NewtonHACKS to promote gender equality in the tech industry

NewtonHACKS is hosting an online hackathon on August 29th for middle and high school students who are beginner programmers. Hackathons are all-day programming events where participants get to collaborate, code, and create awesome projects! This one is directed towards beginners!! … Continue reading →

Fall PTO Events

The PTO will be back in contact in early August with further information regarding PTO events once school opens. The Back to School picnic, 6th grade potluck dinner and Ten Tables traditionally take place in September and October. As we look forward to the start of the school year, we are hopeful that we will have a better understanding of what we are able to do.

Explore Mr. Swan’s Resources on Current Civil Rights Protests

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.”

STEMentors NNHS

Dear NPS Elementary/Middle School Teachers and Principals,

We, Peter Dukakis and Rachel Kimball, are the leaders/founders of STEMentors, a program at Newton North, whose purpose is to bring engaging STEM lessons to K-8 students in Newton, through trips to schools, expos, libraries, and virtual 1:1 mentoring. Our main objective is to spark curiosity and inspire students!

We are hosting six guest speakers this summer, all who are very inspiring and have incredible insight! These sessions will include the following topics: Software Engineering, Computational Chemistry & Drug Discovery, Physical Medicine/Rehabilitation, Ophthalmology, Synthetic Biology, and Airborne and Space-based Sensor Engineering.

Every session is virtual and free of charge. There will be a Q and A session for kids to submit their questions. More information and the sign-up form is on our website: https://sites.google.com/view/stementors/stem-speakers. Sessions are geared towards students entering grades 3-8; however, kids of all ages (and parents) are more than welcome to join!

Would you be interested in spreading the word to your students’ families? We would greatly appreciate it if you could forward this email to families!

Thanks so much!
Peter and Rachel