlimited amount of students to the library at one time can (and has) resulted in close to 200 students in the library at the same time.  In that situation, there just isn’t the physical room for students to get work done in a significant way.

So, by adding structure to the system, we increase our ability to safeguard the students and we increase their productivity.  Neither of those has anything to do with trust.

I do trust our kids.  I trust them to work towards what’s in their own and the community’s best interest.  I trust them to speak up when they feel called to do so.  Most importantly, I trust them to do what’s right, even when no one is looking.