ASA Parent Passports

Introducing the Parent Passport!

The Catholic Church teaches us that parents are the primary educators of their children.  It is why our mission statement at All Saints Academy emphasizes partnering with our families to bring a well-rounded education to our students. For the 2017-2018 school year, we would like to introduce the ASA “Parent Passport.”  This passport is an active and engaging way for our families to partner with All Saints Academy and participate in just some of the things our students experience for themselves week to week. The Parent Passport is designed around the All Saints Academy core values of Faith, Learning, Loving, and Serving.  Within each core value is a list of five opportunities.  For each opportunity that is fulfilled, a stamp will be given to acknowledge this accomplishment! Once your passport is complete you will be eligible for a special drawing at the end of the school year.  GIFT CARDS will be awarded to TEN lucky families!

Although called the “Parent Passport,” any family member can earn a stamp!  Grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers or sisters may all join. Stop by either office and start collecting your stamps today!   

Passports will be sent home Thursday August 31, 2017.

Faith

• Attend a Campus School Mass
• Attend an All School Mass
• Attend a Pack the Pews Mass
• Join us for an all school school Rosary
• Join us for morning prayer

Learning

• Read 5 blogs
• Observe a lesson (Make an appointment with teacher in advance)
• Attend a Field Trip
• Attend fall conferences
• Participate in a Parent Night (Open House, Home and School Meeting, Parent Ed Night)

Loving

• Complete Virtus Training
• Attend Pastries with Pals
• Make a donation to the school (Donations to Eat Pray Run/Eaglefest can be counted)
• Download the “ASA App”
• Refer a friend to All Saints Academy  

Serving

• Participate in Eat Pray Run or attend Eaglefest
• Volunteer 3 hours of service
• Spend a day at recess or in the lunchroom
• Help a teacher with a project
• Complete the end of year survey

Welcome and an Invitation from Home & School

Welcome Back and an Invitation from Home and School

Have your ever wanted to get involved at All Saints Academy but were unsure where your talents were most needed?

The Home and School Association at ASA is a group of parent volunteers who are focused on fostering and promoting a strong school community. We believe that ASA is stronger when we build on the idea of “we are one”

One of the main ways they accomplish this is by involving parents in the planning and implementation of school events throughout the year. Through volunteering you are able to meet other parents and see the joy in students’ faces as they interact with each other at the events. These school events include:

Pastries with Pals

Santa’s Secret Shop

Family Outing to a Whitecaps Game

Teacher Appreciation Week

And many more……

Home and School is responsible for providing a voice for the parents of ASA. They act as a sounding board for the school administration and faculty. Room Parents is one of the programs that Home and School manages to help stay connected into the classrooms. They are ready to hear you great ideas or constructive feedback and share that with the right people.

All parents of ASA students from toddler through 8th grade are welcome to join the Home and School Association and are encouraged to take an active role in the group.Home and School meets every second Tuesday of the month from 6:30pm-7:30pm in the middle school library.

If you have any questions about joining Home and School, reach out to ASAHandS@asagr.org

2017-2018 Members are:

Samantha Hekman - Event Coordinator

Becky Matlak - Event Coordinator

Marcie Schaab - Treasurer

Heather Armock

Julie Druelle

Lily McGavin

Angela Mitchell

Margo Mollan

Jill Ott

Michelle Parris

Tricia Siegel

Jenna Sisk

Julie Vos

Susan Zarzecki

New ASA Community Service Partner: Kids Food Basket

New ASA Community Service Partner: Kids Food Basket

http://www.kidsfoodbasket.org/

As we get ready to start a new school year, we are also rolling out a new community service partner. Service is one of the All Saints Academy core values and an integral component of what we do day to day. Students have individual service hours they track each year. Forms are linked on the ASA Website https://asagr.org/forms  As a school we have also committed to an all school two year relationship with one community partner to allow for focused school and community projects throughout the school year.

For the past two years we worked with Catholic Charities of West Michigan Foster Care. They have been so thankful for the support provided by the All Saints Academy family! We collected various items and jeans day donations for the CCWM Foster Care Program over the course of two years. We also created artwork for them, participated in a few community activities, and completed a letter writing project for foster care families.

We began a connection with Kids Food Basket a few years back by joining their Sack Decoration Project. This year we will be entering into a more formal relationship with them in their Kids Helping Kids program. To prepare for this partnership we did a small introductory kickoff with students in the spring. Look for more information about this partnership and projects as the year progresses.

Summer Saints Club

Summer Saints Club Camp Week 

Summer Saints Club Fun

The All Saints Academy elementary campus is a busy place during the summer! Summer care students regularly play on the playground, run through sprinklers, visit the technology lab, go on field trips, and enjoy a weekly ice cream truck visit. A few students also travel with Mr. Debri or Miss Giroux to the middle school campus on Mondays to work in our community garden. All garden volunteers get to take whatever they pick home, and often students share their harvests with the rest of the Saints Club crew!

Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Zimelis have also been keeping the older Saints Club crew busy with some special morning activities like nature explorations, science investigations, board games, gym time, slime making, shaving cream painting, karaoke, and making rock pets. Weekly themes like Camp Week tie these special morning activities together. Camp Week included flashlight tag, making bird nests, water races, and campfire artwork. During Balloon Week students made stress balls, played more water games, and searched for dinosaur eggs (frozen water balloons).  There is also a “Food Fun” project for the theme each week like “Dirt” making for Bug Week, pretzel s’mores for Camp Week and ice cream making during Stars and Stripes Week. Yum!

Food Fun - Dirt Snack

The Eagles Club room got an upgrade this summer. The Summer Saints crew have been helping to set it up, and testing the space out to get it ready for a new school year. We now have a much larger space (the old elementary technology room) with couches, tables and chairs, a reading area, activity shelves and more. We are working on a few other building wide updates and some minor renovations at both campus. We look forward to showing our “new” spaces off, and welcoming everyone back at our Ice Cream Social on August 24th 6:30-8:30 (both campuses).

New Eagle's Club Room

Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports

PBIS: A Proactive, Preventative, Supportive Approach to
Behavior & Character Development

At ASA we believe that all things are possible through Christ, so when we address the question “How might we positively approach matters of character development, behavior expectations and discipline in our school?” we naturally tend towards interventions and supports that mirror the teachings, mercy and compassion offered to us by Christ.

Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a framework for assisting schools with establishing evidence-based behavioral interventions as a whole community expectation to enhance academic and social behavior outcomes for all students. Research-based practices such as social skills introduction, positive behavior reinforcement, behavior contracting and an emphasis on student self-management are integral components of the PBIS framework.

To begin designing a PBIS model a school will develop 3-5 community expectations that are clear, concise, and positively stated. Reinforcements are then established for adhering to these, and interventions or consequences are defined for breaking expectations. Instructional activities are designed and implemented to teach the necessary behavior and empower students to take responsibility for their choices. The aim is to:

• Acknowledge and encourage positive behaviors with reinforcements
• Prevent negative behavior when possible
• Identify the function of negative behavior and develop support systems that will have the opposite effect so they do not continue

Supports and systems necessary for PBIS include: team-based leadership, data-based decision making, active supervision and monitoring of student behavior, regular universal screening and effective ongoing professional development.

Teaching-oriented, positive and preventative strategies are emphasized for all students to the greatest extent possible with a PBIS approach to behavior. Most students will be successful in a positive school culture with informative, corrective feedback and practice of pro-social skills. When student behavior is periodically unresponsive to PBIS, data about the student’s behavior is used to understand the function of the problem, provide alternative behavior options, remove the factors that trigger the problem, and provide reinforcement for acceptable alternative behavior choices.

Student created, positively stated expectation poster for the 4th grade classrooms. 

In the 2016-2017 school year the All Saints Academy staff began a series of professional development training days, working with the Notre Dame Program for Inclusive Education, to develop a PBIS framework for ASA. Work started with building teams defining a set of positively stated expectations for each campus.

At the elementary campus, the expectations were defined as: Be Safe, Be Kind, Be Fair.

Staff began posting these 3 key phrases around the elementary building and working them into daily conversation this past school year.

At the middle school, teachers are doing a little more work to articulate building expectations. At the start of the 2017-2018 school year expectation for the middle school with be introduced with the phrase “Be like CHRIST.” Meaning that the middle school expectations are to: Communicate, (Honoring all with) Respect, Integrity, and Self conTrol.

For both buildings these expectations will be expanded on, further defined, talked about and implemented with more depth within each classroom or common area as the needs of the age group and the learning that happens in that space dictate.

At both campuses this past year you might have seen or heard about our common school wide Voice Level expectation. Depending on the learning situation students are told which voice level is expected:

Throughout the 2016-2017 school year also, ASA staff began slowly implementing some of the PBIS reinforcement strategies developed for our school community. You may have heard about elementary students celebrating kind and fair behavior at lunchtime with a special movie. At the middle school, students and staff tracked examples of leadership with a Leader board and gave each other Eagle Pride shout-outs to celebrate shining examples of respect and integrity.

As we get ready for the 2017-2018 school year the All Saints Academy staff will again participate in collaborative work to continue developing our positive behavior supports at ASA. This year our focus will be on the direct connection between academics and behavior. This multi-tiered system of support links the preventative school discipline of PBIS with effective academic instruction, in a positive and safe school culture, to maximize student success. Work will center around designing systems, as well as activities and instruction to support growth for all learners, because at ASA we also believe that we can all grow! Look for more information throughout the school year as we continue to develop and implement PBIS.