Blazer's Bulletin 3/24/23

 

 Dear RBS Family,

 I imagine many of us have had the experience of talking/reflecting/(silently thinking) about a topic, place, product – and then suddenly finding it filling our social media pages, right? Like complaining with your spouse about how the vacuum cleaner isn’t working well – and the next thing you know there’s an ad for a new Dyson on Twitter! So it was a little weird (‘creepy’?) that I came home quite late one day earlier this week from a work meeting, was talking with Daniela about how my son’s first guitar lesson went (which I wasn’t home in time to talk to him about before he was asleep), and on one of my feeds the following morning was an article about being a “good-enough-parent” (and being okay with it!).

 Because of the responsibilities that are just part of ‘adulting,’ I know many of us here in the RBS family feel deeply those moments of missing something, or not being as present as one would like with our own kids because of work, travel, caring for older parents – all the things that just go along with life in 2023. But the article makes the argument that as long as we’re providing for our kids the expected basics: food, shelter, warmth, together with connection and belonging, and a relative amount of predictability and responsiveness, then we’re doing our “job.” In fact, some of our parenting ideals of perfection are actually counterproductive – if a child’s every need is met every single time, it’s much harder for them to develop a sense of independence, resourcefulness, and resilience. Regardless of whether or not Siri knew how I was feeling that evening… it was a well-timed read and reminder that believing in our kids – and making sure that they know we believe in them – is a decent baseline to operate off of!

 Making sure our students know we believe in them is a foundational part of who we are at RBS. And while standardized tests are hardly the most important thing for our students to work through, it is one component of our third and fourth grader’s lives (and will be for their future as well – from driver’s tests to SAT’s!), and we believe deeply that this is one of the ways they show us how much they know. We’ll be sending more details in a couple more weeks, but we wanted to give you a little info about this Spring’s administration: our third and fourth graders begin with a practice test on April 20th and then have two days of testing the week of April 24th and three days the week of May 1st – and that’s it! Again, more to come, but wanted to give you a heads up.

 I’ll leave you with a giant thanks for supporting our kids around one of our favorite topics – reading J! From our guest author visit, our beautiful tradition of “dropping everything and reading in the hallway” on Read Across America Day, and – saving perhaps the best for last – the nearly unreal response (almost $25,000 raised by our PTO!) via our Read-A-Thon, it’s a true treat as an elementary school principal to see our learners across the grade levels engaged in this most-important activity throughout the month and beyond! Thank you for helping support us!

 With our appreciation,

Noam, Susan, and the whole RBS Team

 PS – It took me till the next day to talk with him about it, but Lucas had a great first guitar lesson, and then proceeded to remind me of my age by pronouncing that “Pearl Jam is a really great, really old, band!”….