From the Head of School
This morning we had our first fire drill of the year and I was delighted by how efficient and organized our classes are in the Early Years Program. GPS has a complete protocol for dealing with emergencies and a schedule of practices throughout the school year. These are included in our GPS Parent Handbook, which has now been posted on Renweb. To find the Parent Handbook, go to ‘Family Portal’ and then click on ‘Resource Documents’
We had a good turn out for our Back-to-School Nights on Wednesday and Thursday. Thanks to all of our parents for joining the various Google Meets to find out about our program for the year and thanks to our teachers for their informative presentations. In addition to our curricular goals, GPS is very focused on addressing our students’ social and emotional growth. As part of our IB program, we will continue to promote the IB Learner Profiles at all grade levels. For those of you new to the IB program, I encourage you to watch the following short video put out by the International Baccalaureate, which talks about the Learner Profile. You can find it here.
More Lower School Workbooks
Many thanks to all of the Lower School parents for picking up the new math workbooks this week. Some of the publishers that we use have had production and delivery slowdowns caused by COVID 19. We had one last delivery of materials that arrived this week, which includes Lower School Spanish and Language Arts workbooks. These will be available for pick up from the GPS office starting Monday from 8:00 am - 3:45 pm. Please come and get them as soon as possible so our teachers can start using them for assignments.
New Sports Court Ready and Waiting With the paving and stripping completed, our new sport court is ready for use. We are excited that this will be ready for the basketball season, which will start later this fall. As practice sessions for team sports are allowed by the County, look for more information and sign ups for our basketball teams in the weeks ahead.
Staff Spotlight
Meet Jessica McClure
This week we are pleased to introduce a new member to our talented and dedicated faculty. Mrs. Jessica McClure joined us this summer to teach the combined Grades 2/3 class. We were very fortunate to find a teacher of her caliber with 20 years of experience in private schools. What most impressed our search committee when we interviewed Jessica was her obvious passion for teaching. When asked about this she stated, “I have the great pleasure of doing what I love every day. I knew I wanted to become a teacher at a very young age. It is my job to facilitate minds, listen to questions, encourage risk, support the struggles, and cultivate dreams. Every day that I teach, I learn as well. I am thrilled to be a part of the GPS family.” This week was also Mrs. McClure's birthday and it is obvious that she has already won over the hearts of her students and their parents.