ISY Elementary Blog

Thank You

Mike Simpson, Elementary School Principal

June 3, 2022

Our return to in-person learning was a wonderful reward for our community’s hard work and resilience. It also reminded us how much we missed simple things like sitting together to read a book, eating lunch with friends, or playing on the playground.

It can be very easy to take simple things for granted just because they are simple. But as we look forward to next year, I think it is the simple things that we are looking forward to the most. In making time for simple things and doing them well, we can build a sense of community that our children need to thrive academically and personally.

Like last year, this year was far from simple. Thank you for your support of our Elementary School team and of your children as they worked online and transitioned back into in-person learning. As principals, we are also very grateful for the tireless work of our faculty and staff who made the complicated as simple as possible so our children could continue to thrive.

While we would have preferred a much simpler year, we can look back on this year with great satisfaction. As we met challenges head on and found new ways to keep our children connected and learning, we uncovered strengths and skills we did not know we had and so did our children! Our children will continue to benefit from these new strengths and skills for years to come – hopefully in simpler times.

As we head into the last week of school, on behalf of all of our Elementary School team, thank you again for your support and we wish you all a safe and restful summer. And to those of you moving on from ISY, as we say to our students, Once a Chinthe, Always a Chinthe!

School will be dismissed this Friday, June 10 at 11:30am

COUNSELOR’S CORNER with Ms. Patty:

Creating Holiday Structure

As we look to the coming summer holiday, it is important to think about how to manage the hours without school. Generally, most families will benefit from developing some amount of structure or schedule. How much structure will depend on your family. While many children are able to take unstructured time and turn it into useful engaging activities, many are not and providing a structure is helpful. Important issues to consider when creating holiday structure include:

Be consistent: Write your plan down and post it. Regularly monitor that the plan is being followed.
Use the schedule as a tool: When the written schedule is relied on, it can avoid power struggles and help your child manage their time, develop organization skills and help them to transition back into school in August.
Keep the Family Schedule: Often the holiday lends itself to sleeping in late and losing time. Keep family scheduled events, such as family dinner and bedtime routines consistent.
Find a balance: The holiday is specifically that, a time for rest and relaxation. Don’t overschedule and manage every minute. It’s important to build in moments of down time around meaningful scheduled activities.
Be flexible: Although consistency is important, allow for flexibility. If you find the schedule is too rigid or too laxed after a specific week, alter it to find a balance that works for your family that week.

Creating a balanced holiday schedule that reflects your family values can help make the holiday more pleasurable for everyone. Take time as a family to build a structure that meets the needs of everyone.

Ms. Patty wishes you a safe and happy holiday. She looks forward to returning to ISY in August for the 2022-23 school year and can be reached at escounselor@isyedu.org.

Patty Amundson-Geisel

Pre-K to Grade 6 Counselor

Return Library Books by Monday, June 6

If you have any overdue books you will be emailed a reminder from the library. Books can be brought to the library or put in the return basket on the front steps.

All library books are to be returned to the library by June 6.

Please Return ISY iPads and Chromebooks

Many of our students borrowed ISY iPads or Chromebooks to help with online learning at home. Now that we have returned to in-person learning, we have collected these devices to be used in classes next year.

If you still have an ISY iPad or Chromebook at home, please return it to the Elementary School Office as soon as you are able to.

Online Learning

Now that we are into the last few weeks of the year and we have settled into in-person learning, we will not be accepting any more students into our online learning program.

Moving forward, we are also setting a goal to eliminate the hybrid /online program for the 2022-23 school year. The only exception to this would be interruptions due to directives from the Myanmar authorities, or short term COVID spikes causing class, grade level, or full school return to virtual learning for short periods.

Semester 2 Reports – Thursday, June 9

Semester 2 Reports will be available on Powerschool this Thursday morning, June 9. We will email families to advise that the reports have been uploaded and provide instructions on how to access them.

Departing Families – Withdrawal Form

If you are withdrawing your children from ISY please be sure to complete the withdrawal form which can be found on PowerSchool.

Elementary School Bracelets – Please return

Before the pandemic, Elementary School students used bracelets (see picture) to enter the campus. If you have a bracelet at home, could you please return it to school by putting it in the box on the Front Steps.

Donations can be made at

https://isyedu.org/life-at-isy/online-ordering/

Mississippi Challenge

Dr. Hedger and Max have been making great progress on their Mississippi River challenge since they started last Saturday. Conditions were tough in the first few days but have been good over the last two days. A video of their launch can be seen on our YouTube Channel and a post on our website has information of their first two days. You can follow Dr. Hedger and Max’s progress further on Dr. Hedger’s blog.