We invite students and families to explore with the 8th Grade class some resources organized by Mr. Swan, Bigelow Civics teacher.

From Mr. Swan, Jun 11 – 

“As perhaps you can imagine, in my role as a Civics teacher, I have felt uniquely overwhelmed by the news cycle of local and worldwide events, emotional turmoil, public outcry, and Big Ideas swirling around the past two weeks. [So] today I introduced a new task that dives straight into the middle of all those swirling issues. […] Students have 5 days to explore at least 5 boxes in this Choice Board. […]

I designed this board to include a variety of formats, faces, and voices; multiple potential topics of interest; diverse target audiences; and reliable, credible, professional information sources. I only included resources that are middle-school appropriate, although the language and concepts of certain items may be challenging for some 8th graders. Also, I had families in mind when creating this board. Perhaps multiple members of your household could each explore a row or a column, and share what you learned with each other. There are so many reading lists, social media posts, and other items flying around — maybe this format will help to structure and organize the exploration. Of course that will not be possible or appropriate for every family’s situation.”

We want to thank the 7th grade families who donated the money from the cancelled raft trip to our scholarship fund.

The Cyndi Dailey-Smith and Howard B. Smith Scholarship Fund provides support for Bigelow students who might not be able to otherwise participate in cultural and curricular enrichment learning opportunities, such as field trips and the NYC trip for eighth graders.

Incoming Freshmen at Newton North High School

Newton North High School uses the same online directory that we use here at Bigelow (Membership Toolkit). We will be authorizing them to automatically import graduating students from our account so that no student is overlooked. This would be a great time to log in and make sure your information and share settings are up to date. Just visit: https://bigelowpto.org/directory/

If you still have children at Bigelow next year, you will be able to select which school to view upon logging in. If your child is not moving on to Newton North, please be sure to let the Newton North directory administration know so they can have the PTSO remove your child from the directory. Let us know if you have any other questions about this.

Incoming 6th graders at Bigelow

Incoming 6th graders from Underwood, Lincoln-Eliot and Ward, will be automatically added to Bigelow’s Directory in August. Mason Rice and out of the district families will need to enter their information manually when the system is ready to accept new families at the end of summer.

Access to the Bigelow Directory

Access to the online directory is free and it can be used by all Bigelow families at all times. In the summer, online access will be paused for a month in July while we update information. Thanks for your understanding. If you have any questions, please contact our Directory chair, Megan Flynn at maflynn59@gmail.com 

If you could not retrieve your student’s belongings, please contact the school main office to arrange a specific time to have your bag brought to the front door for pick-up.

For those of you who ordered yearbooks, they are being printed this summer, and we will arrange distribution of them in September.

Please contact: Heather MacDonald
Phone: 617-559-6800
Email: macdonaldh@newton.k12.ma.us

Here is the procedure for returning your child’s belongings to you and collecting any school books from them. A “grocery store style curb-side pick-up” in the gym parking lot will happen on June 15-17. Before arrival, please read the following directions to keep everyone safe:

• Students are encouraged to join you. This is a chance for them to say goodbye at a safe distance to some of their teachers on duty.
• Arrive by vehicle only.  No walk-ins.
• All passengers in the car should  wear a mask at all times.
• Enter the Bigelow parking lot from the first entrance on Park St, and follow the one way path through the parking lot.
• Place a sign on your dashboard with your child’s name, cluster and homebase before entering the parking lot.
• Please put in a bag any school textbooks, library books, or other property of Bigelow and leave it in your trunk for easy retrieval.
• Please remain in your car at all times.   Once in the pick-up zone by the gym, please open your trunk.  We will put your child’s belongings in your trunk.

At this pick-up, teachers will load your car’s trunk with a bag of your child’s belonging and will collect from you any school issued textbooks. library books, and other property of Bigelow.  Please check your home for any materials, and put them in a plastic bag with your child’s full name in it in your trunk so that we can easily retrieve it.

Download Curb-side Pick-up Schedule here. 

Please note: If you have children in multiple grades or teams, you only need to attend one curb-side pick-up.  If you can not arrive at your designated time, please contact Kersten Raso at rasok@newton.k12.ma.us.

Bigelow’s Class of 2020 Graduation Ceremony is ON.

It will be livestreamed tonight, June 18, 7pm, AND tomorrow night, June 19, 7pm.

Here is the website: https://bigelow.gradcaster.com/

From Mr. Todd Harrison, Bigelow Principal, Jun 12, 2020 –

Dear Bigelow Families,

It’s been another earth-shaking week.  I am reminded of the comment by historian Todd Gitlin who commented that during the rapid events of 1968, it felt like we were living in a kaleidoscope.

I want to give you an update on the emerging steps and plans that Newton, NPS, and Bigelow are taking to address with urgency the racism in society, our community, and our schools that we’ve all been reminded of over the past several weeks.

I met with my fellow middle school principals on Tuesday, and we worked on plans to integrate anti-racist professional development and anti-bias education for students into our plans for next year.  On Wednesday,  I met with the Bigelow boys and girls of color affinity groups to hear their thoughts and feelings.  On Wednesday night, the Newton parents group, FORJ (Families Organizing for Racial Justice), held a large and successful zoom meeting attended by over 250 parents, principals, teachers, (and even a Bigelow student) to discuss racism in the Newton Public Schools.  Last night, I met with the Bigelow chapter of FORJ and we talked more about pro-active steps that we can take as a school community.

I’ve heard a lot of powerful comments and feedback at these meetings, and there’s tons of passion and commitment to act now.  I know that many of you are having similar heart-to-heart conversations with family and friends. This work is crucial as we continue to expand both our own understandings of racism and our own skills to communicate about it, in order to be able to lead this work with our students promptly and successfully.

As part of our big picture for this summer, in which there will be a variety of professional development opportunities for teachers to help prepare for the many challenges we face next fall, the middle schools plan to convene a group of teachers and counselors that will build out and build up our advisory program and develop a more robust active anti-racism curriculum as part of it.  We anticipate that all students will need more social-emotional support when they return in September, and our advisory program will need to play an enlarged role with more sessions and more time in response.

This, of course, does not negate the need to do so much more in so many other areas, but I want you to know about this initial step.  Things are moving, and I am sure they’ll be more.

The range of emotions is wide as we finish this unique school year.  History is happening daily.  I look forward to seeing you and your children–at a safe social distance–next week during our curbside pick-up days, and sharing a grand finale online graduation ceremony with all of you next Thursday, June 18, 7-8:30pm.  (Link and password are forthcoming next week.)   Please give your children a “Big-hello” for me.  We send them our collective embrace.

Best regards,

Todd

From David Fleishman, Superintendent of Schools, June 10 – 

“We are not yet sure what the public health situation will be in September as we begin the next academic year. We do know the paramount importance of protecting the health of our students, staff, and the larger school community. Given this uncertainty, we are developing a plan that is flexible and able to respond to the rapidly changing conditions. We must recognize that portions of the next school year will likely involve three different modes of instruction: in-person learning at schools, distance learning with an improved schedule, and/or a hybrid of the two models to facilitate social distancing.” Continue Reading….

From the Newton School Committee, June 8 – 

“This update covers the 6/8/2020 Newton School Committee meeting. Before we present the information about our meeting, we wanted to draw your attention to news regarding Unit C staffing for next year. While most NPS staff are permanent and long-term employees, we do have a number of staff contracted annually. For the coming year, NPS will not renew the yearly contract of approximately 100 of our roughly 700 Unit C paraprofessionals. Unit C includes special education aides, behavior therapists, classroom aides, and other educational assistants. In a typical year, the district examines these contracts to determine which positions to renew. Over the past 5 years, about 50 positions on average have not been renewed. This is no typical year as schools navigate the disruption to educational models and budgets caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Continue reading…