-       As mentioned last week, student arrival is at 8:35. Thank you for being on time and for remembering that all students must be accompanied by an adult before 8:35. Until then, no Janney adults will be present on the playground, and supervision is critical to our students' safety. In the rare case that you arrive after your class has entered the building, please proceed through the main entrance.

-       In my last newsletter, I listed the open house dates and times for our classrooms - it was great to see families in the building this morning taking advantage of those times! I neglected to include our Special Subject (art, music, PE, social studies, science, library, media, and Early Childhood) Open House time, which will be held every Tuesday at arrival.

-       Now that we have had a quite a few rainy days to provide us with practice, our inclement weather arrival and dismissal patterns have fallen into place. At arrival, PK-1st proceed directly to classrooms, the second grade meets in the atrium, and grades 3-5 meet in the cafeteria. At dismissal, all students can be collected directly from their classrooms (early parents and guardians can gather in the main hall until 3:10pm for PK and K and until 3:15pm for all other grades so that classes can enjoy a full day of learning). Of course, once construction has concluded, this pattern will change, but thank you for making if work for now!

One of our key values at Janney is collaboration. We strive to foster discussion and participation through opportunities like grade-level meetings, weekly student work conversations, integration with the special subjects and student services teams, community meetings, open houses, principals coffees, etc. We also take a collaborative approach to our interaction with other schools in the District and are proud members of the innovative DC Collaborative for Change (DC3). Member schools (Hyde ES, Mann ES, Maury ES, Miner ES, Orr ES, Smothers ES, Walker Jones EC, and Webb- Wheatley ES) come together to share resources, both human and fiscal, in order to improve student achievement for all students regardless of their zip code. The DC3 schools are committed to employing instructional strategies that focus on students as individual learners. We also believe that the social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum. Practices that unite the schools include balanced literacy (Readers and Writers workshop), constructivist math, Responsive classrooms, and the concept of choice for students and adults. Administrators, teachers, and staff from across the nine schools regularly share practice through common professional development, grade-level summits and inter-school events, and we also provide opportunities for students and families across the Collaborative to come together as a community. The DC3 is a driving force in our growth and thinking for our students at Janney.