2023.3.31 – Saxe Weekly – The Saxe weekly

March 31, 2023

Dear Saxe Family,

I hope it was a great week for you at Saxe Middle School! This week in the Saxe Weekly, we take a look at the close of Middle-Level Education Month, National Assistant Principals Week, Paraprofessional Day, Kindness Week, Band & Orchestra, Chess awards, cafeteria, some visiting alum, Shark Tank, Science, and much more. Enjoy and have a wonderful weekend!

Be Well,

Dave Gusitsch

Principal, Saxe Middle School

Upcoming Noteworthy Dates:

4/3 -4/6 Kindness Week

4/3 – 4/7 National Assistant Principals Week

4/5 Paraprofessional Appreciation Day

4/7 No School – Start of April Break

*Quotes that resonated with us this week:

“If you want to feel more comfortable and happy, work on making the people around you more comfortable and happy.” – Kathy Freston

“We long to belong, and belonging and caring anchors our sense of place in the universe.”– Patricia Churchland

“Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you.” – Mary Lou Retton

“There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.” – Fred Rogers

“Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation for reward, safe in the knowledge that someday, someone might do the same for you.” – Princess Diana

Middle Level Education Month

As MLEM comes to a close, we celebrate this important time in the lives of our students. Middle school is an opportunity to learn, grow, explore, play, innovate, try, fail, try again, and have fun while doing it. These are trademarks of an environment that is educationally safe for students, guided by amazing professionals, and Saxe Middle School is grateful and proud of all that we can do for our students and families!

National Assistant Princpals Week

“This is a celebration of the unsung heroes in our education system. These dedicated folks work tirelessly to bolster teachers, motivate students, support their principal, and create a positive learning community, while facing the many unpredictable challenges that land on their desks.”

Mr. Bedard – Upper Division

Dr. Ferreira – Upper Division

Ms. Granite – Lower Division

Thank you to our dedicated Saxe Middle School Assistant Principals – Mr. Bedard, Dr. Ferreira, and Ms. Granite. We are blessed to have an amazing team of professionals who know and understand the unique needs of our middle school students. The role they play within our entire school community is essential and we truly appreciate each of them!

Celebrating our Paraprofessionals

We have an amazing group of paraprofessionals at Saxe who engage, motivate and support our students every day! Thank you so much for your never-ending patience and caring!

Kindness Week: April 3 – 6, 2023

Similar to last year we are continuing our collaborative Kindness Week with Middlesex MS (Darien). “We may be rivals, but we are united in kindness…” Recently, our Student Leadership groups and MMS students met in the Saxe Design Lab to organize the themes and activities for the week of April 3-6th, 2023.

Check out the promo video below:

Kindness Week Promo Video

Saxe Shark Tank

Do you or your child find it hard to get up in the morning? Have you tried different alarm clocks and nothing seemed to work? Then the B-Ball Alarm clock might be a solution for you. Or maybe you are tired of losing your cookie when you dunk it in milk and want to try the cookie catcher.

On Wednesday, March 29 the finalists of our Grade 7 workshop program, Shark Tank, presented to a panel of “sharks” for feedback. This quarter the inquisitive panel consisted of assistant principal Sarah Granite, community member Chris Coyle, and Board of Education member Erica Schwedel. During the panel discussion, students discussed new skills that they learned such as soldering and shared 3D-printed operational prototypes.

Band and Orchestra

Congratulations to five of our 6th-grade students who were selected to perform in the Connecticut Music Educators’ Association Elementary Honors Band and Orchestra Festival yesterday at the Hartford Convention Center. These students joined other student musicians from across the state to rehearse and performed in a concert in the afternoon. We are so proud of their hard work and dedication. They represented Saxe beautifully!

Peyton DiMarco (clarinet)

Jules Huang (violin)

Mary Jordan (violin)

Adam Maklad (cello)

Kellen Wong (violin)

First Annual 7th-Grade Chess “Madness” Tournament

Lots of the kids play “Chess” on their phones in the morning by Mrs. Bennett’s room. One morning Mrs. Hines asked if they would be interested in having a fun tournament that models the “March Madness” brackets. From that moment…it took on a life of its own. The Co-Commissioners were Chris Cunningham and Marco Monaco and both Sam Hering and Marco Monaco designed the winner’s trophy! Out of the fifteen participants, the Co-Champions were Charlie Franz and Sarthak Parikh. Congratulations to all!

Cafeteria

We are fortunate to have such an amazing crew of Food Service staff members preparing, and putting out, a wide range of healthy, delicious offerings in our Saxe Cafeteria. Upon our return from April break, we will be operating with an updated “traffic pattern”. This will assist with purchasing efficiency and traffic flow. Be on the lookout for updated signage in the cafeteria and stay tuned for more info in the coming week!

Tweet Street

Below are photos and phrases that were included on our Saxe middle school Twitter page (@SaxeMS) this week. Enjoy!

Got a visit from two of our favorite Saxe alum this week! Great to see them thriving at NCHS and we love when they come back to see us!

Some of the workspace and products from the most recent round of #SaxeSharkTank. Awesome to see the innovation & design thinking process from beginning to end. Very proud of our Saxe students!

The next round of #SaxeSharkTank is underway! It is amazing to see these Saxe students present their products and discuss the entire design thinking process that got them here! Here is the B-ball Alarm Clock…

The smile on both faces says it all! We’re “over the moon” about moon phases in grade 5 at Saxe!

Have a great week, see you next Thursday!

Thank you to all of our Saxe Weekly contributors! Each weekly edition is an example of collaboration in action. A special thanks to Lauren Sherwood for the continuous stream of positive, optimistic quotes!

Saxe Resources (live links)