May 31, 2019
Hi everyone.
I hope that this letter finds you and your families well during this busy spring season. By the time you read this, I will have talked to all of your children through their science classes for their fourth quarter class talks. The major themes of this talk have been for our students to finish the year strong by making good decisions and for them to realize how bright their collective futures are. They simply need to have the right focus, exert good effort, and utilize the supports we (school and home) offer them. In 22 years as a middle school educator, I have seen many students consistently incorporate these habits to achieve amazingly successful lives!
Goal Setting
To help them be successful, I talked to your children about how they can successfully set and achieve goals by writing them down and then looking at them daily. Along with a specific goal, students (or any of us) need to write what strategies they are going to use along the way to achieve their goals. In addition, they also need to write down which people in their lives (a parent/guardian, a specific teacher or coach, or perhaps a good friend) are going to help them achieve their goal. They need to then inform the people who will be involved in supporting them of what their goal is and share how they can help. In addition to support, this adds a layer of accountability that we all need!
Example:
I want to achieve honor roll status for term 4 of the 2019 school year.
I have to work hardest to do well in language arts, so I will ask my teacher to tutor me during extended learning time (ELT) at least three times during the term. I will also ask my friend, _____, who does really well in language arts to give me advice on how to do well and/or my parent/guardian to read over important assignments before I turn them in so that I know they’re done as well as possible. I will also check my grades three times a week so I am aware of what they are and to ensure that I have submitted all assignments.
Brain Development & Risky Behaviors
During my talks, I was also compelled to talk to your students in detail about the dangers of irresponsible technology use and vaping. I had mentioned these topics in my term three class talks, but this time I explained that students are especially vulnerable to making impulsive decisions related to these concerns because the prefrontal cortexes of their brains--which in part control impulsivity and decision-making--will not be fully developed until they are 25 years-old! For this reason, students (or anyone under 25) should always think twice before saying or doing anything--this pause will result in better decision making.
Responsible Technology Use
In regards to technology use, I implored your children to never send, post, possess, or forward any images or text that they wouldn’t be proud of you or other adults they really respect seeing. I explained that in addition to possibly losing friendships, irresponsible technology use could result in them being disciplined--at home, at school (if it is brought into school), or possibly in the community by the police in the case of certain images or threats. Though they might not see it yet, irresponsible technology use could possibly also impede their opportunities to get particular jobs they want or possibly even hinder their ability to get into certain colleges. Their futures are so bright, I explained, and we don’t want anything to stand in the way of their potential successes!
Dangers of Vaping
Related to vaping, I shared that vaping is essentially a national health crisis for our youth. There is widespread use of e-cigarettes by adolescents across the country, state, FCPS, and Brunswick Middle. We are catching increasing numbers of students with e-cigarettes at Brunswick Middle, but as much as we’d like to, we cannot catch them all. Education is key: the information I provided your students (and now you) is intended to inform students of the dangers so that they will not ever start. Originally designed to help adult tobacco smokers quit smoking, e-cigarettes have also created more opportunity than ever before for adolescents to have access to nicotine, (as you know) a highly addictive drug. Besides nicotine, vaping with any e-cigarette puts toxins, potentially cancerous agents, and dangerous chemicals which are known to cause a potentially fatal lung disease, into our bodies. The most popular e-cigarette, the JUUL (pictured below), looks like a long computer USB drive. They are loaded with a pod that holds flavored “juice” for vaping--each pod of the JUUL, which can be consumed quickly, contains 20 (a full pack of) cigarettes’ worth of nicotine!
Nicotine is known to increase a person’s heart rate, breathing activity, and blood pressure, which can increase risk of stroke and heart attack. In addition, research shows that use of e-cigarettes by adolescents frequently leads to use of other nicotine products, including smoking cigarettes, as well a higher likelihood for them to consume alcohol and other drugs. Finally, nicotine use can disrupt brain development, interfere with long-term cognitive functioning, increase impulsivity, and increase the risk of various mental and physical health problems later in life. The clear message I delivered to our students: be safe, don’t vape!!!
Below are some additional resources related to responsible technology use and the dangers of adolescent vaping:
https://www.safesearchkids.com/cell-phone-safety-tips-for-tweens-and-teens/#.XNwKKkhKiUk
https://e-cigarettes.surgeongeneral.gov/knowtherisks.html
We truly care about your children and want to partner with you to ensure that our students remain healthy and safe as they pursue their individual paths to very bright futures. As always, feel free to contact me or any member of our school team if you have questions, concerns, or suggestions. It is an honor to work with you and your children and to serve the Brunswick Middle School community!
Sincerely,
Jay Schill
*Dates and times are subject to change.
Good attendance leads to success and boosts graduation. Our school goal is 96%.
Middle School
Cumulative Attendance Percentage
Urbana
96.29
Oakdale
95.89
Windsor Knolls
95.74
West Frederick
95.71
Ballenger Creek
95.53
New Market
95.44
Middletown
95.40
Brunswick
95.21
Crestwood
94.98
Thomas Johnson
94.80
Monocacy
94.69
Thurmont
94.64
Walkersville
94.52
The last school wide social for the year will be held on June 17. The requirements to attend the Term 4 Social are:
This social will be the big one! Classes will end early and students will attend 3 half-hour sessions, their will be PBIS Raffles, and snacks!
Please find attached a note from Mrs. Van about "The Walk of Honor" here at BMS.
8th Grade Ceremony - Thursday, June 13
Location: BHS Auditorium
Time: 8:30am - 10:45am
Students will line up after attendance in alphabetical order.
Students will then walk over to the high school and sit in the same alphabetical order in the center isle of seats. We will practice lining up prior to the ceremony.
Students will be recognized, speeches will be given, students will walk across the stage to receive their certificate, everyone will be seated, final remarks will be made, and then students will be dismissed for brief picture before walking back to the middle school.
After 8th grade lunch, there will be 8th grade celebration activities planned.
Chromebook Collection will begin on Tuesday, June 11. Parents and guardians, please help us insure that Chromebooks have been cleaned and that the case and school issued charger are with your student's school issued device. Any missing or damaged equipment may be subject to replacement costs. Any questions concerning school device collection can be directed to dana.lichtenberger@fcps.org.
News from the Art Department:
Check out D Wing's newest resident!
Thanks to the amazing creativity of Zosia Milauskas, Liz Lashley and Rileigh Tissue, Regal the dragon soars in the D Wing skylight! This nine foot beauty took five months to create!
Up next: three dragon eggs with baby dragons!
The FCPS Earth and Space Science Lab has fun programming all summer long for kids (and adults) of all ages! Check out their website for up to date program details!
Media Specialist: Heather McFadden
BMS Online Resources
All BMS media materials (books, magazines, ect.) are due on JUNE 6. After that date, overdue slips will be issued to students and students will be held accountable for those missing materials. Any materials not returned by June 14th will be considered lost and students will be responsible for replacement costs. Any outstanding fines will result in a financial obligation and the holding of the student's final report card until that obligation has been settled. Questions concerning books and fines should be directed to heather.mcfadden@fcps.org.
Don't fall victim to the Summer Slide! There are some great resources available to keep your reading skills sharp all summer long!
Axis 360 on the BMS Media page offers eBooks and Audio Books in the FCPS catalog. Log in using your student id.
Put your Student Success Card from FCPL* to work this summer.
Take the FCPL Summer Reading Challenge (Can you get more points than Ms. McFadden? Follow my progress on Twitter and Instagram @bmsmcmedia )
Need some ideas for what to read next? Check out the reading lists from FCPL, the Blackeyed Susan Award book lists, or the amazing lists from Project Lit.
Prefer to read Capstone Interactive books? We have access to Capstone books all summer long, for free! Find more information here. **
*Student Success Card from FCPL-Spanish Directions
**Capstone Interactive-Spanish Directions
Many thanks to the BMS parent volunteers who've helped with shelving books, inventory, and weeding! I really appreciate your help! I am looking forward to getting the BMS community more involved in our reading adventures next school year!
Health Room Technician: Linda Trabold School Nurse: Debbie Winpigler-Beck, RN
FCPS Health Services
Attention 6th Grade Parents:
DON’T DELAY! MAKE THE APPOINTMENT TODAY!
We do not want to exclude your child from school in September!
State vaccination requirements for students entering 7th grade for school year 2019-2020 are as follows:
All 7th grade students must have the following:
· Single dose of Tdap (Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis) vaccine.*
· Single dose of Meningococcal vaccine (MCV)
*Tdap is not the same as the other Tetanus, Diptheria, and Pertussis vaccines called DPT or DTaP. Even if your child has received DPT or DTaP in the past they will still need a single dose of Tdap. *
*We then need to have documentation of your child receiving Tdap and MCV vaccinations. *
Make your child’s appointment now and avoid the rush. Please bring the vaccination documentation to school as soon as possible.
If you have any questions about the new vaccination requirements, please contact your child’s health care provider or the school health room.
Grade 6: Kelly Mahn Grade 7: Christine Akagi Grade 8: A-K Kelly Mahn; L-Z Christine Akagi Behavioral Specialist: Amy Nelson Registrar: Christina Faron
BMS School Counseling Information
Community Outreach News
2019 Teen Summit & Resource Fair- Saturday, June 1: 9am-1pm at Frederick High School. For more information, see the Teen Summit flyer.
Breakfast on the Farm at Valley-Ho Farm June 22: 9am-1pm. For more information: Breakfast on the Farm
See the attached flyer for more information about the Salvation Army Free Summer Camps.
2019-2020 School Supply Information for Elementary, Middle and High School Students in Need of Assistance
Brunswick Feeder Schools
Contact: Beacon: Leslie Gum at 301-834-9718: no pre-registration*
Donation Drop Off: Wednesday, August 14, 9am-12pm; Steadman-Keenan American Legion 18 South Maryland Ave, Brunswick, MD 21716
Distribution Day and Location: Saturday, August 17th, 9am-12pm; Steadman-Keenan American Legion 18 South Maryland Ave, Brunswick, MD 21716
*(Please note: in cases where pre-registration is NOT required, guardians MUST bring the student's ID, report card, or school schedule (ect) for identification purposes on distribution day)
For more information and other feeder school dates, please see attached file: School Supply Information
For the information in Spanish, please see attached file: School Supply Information-Spanish
The FCPS Food & Nutrition Services Department is participating in a Summer Food Service Program to provide meals to all children ages 18 and younger without charge at the following sites from Monday, June 24-Wednesday, August 21, 2019, with breakfast 8:30-9 and lunch 11:30-12:30:
Frederick High Governor Thomas Johnson Middle Hillcrest Elementary Lincoln Elementary Monocacy Middle North Frederick Elementary Waverley Elementary Whittier Elementary
PTO News
It was a very busy start to this quarter and we have all survived the SPRING FORWARD time change. Summer is just around the corner and closing in fast. We find ourselves reflecting on the last year, amazed about all we've accomplished, and we had so much fun laughing while we did it! I realize we had fun because we have an awesome, giving BMS community. All of this would not have not been possible without our awesome parent volunteers, teachers, administration, and staff volunteers. We truly appreciate that you spend time away from your families and personal responsibilities to come to our school to make our school better and enrich our children's middle school years.
We want to wish our exiting 8th graders the best in high school; we are thrilled to see them move up but are realizing the short time we have with these children in middle school! We are excited and are looking forward to meeting/reuniting and welcoming our new upcoming 6th graders and their families.
Rubik's Cube Competition
The Rubik’s Cube competition was a huge success! A big THANK YOU to our teachers Ms. KIM SCHMIDT & Mr. TROY MILLER for organizing a fun day! The PTO helped sponsor the event by providing concessions and helping with decorations. We appreciated all the teachers who donated their weekend day to judge the competition. It was amazing to watch how fast these children solve these cubes please make time to come watch it next year.
Congratulations to BMS's "Cube Slayers" team. They won 3rd place in Rubik's Cube Competition. They won with a team cumulative time of five minutes and 57 seconds.
BOOK FAIR
What an exciting and rewarding book fair week we had! We raised $764 for "All for Books"! That means we placed 76 much-needed books in the hands of members from our own BMS community. The Scholastic Possible Fund matches every donation. The generous donations from our community businesses, students, parents, and BMS staff made a huge difference locally and worldwide! It is proven that if a child chooses a book, they are more likely to try to read it. We also were able to raise funds for the BMS PTO! The $900 will go towards all the various activities and supplies needed to make your child’s experience at BMS memorable.
We also donated to our Library $200 dollars to purchase more of the popular graphic novels.
A HUGE thank you to all the volunteers who took time out of their busy schedules to help at the book fair. Over the course of the week-long book fair, we were open for a total of 45 hours! We couldn’t have done it without you! We also need a HUGE thank you to Ms. McFadden for graciously allowing the Book Fair to explode into the media center!
Thank you to ALL that shopped the book fair! Instilling the love of reading and the importance of helping those in need was accomplished during this event. I can’t even begin to describe the joy and appreciation that BMS students shared when receiving a book they had been wanting since the day the fair opened. Thanks to all that made that possible!
Uncle Jerry T's Fundraiser
Our Jerry T's fundraiser was a huge success; our online orders grossed almost $1600, and our paper orders grossed over $1000. Your participation in our fundraiser helped to raise the school $1040.00. Thank you to all that supported our fundraiser by falling in love with something in the catalog!
Talent Show
Our inaugural talent show was a big success; we raised over $1600 dollars and we split these funds with our 8th grade formal team. We have such talented students. The audience atmosphere during the show was lovingly supportive of all our students. We especially loved that our teachers are also very talented and that we can always rely on Mrs. Van to make us laugh. We are so looking forward our 2020 Talent Show!!
Our Talent Show Winners were:
1st: The DERPS Ladies - Jenna Dick, Cayleigh Armitage, Meghan Davidson, Alexa Domathoti, Jaina Follin, Natalie Birney, Audra Asbury, Claire Price & Abby Parks
2nd: Michelle Isaacura-contortion
3rd: Keira McDonald- Singer/Guitarist - I will follow you into the dark
"CRUISIN INTO SUMMER" Dance
We sailed off into the summer with our last dance for the year with our students, staff, and volunteers dressed in beach attire. Mrs. VAN didn’t let us down with her hilarious expanding tourist costume. The students enjoyed the Kona Ice, making their own creations in edible sand, and visiting the stations like hair braiding, tattoos and a beach side selfie Polaroid station. We want to express a Huge Thank You to all our dance volunteers! We appreciate how you come out each dance to help us amazingly transform our cafeteria in record time. You then entertain and feed our students and clean it all up! Wow! It will be 5 months until our next dance.
Donations back to our school
We donated $1500 to each class and $4500 in all to create an educational offsite or in house field trip. Teachers are busy planning these events for June. Thank you to all who participated in our fundraisers throughout the year, paid your $10 PTO membership fee, and gave donations. Your monetary involvement helped make this possible for our students!
Volunteer Thank You
As you can see by this long list of items that our BMS community have volunteered for this school year, we could not do what we do without our volunteers! We encourage and invite you to look over this long list to find something you would like to help with. You do not need to be a PTO member to volunteer, please come and get involved with our BMS community.
Thank you for volunteering for: distributing spirit wear, Back to School Night, Improving our school grounds, dance decorating, dance work stations, dance ticket sales, dance clean up, field trip chaperons, climbing ladders to hang signs and decorate, clipping Box Tops, decorating bulletin boards, shared club expertise, creating candy grams, distributing candy grams, working school store, working play concessions, welcoming new incoming 6th graders, working book fair, organizing our Rubik’s Cube event, Book Fair, setting up Rubik's cube event, working concessions Rubik’s cube event, organizing, shelving library books, making copies, hanging flyers, taking pictures for yearbook, banking, Talent show creation, tryouts, set up, concessions and clean up. 8th grade formal, creation, decorations, and clean up. PBIS quarterly socials and bi-yearly stores, shelving books, taking inventory, doing Facebook posts, answering emails, collecting donations, & attending the meetings to organize and make all this above come together nicely to just name a few!
Box Tops 4 Education
Our Box Top collection is winding down for this year. Please send in your Box Tops soon! The 6th Graders have won the monthly Box Tops Drag Race 4 out the six months that we had the race. The 7th and 8th graders both won 1 each of the remaining months.
In 2019/2020 Box Tops for education have launched a ‘NO CLIPPING” Box Tops App that facilitates families to earn Box Tops for their school by just uploading an image of their store receipts. Learn How this new Box Tops system works at https://www.boxtops4education.com/bonusapp/how-it-works-app Your family's continued participation in our box top collection program yields tremendous benefits for our students. Thank you for your support!
8th Grade Formal
The 8th grade formal planning committee has worked very hard on their “Rockin the Moroccan" 8th grade formal. The formal is Friday May 31st at 5:30 PM, and as I write this, they are in the exciting final stages heading to the finish line of this large event. A Huge thank you to Didi Willard and Debbie Backer for chairing this event and all the parents who work hard to make this event the best one ever!
PTO Website, Facebook page, and Email
As a reminder, there are multiple ways to get information about the PTO. Our website serves as a “one stop shop”. The website address is http://brunswickms.my-pto.org/
We continue to share information on our Facebook page named "Brunswick Middle PTO" https://www.facebook.com/BrunswickMiddlePTO/
We also have a PTO email account – brunswickmspto@gmail.com. If you have questions or need additional information on something that you do not see posted on our Facebook page or website, please email us and we’ll get back to you.
Please also share these links with your friends with incoming 6th graders so they will be connected with our information.
Find out more about our Parent Teacher Organization:
http://brunswickms.my-pto.org/
brunswickmspto@gmail.com
PRINCIPAL Jay Schill 301 Cummings Dr. Brunswick, MD 21716
240-236-5400 Phone 240-236-5401 Fax
Follow Us on Twitter https://twitter.com/Brunswick_MS_ Visit BMS Online: https://education.fcps.org/bms/
ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL Drew Kibler School Cash Online Menus & Meals
http://www.fcps.org