Arcadia This Week 6/7/2020

Hello, Arcadia Families,

We made it! Congratulations to all Arcadia students on completing another year of school! :)

While classes have ended, we still have a few loose ends to tie up. Here’s what’s up at Arcadia for the coming week!

Monday, June 8: Material drop off/pick up, 12:30-3:30pm

Staff meetings throughout the day

Evening Event: Please see the other email for details ;)

Tuesday, June 9: Material drop off/pick up, 12:30-3:30pm

Staff meetings throughout the day

Marketing Committee Meeting, 7:00pm

To join the video meeting, click this link: https://meet.google.com/tmk-nfcx-szi

Otherwise, to join by phone, dial +1 513-796-6467 and enter this PIN: 493 475 105#

Wednesday, June 10: Material drop off/pick up, 8:00am-12:00pm

Special Education Team meetings throughout the day

Thursday, June 11: Closed

Special Education Team meetings throughout the day

Friday, June 12: Closed

Mission Spotlight

It is the mission of Arcadia Charter School to prepare our students to transition intellectually, emotionally, and ethically to higher education, future employment, and engaged citizenship.

Arcadia Charter School envisions a supportive learning community that, through collaboration and student-driven, project-based learning, encourages and assists students to:

  • Express themselves creatively through the visual, literary, and performing arts.

  • Use technology with innovation, imagination, and responsibility.

  • Develop critical thinking and creative problem solving skills.

  • Construct knowledge and meaning for themselves.

  • Value, advocate, and strive for the wellness of the whole person.

  • Be empowered to act as local citizens within a rapidly changing global community.

Graduation Ceremonies

Congratulations to all of Arcadia’s graduates!! Thank you for inviting us to your homes (or nearby) so that we could share this celebration of your accomplishments with you! Listening to the speeches given by those who supported you along the way, I’m sure you heard how much we are going to miss you, how much we care about you, and how proud we are of everything you accomplished in your many years of school. Most of all, we are proud of YOU, the wonderful people of the Arcadia Charter School Class of 2020!

If you would like to view the ceremonies, they will be available on our streaming channel until June 19th. The videos on the channel are rather choppy, but they are available now: https://video.ibm.com/channel/grJ73PfWNwr

I will also put together the higher quality video we took (separately) and share it with families. That will include all of the ceremonies. I will also share a folder with pictures of each of the individual ceremonies.

Best of luck to you, Class of 2020! Keep in touch! :)

The Year in Review

With the school year wrapping up, September feels like a distant memory. Those first days were full of hope and expectation for a great year, and though in the end it was a strange year, and nothing like we might have imagined, we persevered, and that is a great accomplishment. 

Some of the highlights that stand out to me from my first year at Arcadia are:

--watching the advisories build their social contracts

--working with students to construct the school-wide social contract

--student art hanging in the hallways, and found on notebooks, notecards, locker fronts, walls by desks...everywhere!

--Presentation Night: seeing all of the exciting projects into which students invested their time and energy, and listening to them present that work with confidence

--the support of the new Parent-Teacher-Student Organization; parent support on the School Board and especially on the marketing committee, parents volunteering to help serve lunch, parents giving me feedback and helping improve communication

--ThanksGive! The students put together an amazing show!

--the delicious High School Potluck

--field trips to places like the Renaissance Festival and the Bell Museum

--students playing together out on the field in the back of the school

--arts residencies with amazing artists like Roxane Wallace (dance) and Rachel Ries (music)

--watching Arcadia’s teachers on a day to day basis, thoughtfully interacting with students and developing students’ academic skills

--dancing with the dancers, drumming with the drummers

--Senior Presentation Day, listening to the hard work and significant research completed by each of the seniors around their chosen topic

--the launch of our newly refreshed logo!

--watching students’ creative responses to the COVID19 pandemic, finding new ways to connect and learn with one another

--Innovation Days--especially moving the last one online, but having it still be a blast!

--individualized graduation ceremonies for each of our seniors--hearing the kind, uplifting, words of encouragement written and shared just for them, recognizing their unique contributions to Arcadia and the world

I am, once again, profoundly grateful to the Arcadia community for valuing every child, welcoming multiple perspectives, creatively problem solving together, and uplifting one another. I can’t think of any place I would rather belong than with all of you.

Have a wonderful summer!!!

Announcements 

Meet with Laura

I am going to hold only one Meet this week, on Wednesday, 6/10 at 3:00pm. Feel free to stop by if you need anything or have any questions!

Here is the address for the Meet: 

To join the video meeting, click this link: https://meet.google.com/tmk-nfcx-szi

Otherwise, to join by phone, dial +1 513-796-6467 and enter this PIN: 493 475 105#

Fall Plans: The Minnesota Department of Education announced that they would like us to create plans based on three scenarios: 1) everyone comes back to school; 2) we implement a hybrid model with both distance and in-school components; 3) we continue with distance learning. They will tell us specifically which option to implement between July 15 and 31. At the moment, we are guessing we’ll start the year with some variety of hybrid (option 2), but there are a lot of variables (access to PPE, transportation, scheduling, etc.). I will let you know as soon as I do what our plan will look like for September! No matter what it looks like, we will be ready to welcome you all back!! 

Chromebooks: If you have a school Chromebook, you are welcome to use it over the summer, or you can return it if you would prefer. Knowing that some form of online instruction may occur in the fall, we decided it would be best to leave the computers with students, but understand that some families may not want to have them over the summer. Either way is fine.

Meals for Children: We will continue to partner with Northfield Public Schools. Here is the information they are currently providing to families: 

Beginning Monday, June 8, the Child Nutrition program will serve meals on Mondays and Wednesdays at all current locations. The meals will be bundled for multiple days. Meal bags will have two days of meals on Monday and three days of meals on Wednesday. Beginning July 1, the program will operate at reduced locations based on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) summer food service program guidelines. Please continue to watch our website for further summer meal program information.

Upcoming Events

June 8 and 9, 12:30-3:30pm, materials pick up/drop off 

June 9, 7:00pm, Marketing Committee Meeting

To join the video meeting, click this link: https://meet.google.com/tmk-nfcx-szi

Otherwise, to join by phone, dial +1 513-796-6467 and enter this PIN: 493 475 105#

June 10, 8:00am to 12:00pm, materials pick up/drop off

June 23, 6:30-8:30pm, Arcadia School Board Meeting (online, with no representative at the school due to the pandemic)

To join the video meeting, click this link: https://meet.google.com/tmk-nfcx-szi

Otherwise, to join by phone, dial +1 513-796-6467 and enter this PIN: 493 475 105#

 

Sincerely,