Take the night off and go to Chick-Fil-A dinner! The kids will get to see their friends, you will get to meet some other parents, and Terraset will get 25% of what we spend!

Remember, you have to present this Flyer when you place your order! Both eat-in and drive through orders are eligible anytime between 5-8pm.

 

 

We now have about 75 people who have made their Three for Me pledge to volunteer for the school and over 65 individuals (not all of whom have pledged) who have spent time in the school helping in someway.

Indeed, over the past three months, volunteers have given an average of 45 hours per week to the school... more than one full-time worker. Given that we have about 300 families in the school, imagine what we could do if just one person from each family volunteered!

 

One of the volunteers, Joelle Antonini, typically volunteers for two to three hours each week helping Mrs. Stanmyre cover new library books. Joelle and her husband, Frankie, have two sons at Terraset. Melvin is in 5th grade and Gaetan is in 2nd.

 

Joelle is originally from France. Raised in Lamasquere, a small village of only 750 people just 20km southwest of Toulouse, her move to the US, almost eight years ago, is certainly a long way from home... in more ways than one.

 
When her husband was offered a job in the States, the Antoninis saw a great opportunity for their family to experience American culture and to learn English. They are probably here to stay now!

Joelle started volunteering for Mrs Stanmyre in early 2008. "Volunteering is important to me," Joelle said. She sees it not only as a time to help the school, but also an opportunity to better understand the school system. Joelle commented that schools in the States are "more open for the parents. In my country the school is closed to the parents... parents feel alone because they don't have a lot of contact with the teachers or [other staff] at school."

Being a volunteer has helped Joelle become more involved in the school, and as a result, better understand how her sons spend their time each day.  "I'm really impressed to see all the people who give their time."  Joelle is certain this supports the children's development.

 

In addition to helping in the library, Joelle is one of the first to volunteer when a call goes out for food "I cook or give food for special school celebrations." And those of us that have been lucky enough to taste her offerings are very glad about that! 
 
Joelle advises parents new to the school to "be a volunteer as soon as possible."  She suggests that the more you are involved, the more you will understand the school system and its philosophy.  The time you give helps all the children to develop, be happy, and more comfortable at school she said.

 

So, if you have not had the opportunity to volunteer at the school yet, do something about it now. You will not only be helping your child, you'll be helping all Terraset kids and yourself!

 

Sra. Calvache Vu joined the school just a little over a month ago to teach the Foreign Language in Elementary School (FLES) program. For Terraset, that means Spanish and to see her working with the children you would think she had been here the whole year. She appears to have settled into the school very quickly and she is expecting the kids to settle in with her too. 

 

Just before coming to Terraset, Sra. Calvache Vu moved back to VA from the San Francisco Peninsula area, CA. She was teaching at Borel Middle School and comes to us with 13 years teaching experience.

 
She first moved to the United States in 2004 and since then has taught in NC, CA and VA

You probably saw the newsletter Sra. Calvache-Vu sent home in the Tuesday Pack last week. It is clear that she is passionate about teaching our children and is commited to the FLES program. Indeed, she emphasises that the program is not only about teaching a foreign language but "helps to improve overall academic performance and encourages superior problem-solving skills because of the second language exposure and challenges in understanding it."
 
Sra. Calvache Vu would like to reach out to Terraset families too. She says there are many ways in which parents and families could support her. "First of all, I welcome parents who want to volunteer and help me with: getting materials or copies ready. Extra hands are always a benefit. Second, Parents who speak Spanish could help me... from January, in the reading program. I want to start with the students who are advanced. Third, parents could help me at home."

 

So, if you speak Spanish, setting a routine with your child reading, writing and/or speaking just in Spanish for at least 20 minutes every day, would definitely help your child. If you do not speak Spanish, start by getting involved, letting your child teach you what they have worked on in class. Parents who are interested and keen to learn really encourage their children to learn too. Creating a specific area for Spanish vocabulary at home will help also. Remind your children: vocabulary, spelling and grammar -- these are important in any language and the concepts you learn in one language will transfer into another. You might also want to look at spanish web sites with a range of levelled activities, books, games, cd's, videos, or songs -- these may promote interest and develop skills for understanding the language. 
 
"I always tell my students... if you are alive, you need to be active like bunnies!" Learning a language is not only about grammar, it is also about culture and having  fun. Playing and even dancing can also promote learning! 

 

From Alison Stobie, GRACE Art Coordinator

 

This month the kids will be exploring the work of Alexander Calder, an American artist famous for his mobiles and stabiles, in GRACE Art.    
 

Alexander Calder was born in Pennsylvania in 1898.  His father and grandfather were sculptors and his mother was a painter. Calder had a very happy childhood and enjoyed making things out of junk and playing with gadgets. He had no interest in art in his childhood but was fascinated by how machines worked. Calder was known by his friends as Sandy. He was a big friendly bear-like man who loved having fun. He was always seen smiling and wearing a red flannel shirt - even to fancy parties. In fact he said "I think red's the only color. Everything should be red."
 
When Calder left school, he went to college to study mechanical engineering. He had a series of jobs which he didn't particularly enjoy. He started taking art lessons at the age of 24 then went to art school in New York to study painting. His teacher encouraged him to draw with a single line. He started drawing the Central Park zoo animals and people on the subways using a single line. This helped him later in life when he began to work with wire sculptures. 
 
Calder loved the circus and a lot of his later work was influenced by circus animals and performers. In fact, when he lived in Paris he became well-known for a circus he made from wire. He would give little performances with his circus animals and acrobats. He would carry his wire circus in five suitcases back and forth from France to America. It is now in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
 
Calder was interested in the modern art movement in Paris and was influenced by abstract art. He moved from working with art that resembled people or animals to working with shapes. He was friends with Joan Miro and Piet Mondrian. He began to develop his idea of absraction from the two dimensional to three dimensional sculptures. In fact, Calder believed his art had a fourth dimension - space.
 
Calder is most famous for his sculptures and especially his mobiles. He loved building mobiles which were carefully balanced to move in the slightest breeze. He never knew how his mobiles would move - they just seemed to dance in the wind. Calder made all sorts of mobiles; some were small enough to fit in an envelope, others stretched out across ceilings. He made more than one thousand mobiles in his life and they had names such as Little Spider, Rat, Ghost, Black Sponge and Performing Seal.
 
Calder also built stabiles which are structures set on a surface or the ground. You are able you examine a stabile from many different angles and explore it from inside and outside. Calder used his engineering knowledge to help him design many of his stabiles. He didn't actually make his stabiles himself.  Some of them were so big he had to have a metal workshop build them for him. Some of his stabiles had funny names like Little Long Nose, Stegosaurus, Flamingo and Snow Plow.
 
Calder was not a fancy artist. He loved recycling materials and made birds from coffee cans and fish out of buttons and beads. He loved working with wire and always kept a roll of wire in his pocket. He would say "I think in wire."  He also made spoons and forks, jewelry and children's toys.
 
He died when he was 78. Everyone who knew him said he had a big heart. For Calder, the most important thing about his art work was that it embody happiness.

 

Terraset's kindergartners have been collecting acorns for the "Nut Buddies Program" a component of the Growing Native initiative organized by the Potomac Conservancy, a Silver Spring-based group.

 

The nut harvest was turned over to the Potomac Conservancy last month. When the nuts -- which are really seeds of the trees -- have sprouted into baby trees, they are planted by volunteers (including scouts, school groups and other kids) along the streams and creeks that feed rain and spring water to the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. 
  

Growing Native is a year-round volunteer project that collects hardwood seeds and plants trees to help restore and protect rivers and streams in the Potomac River watershed. The kids had plenty of fun collecting the nuts and they got to recognize the different acorns. You can too... check out these Nut Buddy Cards!

... I am glad to see that you and others in the school community are keeping abreast of the severe budget challenges we face. What concerns me is that most of the community does not appreciate either (1) the magnitude of the problem, or (2) the limited options available for the School Board to address the problem.

 
On the first point, during this school year and last, the available revenue has not kept up with growth in costs and enrollment. In fact, this year we are educating 5,000 more students than last year - with almost $20 million less money. Next year will bring 2,000 more students. And yet we expect state funding to drop by another $24 million. On top of that loss, our mandated expenses will rise by nearly $150 million next year, primarily due to increased costs for retirement programs, utilities, and other benefits. If the Board of Supervisors (which provides about 75% of our operating budget) simply provides the same amount for schools as it did this year, we will have to cut more than $160 million from next year's budget. And, by the way, to provide us with the same funding as this year, the Board of Supervisors will have to raise the real estate tax rate next year by about 11 cents - not exactly a foregone conclusion.

To balance our budgets for this year and last, we have made painful cuts throughout the system. Those cuts and other cost avoidance measures exceeded $171 million (including 788 positions) this year alone. We have tried to impose most of the cuts on the "administrative" side of the system. Unfortunately, because 92% of our people work in schools, and more than 90% of our budget is spent on instruction and getting children to and from school, there are limits to how much "administration" we can cut. Nonetheless, we have cut administration by 15% over this year and last, while cutting schools by "only" 5%. And those cuts are indeed, painful, as they included freezing all employee pay and raising average class size for nearly every student in Fairfax County.

To cut another $160 million from next year's budget will require even more pain. Freezing employee pay saves "only" $39 million. Raising general education class size by 1 student on average saves less than $20 million. These two cuts alone produce the largest savings. Arguably, they have the biggest negative impact on teaching and learning. And yet, they make up little more than 1/3 of the total cuts we could have to make for next year - assuming funding does not increase. Another popular idea, imposing fees for participating in athletics - for those whose families can afford them - raises about $1 million. We simply cannot rely on fees to dig our way out of a hole of this size.

 
The bottom line is that if we have to cut another $160 million on top of the cuts we have made this year and last, we will have very little choice but to consider eliminating the programs that "make Fairfax Fairfax" - programs like elementary school band and strings, focus schools in the arts and other subjects, foreign language immersion, foreign language instruction in the elementary school, and full-day kindergarten. Worst of all, insufficient funding may jeopardize the additional help we provide to students who are at the greatest risk of not succeeding: more teachers in high-poverty schools; the modified school calendar (which gives some students as many as 30 extra instructional days per year); and summer school.

No wonder the Superintendent and School Board are sharing with you and others in our community the disastrous consequences for the children and families we serve, if something does not change in a big way between now and next May!

Which brings me to the second point - the School Board has only two options to bring next year's budget into balance: (1) convince the Virginia General Assembly and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to increase our funding; or (2) make Draconian cuts to the services we provide to children and families.

In my view, now is not the time to lobby the School Board to save one particular program by doing away with another. Now is not the time to advocate for saving programs that help some of our children, at the expense of cutting programs that help other children. If we simply become a collection of interest groups for particular programs, we all lose. To the contrary, now is the time - now is the best time - to advocate for more funding. So instead of writing to the School Board now and asking us not to cut a particular program for next year, I urge you to contact our Supervisors right now, and tell them that it is not acceptable to provide the school system with the same or less money next year.

I cannot tell you what choices I will make about the FY 2011 budget, come next year. But I can promise you that the more revenue we have to address our needs, the easier those choices will become. I can also promise you that, if the School Board has to cut $160 million from next year's budget, a lot of worthwhile, important programs - programs that advance goals we all value - will not survive. And we will have seen the forced, systematic dismantling of one of the greatest school systems in America. Please help us prevent that from happening.

Thank you for writing, taking this difficult message to heart, and doing the right thing.

Sincerely,
Stuart D. Gibson
School Board Member
Hunter Mill District
 
 

If you want to discuss the budget with Stu Gibson directly, here is your opportunity!

 

Stu Gibson speaking about the FCPS budget
7:00 p.m. Tuesday, December 15
Hunters Woods Elementary School

 

• People 6 months through 24 years of age
• People 25 years through 64 years of age who have certain medical conditions that put them at higher risk for influenza-related complications
• Pregnant women 
• People who live with or provide care for infants younger than 6 months (parents, siblings and day care providers)
• Health care workers who have direct patient contact

 

Bingo Night - Friday, February 5th 

 

Mark these dates in your calendar!

 

 Parents can help children make friends.