Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Principal Notes
by Brendan Norton

It has been a busy few weeks since our return from Winter Vacation, with three separate events in the first week alone.  The annual Parent Visitation Day, on January 8th, was a remarkable success, 223 parents came into the building to visit their children’s classes and hopefully left better sense of what is it is like being a student at Parker Middle School.  In addition to Parent Visitation Day, twenty-nine 8th grade girls were invited to UMass Lowell for a Health and Fitness Informational day that ended with a UMass Lowell Women’s Basketball game.  The girls who went on the field trip had a wonderful experience.


On Friday January 9th, students returned to homerooms to complete a peer led core values activity. The peer leaders were members of our A World of Difference Group and our Parker Leadership and Service group .  The activity, called “footprints,”  asked student to write about a time when they had stood up for someone else or when they had witnessed someone standing up for another person.  Students wrote about these experiences inside of a footprint cut out which were then displayed in the performing arts center at the high school during the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. 

                The following week a group of sixth grade Parker Leadership and Service students visited Lasell College for a conference. This conference was a part of the MIAA You Lead campaign for teaching students how to be leaders in creating a culture against teen drug and alcohol use.  Students returned from this trip eager to meet with me and discuss how they could share their experience with the rest of the school. Friday was a “Patriots” day with students coming to school in their New England Patriots gear.  This clearly had a significant impact on the outcome of the game, so students should be prepared to come to school decked out again on the 30th.   We also had our annual school wide Geography Bee last Friday.  It was a very close contest this year with 7th grader Nicole Boyer winning for the 2nd year in a row. 


As we move to the end of January and into February we are planning several events lead by our Parker Leadership and Service members including, Hoops for Hearts, Pennies for Patients, and the Shriners Can Top Drive.  Please look out for information about these events in the coming weeks.