November 4, 2022

Dear Beagle Middle School Parents,

Here are some updates and reminders that we wanted to pass along:

Continued Behavior Conversations At Home Appreciated:  We thank our parents for continuing to have conversations with students at home about appropriate behaviors and treating others with respect.  As we have discussed in the past, we practice school-wide PBIS at Beagle Middle to support the social, emotional, and behavioral development of our students.  Our staff provides students with targeted lessons around our Comet PRIDE expectations to ensure students engage with each other in a positive, respectful fashion; they hold themselves to a high level of integrity; and they make a determined effort both academically and behaviorally.  With the changing of seasons and the first trimester coming to an end, we are beginning see the typical rise of inappropriate behavior within our student body, especially during passing time and lunch/recess. The behaviors we have observed on the rise recently include:

• Horseplay 
• Pulling backpacks 
• Hat grabbing
• Running
• Touching
• Intentional crowding

Despite our hallways, cafeteria, and playground being consistently and appropriately monitored by staff, we have had to address the aforementioned behaviors much more frequently over the past week.  Therefore, we greatly appreciate your continued support of reiterating appropriate behaviors with your student at home. While students received a great deal of Comet Pride lessons very early in the year in conjunction with targeted social/emotional/behavioral lessons in Check and Connect Class throughout the year, our students will receive an additional hallway behavior refresher lesson next week based on our observations.  As experienced educators at this level, we fully know and understand that most tweens are driven by emotion, impulse, and peers; therefore, we must be even more diligent and explicit in reinforcing expectations and positively reinforcing the behaviors we expect of our students.  Again, we thank our parents for their continued efforts at home with promoting appropriate behaviors and treating others with respect. 

Volunteers Needed for Career Pathways Presentation in May: We will be hosting a career day on Monday, May 22, 2023 (half-day) from 7:30am - 11am. We are seeking volunteers from as many career pathways as possible in order to expose our students to the different opportunities available. The requirements would be:

• A 20 minute slideshow or PowerPoint presentation to present to students.
• This presentation will be presented 5 times to a different group of students in a teacher's classroom with the teacher providing supervision.
• Volunteers will need to fill out the online volunteer registration form through the link on the Grand Ledge Public Schools website, but this can be completed later in the year.  

Please consider bringing freebies or swag or any other fun thing to help students remember your career.

If you are interested in participating in this activity, then please use google form below by Wednesday, November 30, 2022. Someone will contact you with more information.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeM0HP5vBvtBMKWEl6zdLoRZnOilbEmDOH7nwjjVjlTjijcGw/viewform

Grand Ledge Middle School Swim and Dive:  The Grand Ledge Middle School Swim and Dive Team is open to all 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students!  There will be a swimmer/parent meeting on Thursday, November 10th at the Beagle Middle Pool.  Those interested should register at grandledgecomets.org and click on the aquatics tab.  The registration fee is $165, which includes a team shirt and swim cap.  If you have questions, then please contact Coach Marcie at 517-925-5360 or floodm@glcomets.net.  GL Swim and Dive Flyer.pdf 

Parent/Teacher Conference Registration Ends Today:  Parent Conferences will be held on November 7th and 9th from 4pm - 7pm and November 11, 2022 in the afternoon. Conference registration will end today at 3pm.  Conferences will be utilizing Zoom for the meetings with teachers this trimester. Sign-up through PTCFast.com is now open. Please go to https://www.ptcfast.com/schools/Beagle_Middle_School_2 for detailed information and to sign up. Once you have completed scheduling all of your conferences, an appointment confirmation email will be sent. Simply click on the Zoom Conference Link for each teacher (in your email) at your conference time and you will be admitted into the teacher's “waiting room” for your personal parent-teacher conference. **Please star and save your confirmation email as your notice of when your conferences are and to have your zoom links available. The middle school will not have a copy of your conference schedule, and without it you will be unable to access your student's conferences!** Please also note, that appointments are available to meet with your student's counselor during conferences, see below for which counselor your child would be assigned to:Kim Driscoll (students last names A-K) driscollk@glcomets.net, Eddie Saade (students last names L-Z) saadee@glcomets.net

Please remember, conferences are to discuss your student's academic progress. Teachers have limited time during these scheduled conferences and therefore we respectfully request that you only sign-up to meet with those teachers you need to see.  It is important to know, however, that our staff is always willing to communicate with you via email.  If a teacher you would like to meet with does not have any times available, please email him/her. Email addresses are the teacher's last name, then first initial, followed by @glcomets.net. If you have any issues signing up for conferences, please email Mrs. McMillian, secretary, mcmillanm@glcomets.net

Anthony Ianni Book Signing: Anthony Ianni—believed to be the first men’s college basketball player on the autism spectrum, playing for Michigan State University from 2009-12— will be signing copies of his memoir, Centered: Autism, Basketball, and One Athlete’s Dreams, at Barnes and Noble located in the Lansing Mall on Friday, November 11th from 5-6pm.  Anthony is now a public speaker, and he enjoys visiting schools around the country to share his story with children.  We wanted to share this great opportunity with our parents.  

Joint Hayes/Beagle PTO Meetings: Joint Hayes/Beagle PTO meetings are being hosted in a hybrid-fashion this year with the in-person opportunity being hosted here at Beagle in our media center.  Meetings are the second Tuesday of each month from 6:30-7:30pm.  Our next PTO meeting will be on Tuesday, November 15th.  We welcome parents to attend our PTO meetings either in-person or virtually.  If interested in attending virtually, here is the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82744686994

Students’ of the Week, Community, and Extra Curricular Resources:   To view our students of the week or to review additional community/extra curricular information on our webpage, then please click https://www.glcomets.net/ourschools/beagle-middle-school/and then click on the appropriate icon on the left side of our homepage. 

These are all of the updates that we have at this time.  Please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns.  

Take care,

Dave and Eric