January 9, 2020

HAPPY NEW YEAR, COBRAS!

Wow! November and December flew by, and it's super hard to keep everyone updated during the holidays. We were able to provide SO many families with holiday meals or gifts this year and we are so grateful for everyone who donated to those projects or contributed their time to making it a success.

Parent Information Nights

For the month of January, we are currently putting together a PBIS parent night. The goal of this information night will be to explain to parents what it means for Cooley to have been recognized as a PBIS Platinum school. Our school wide expectations are presented to students in matrix and this helps them to understand what Being Safe, Being Responsible, Being Respectful, and Being Kind looks like in different settings here at school such as the classroom, the parking lot, the quad, the cafeteria, etc. At our informational night, parents will learn all about these school wide expectations, how we present them to students, and then they will be given the opportunity to design their own behavior matrix to use at home with their students! Stay tuned for the upcoming date.

WEB

Our beloved WEB program is going strong. In November, we celebrated our hard-working WEB Leaders with a field trip to Strikes Unlimited. The WEB Leaders and assistants spent the day bowling, having fun, and bonding with one another. It was an amazing day. This Friday, January 10, we are also hosting a WEB movie night. WEB Leaders and their 6th grade "webbies" will meet in the multipurpose room at 3:30 to hang out, bond, and watch a fun movie!!

Care Solace

We are super excited to have a new resource available to us here in the Roseville City School District. Care Solace is a platform that staff, students, and families can use to access mental health or substance use supports and services. The Care Concierge team is also available 24/7 to help assist you in finding the right options for you that can help you right now. They can connect you with different types of treatment such as therapy, hospitalization, residential inpatient treatment, outpatient treatment, detox centers, or day treatment. They provide help with finding services for children, adolescents, adults and seniors. Please visit caresolace.com/rcsdfamilies to find out more information.

Reality Fair

The biggest news this year is our upcoming Reality Fair. The goal of my Reality Fair is to help students increase their financial literacy skills while learning about the correlation between educational attainment and potential earnings.

It will operate very similarly to a career fair. First, students will be randomly placed into 1 of 5 income bracket categories, based on the average in California, where they will receive their hypothetical level of education (no high school diploma, high school diploma, associate's, bachelor's or master's degree or higher) and their corresponding salary.

Students will then proceed to rotate between different booths where they will be challenged to find a way to budget for housing expenses, transportation costs, medical/dental insurance, groceries, and more, while still having money left over at the "end of the month".

Students will also have the opportunity to stop by the "chance" booth where they will spin a wheel and either lose money for an unexpected expense, such as a flat tire, or gain money for an unexpected reason, such as receiving a bonus at work.

I will be providing every student who participates in the Reality Fair with a *Pay Day* candy bar for successfully practicing their financial literacy skills! (or chips for the kids who can't eat peanuts).  I have reached out to the high schools, and am in the process of reaching out to colleges/trade schools, to table at the Reality Fair. As students visit each booth, they will receive a stamp on their stamp card, and completed stamp cards can be submitted into a drawing to receive a high school "scholarship" which will be money to use for high school expenses. Additionally, all students who complete a feedback survey following the Reality Fair will be entered to win a yearbook.

We are SUPER excited to bring this experience to Cooley Middle school and cannot wait to give these kids a "dose of reality"!

That's it for now, stay tuned!!