October 28, 2022

Dear Beagle Middle School Parents, 

Here are some updates and reminders that we wanted to share with our parents:

Trimester One End in Three Weeks:  It’s hard to believe, but the first trimester for middle school ends on November 18th.  With that being said, we wanted to make parents aware that any missing work or reassessments need to be completed and submitted to teachers one week before the end of the trimester.  This allows our teaching staff to grade and assess current and missing work in a timely manner, ensuring that an accurate final grade is provided to students at the end of the term.  In addition, students enrolled in trimester-long electives (everything besides Band, Choir, and Foregin Language) will rotate into their next elective class within the same hour.  Please note, there are a few individualized exceptions to this as well for students enrolled in Math Up! or LINKs class.  We appreciate parents continuing to monitor their child’s grades in PowerSchool and using student planners to have discussions about their learning in the classroom each day. 

Check and Connect Class Updates: As we have discussed in the past, Check and Connect Class (CNC) is a multi-faceted class where students receive targeted lessons that support their social, emotional, and behavioral skill development along with helping to strengthen organization and executive functioning skills.  This class is strategically placed at the end of the school day to ensure students are able to engage in the aforementioned activities and have time to organize themselves before heading home.  On Mondays and Wednesdays students engage in social, emotional, and behavioral lessons.  So far this year, students have received direct instruction on the following topics: planner use, conversational skills, organization, academic integrity, adult interaction, conflict resolution, self advocacy, and active kindness.  Before the end of the trimester, the next topics that will be covered include: mindfulness, friendship building, and identifying bullying behavior.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, students have time to complete homework and catch up on their academics.  Fridays are often class engagement days where students and staff engage in team-building or fun, social activities.  Planner use is a requirement for all students, and planner use is checked on a daily basis in CNC class.  Student planners are a great way to keep up on the day-to-day activities in classrooms here at Beagle. 

Parent/Teacher Conferences: Here is a reminder regarding parent/teacher conferences, which was sent to all parents on Monday this week by Mrs. Hernandez: Beagle Middle School Parent Conferences will be held on November 7th and 9th from 4pm - 7pm and November 11, 2022 in the afternoon. Conference registration will end on Friday, November 4th 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. Please note that students' of the week this week will be celebrated on Monday. 

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