Up next: Gratitude
I am that person who will bah-humbug my well meaning school kids when they request a little Christmas and holiday music on the class speaker before Thanksgiving. I’m all about the sparkly, gift wrapped cheer, but I will fight a little too boldly for the Thanksgiving season. Once again, I will use the excuse of a newsletter to step onto my soap box. I am, ahem, grateful for those of you who humor me when it’s my turn. That being said, it’s the gratitude that I’m fighting for. I’m asking for a season of prolonged, quiet gratitude that asks for no gifts, and doesn’t rush to the unwrapping rituals.
In fact, Our days at The Cooper School are the best when the ‘thank you’s’ are abundant. Now, a middle school ‘thank you’ has several iterations – it could be a half smile, the tiniest nod, a laughing fit. A Cooper School middle schooler’s language of gratitude is even more varied: it’s applauding their peers a minute longer than anyone expects at the talent show, it’s squeezing a friend’s hand as you sing in front of the whole school at said talent show, it’s an elaborately illustrated whiteboard message left for a tired teacher when she’s not looking, it’s a head on the shoulder of someone who lets you be upset, it’s a walk on the beach to raise money for those who lost much of what they were grateful for. So yes, I’ll happily look like a deflated Macy’s Day balloon using all my breath to preach gratitude to my TCS kids, simply because they are already too good at it! They should celebrate it, find more ways to say it!
Of course, there are days where you lose a little steam. Even Mrs. Thanksgiving 2024 hits a wall sometimes. Thankfully, adult gratitude can be as simple as looking out on a field of kids in their Halloween best, letting the breeze hit you and your silly clown costume, and exhaling.
-MK
Math:
This week in Algebra 1 was a short week due to the Halloween Carnival and the Teacher Work Day, so we’ll spend a bit of time looking for relationships between categorical and numerical data before finding and analyzing lines of best fit. Next week, we’ll begin wrapping up and review for our unit 3 test!
ELA:
8th grade photographic writers studied lighting as a way of looking at tone and using background in photos as inspiration for layering information and flashbacks into our stories. We challenged ourselves to write stories that paired with ‘tense’ photographs and looked at images of motion to encourage kinetic, energetic writing.
Next week, photographic writers will finalize photos and stories for their exhibit on 11/7. We hope to see many families at this celebration! We test unit 2a vocabulary on 11/8.
Social Studies:
The eighth grade will be starting a new unit this week on the rise of Nationalism and the shifting world of the 1800’s. This unit will focus on the rise of new nations and the many changes the world went through because of the revolutions we have previously studied.
Science:
Eighth graders will be finishing up their Rube Goldberg machines! Their presentation will be in the Science Lab on Wednesday, November 13th at 2:00.
A Note from our Development Coordinator:
We currently have 0% family participation for the 8th grade in our annual fund campaign, and if you haven’t had a chance to give yet, there’s still time to contribute and make an impact!
Also, thank you to those of you who have given your donation directly to me or who have Venmoed the school! If you haven’t had the chance to yet, there is still time!
Important Dates:
November 1: Teacher Work Day (No Students)
November 7: 8th Grade Photography Presentation
November 8: Parent Coffee with Jason Patera & Merle Henkel
November 11&12: Parent Teacher Conferences
November 13: Cooper Clusters Lunch
November 13: Rube Goldberg Presentation (2:00)
November 22: Harvest Feast
November 25-29: Thanksgiving Break
