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.
