Well, August is upon us and we are busy getting ready to welcome our students and staff back to begin a new year of school! Things have been very busy in Maple Valley this summer as we wrapped up one year and began the launch of another. I wanted to share some highlights and information to help get our new year started on a high note!
Our Elementary staff began training this week for a new curriculum to teach English Language skills to our pre K through 6th grade students. The curriculum is called Wonders™ and will replace Reading Street™. We expect that streamlining our resources and focusing on the students’ needs we identified through our data analysis will drive student achievement. We continue to be mindful of the learning disruptions over the past few years and will strive to get back to our proud tradition of strong student achievement. Please help us by reading books with kids and expanding their love of reading!
We are also getting ready for the fun of the fall as our football team returned to camp under the direction of Coach Marty Martin to prepare for our final season of 8-man football. Given the strength of our youth football programs and our membership in the Big 8 Athletic Conference this year, we are planning to return to 11-man competition in the 2024-25 school year. Expansion continues for us as our marching band has taken a large growth leap under the charismatic direction of Mr. Evan Meekhoff who inspired more than 40 students to go out for band camp this past week as they learned their routines. We hope you come out for all of our fall sports to cheer with our cheerleaders and support our teams and band! Our Athletic Director Mr. Wilkes has launched our new and improved webpage at MapleValleyLions.com to help you access the schedules for all of our fall sports options.
We will continue our second year of Advisory at the Jr./Sr. HS this year. Advisory is a brief time each day that students spend with their advisor/teacher. The intention of this time is to help our students learn important practical life and social skills, set goals and learn how to collaborate and be connected as a community of learners. This year we will be adding some future work focus opportunities and speakers to expose our students to the many career options they have across the spectrum of hands on skilled trades, internships, Co-op learning options, and higher education. Given the shortage of skilled tradespeople, we plan to emphasize the many excellent career options students can consider. We are also adding a hands on learning class that has career applications for our 8th grade students this year. We want to get our students thinking about their options so they can find relevance in the things they learn in the classroom.
We continue to seek strong partnerships with local industry and business and to that end we are hoping everyone can come out to the August 12th Back to School Bash hosted by the Route 66 organization. It should be an evening of great fun in downtown Nashville from 5-8 pm See our website mvs.k12.mi.us for their flyer. I plan to be there visiting and recruiting families to volunteer in our classrooms, speak about careers to the Advisory classes and be mentors to build strong relationships with our students. We want to build strong community connections with our students. Student school supplies will be distributed and lots of family fun activities are planned! I hope to see you there!
It is a great day to be in the Valley! Dr. B
Dr. Katherine Bertolini
