2026.3.6 – Saxe Weekly (#316)

March 6, 2026

Dear Saxe MS Family,

Happy March! As the snow continues to melt outside, we look forward to warmer, and longer, days. We also look forward to continuing to build on the foundation of the learning, relationships, and experiences we have built over the course of the school year up to this point. Each week, we share snapshots of these aspects to provide some insight into what makes our school community truly unique and special. We are grateful for your interest and for checking out the latest happenings at Saxe MS!

This week in the Saxe Weekly, we take a look at Daylight Saving Time, the latest Saxe MS podcast episode, Middle Level Education Month, Global Day of Unplugging, Digital Wellness, School Counseling, Mandarin, NCHS Orientation, Women’s History Month, Hawks Gazette, STEM, Science, Social Studies, “March Messages”, and much more. Enjoy and have a wonderful weekend!

Be Well,

Dave Gusitsch

Principal, Saxe Middle School

Reminder to “Spring Ahead”

Just a friendly reminder that we will all “Spring Ahead” this weekend for Daylight Saving Time. “Losing” an hour of sleep is never fun, but the longer afternoons will be warmly welcomed!

Note: created using Google Gemini’s “Nano Banana” feature…

Upcoming Noteworthy Dates:

3/8 “Spring Ahead”! (Daylight Saving Time)

3/11 First annual Band Solo & Ensemble Competition (3:30 – 7)

*Quotes that resonated with us this week:

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus

“A little progress each day adds up to big results.” – Satya Nani

“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” — Napoleon Hill

“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.” — Chinese proverb

Saxe Jokes of the week:

How do you stop a bull from charging? Cancel its credit card!

What does Jack Frost like best about school? Snow and tell.

I wondered why the baseball was getting closer and closer. Then it hit me.

What March flowers grow on faces? Tulips.

Saxe Weekly: The Podcast

Interested in getting an overview of the latest Saxe Weekly in podcast form? Using Google’s Notebook LM, we are able to offer an option to listen to all of the great “goings on” in our school community while you are “on the go”, with the Saxe MS Podcast! We invite you to give it a listen… Enjoy!

Note: We have been using Notebook LM to create our podcast for the past couple of months, and recently, noticed the “create an image – infographic” option. It’s a pretty neat representation of the latest Saxe Weekly and may become part of our weekly update – enjoy!

Middle Level Education Month

Each March, we celebrate Middle Level Education Month. It is an opportunity for us to recognize the role that this phase on the educational journey of our students is one of the most important portions of their trip! Below are some more resources, information, and opportunities for students to get involved. Stay tuned for more information and moments to celebrate throughout the month of March. If you have any questions about getting involved, please feel free to reach out!

MLEM: as shared by the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP)

MLEM: as shared by the Association of Middle Level Education (AMLE)

March is Middle Level Education Month (MLEM), devoted to celebrating the opportunity of the middle grades and the profound and consequential years of early adolescence.

This year, we are lifting up the voices and the champions of the middle grades. From students sharing their perspectives through our expanded Student Sound Off Contest, to adult advocates who guide, mentor, and inspire young adolescents every day, MLEM is all about recognizing the impact happening in middle schools across the country.

Join us as a champion for middle level education! There are a variety of ways both students and adults can get involved and celebrate the power and promise of the middle grades.

MS Student Sound Off Contest

Students can SOUND OFF on any aspect of their middle school experience in response to any of the prompts below. Because we all have different talents, interests, and ways of expressing ourselves, students can submit in the format that most appeals to them.

Being a middle schooler is like…
I feel happiest when…
I feel safest at school when…
I wish the adults in my life better understood…
Something that really matters to me is…
One of the biggest challenges or opportunities of being a middle schooler today is…
An adult in my life that is really important to me is…
An adult in my life that makes me feel safest being myself is…
An adult in my life that cheers the loudest for me is…
An adult in my life that I really admire, or see as a role model is…

After you’ve reviewed the contest details below, be sure to submit your sound off by April 3, 2026! Need some inspiration? Check out the finalists from 2023, 2024 and 2025.

And, yes – there are prizes!

Adult Advocate Awards

In a successful middle school, every student’s academic and personal development is guided by an adult advocate. In fact, research shows that students who can name an advocate at school experience many benefits, including greater engagement at school… Each day, thousands of adult advocates show up for kids in ways that matter to them, from teachers and administrators to counselors and coaches.

Global Day of Unplugging

As we mentioned in our most recent Saxe Weekly, our school community joined in the Global Day of Unplugging to continue our goal of keeping a focus on “Digital Wellness” for all. Below are communications, resources, and tips to learn more, or better yet, join in! An extra special thanks to Ms. Kleis for all of her work on this, and all of our wellness-focused initiatives!

Below are a few “screen-free activity ideas” that came up following a quick query:

Outdoor & Active

Nature Exploration: Go for a hike, visit a local park, or head to the beach to “forest bathe” or birdwatch.
Community Movement: Join a group bike ride, attend an outdoor yoga session, or host a neighborhood BBQ.
Volunteer: Spend your tech-free hours giving back, such as picking up litter in your neighborhood or helping at a local food bank.

Creative & Relaxing

Analog Hobbies: Pick up a paintbrush, start a knitting project, play a musical instrument, or finally start that physical book you’ve been meaning to read.
Journaling & Correspondence: Write a letter to a loved one via “snail mail” or journal about your thoughts on disconnecting.
Public Art: Create temporary art, such as sand mandalas at a beach or sidewalk chalk exhibits in your neighborhood.

Family & Kids

Indoor Campout: Build an elaborate fort using blankets and cushions, then “camp” in the living room with flashlights and stories.
Scavenger Hunts: Create a “wacky” list of items for kids to find around the house or at a local park.
DIY Science & Crafts: Make homemade playdough, oobleck, or paper airplanes for a family competition.

Digital Wellness

And, in the spirit of unplugging, here is a quick article overview that I came across this week that supports our move to “Phone Free Schools” to promote/protect student (and, staff) wellness. It is also a good personal reminder to minimize the “noise” of distractions in my own life (for example: I stopped notifications for most apps on my phone so I can control when I check for messages, and not the other way around)… Just like many other topics, we “know” quite a bit about the reasons that too much of anything is not good for us, but reminders are always helpful!

5. What Happens When a Student’s Phone Buzzes

In this article in The Learning Dispatch, Carl Hendrick (Academica University,

Netherlands) reports on a new study of smartphone notifications. The conclusion: students’

attention has been “colonized by a system designed to fracture it,” says Hendrick. “The ping of a notification, the silent vibration in a pocket, the ambient awareness that something, somewhere, might require a response: these are not incidental features of modern life. They are now its architecture.”

The researchers studied what happens to students’ attention each time they receive a notification: cognitive processing is slowed for about seven seconds. This may not sound like much, but the average participant in the study received more than 150 notifications a day, so the cumulative impact of all those seven-second interruptions was “a fundamentally altered cognitive rhythm,” says Hendrick. “The mind never fully settles. It hovers in a state of anticipatory vigilance, perpetually primed for the next interruption.”

The researchers were able to separate out students’ reactions by notification type: ones they didn’t recognize, ones from the apps they used most often, and ones they knew were specifically for them. The amount of distraction escalated from small with the first (the notification caught the student’s eye) to moderate with the second (they were accustomed to getting information from it) to significant with the third (it was for them). “The last of these is the crucial amplifier,” says Hendrick. “Put simply, we are not merely distracted by notifications. We are recruited by them.” Even if a student sees a notification on another student’s phone, it’s a distraction: “The body responds before the mind has decided to care.”

The study concluded that young people’s screen time is not the metric parents and educators should be most worried about. The researchers looked at (a) the number of notifications per day, (b) how often kids checked their phones, and (c) total time spent on devices. It turns out that screen time was only marginally associated with cognitive distraction; what was most powerful was the frequency of notifications and how often kids reached for their phones. “Parental anxiety fixates on duration,” says Hendrick, “but this study suggests that the relevant variable is not how long we stare at the screen, but how frequently we are pulled toward it. The damage is done not by sustained use but by the ceaseless rhythm of interruption and return.”

What’s going on in the brain, he reports, is a dopamine kick that gradually sensitizes the reward circuitry, increasing attentional salience. “Our relationship with our devices,” says Hendrick, “has been shaped, through thousands of daily conditioning trials, into something resembling a compulsion.” Over time, notifications produce a level of activation similar to seeing faces, experiencing a threat, and survival-relevant cues. “A notification from Instagram, in the brain’s reckoning, begins to compete with a rustling in the undergrowth.”

All this is deeply subversive of the kind of “cognitive patience” required in schools – students’ willingness to linger with difficulty, to sustain attention long enough for meaning to emerge,” says Hendrick. “But this is precisely what the notification environment does: it trains the brain to expect interruption, to anticipate reward at ever shorter intervals, to treat sustained focus not as the default mode of cognition but as an effortful departure from it… Every notification is a small vote for shallowness.” The clear implication: during focused work, phones need to be in another room.

For educators, says Hendrick, the message from this study is clear: “The mere presence of a smartphone in a classroom (even one set to silent mode) represents a cognitive liability. Pop-up notifications, whether seen or merely anticipated, impose a tax on the very attentional resources that learning requires. And the tax falls disproportionately on those students whose notification environments are most dense and most rewarding; which is to say, on those who are most deeply enmeshed in the platforms designed to exploit their attention, usually social media.”

Here is the full article if you wish to read it:

“How Much Cognitive Damage Does a Phone Notification Actually Do?” by Carl Hendrick in The Learning Dispatch, February 13, 2026; the original study is “Attention Hijacked: How Social Media Notifications Disrupt Cognitive Processing” by Hippolyte Fournier et al. in Computers and Human Behavior, June 2026 (Vol. 179, pp. 1-39)

School Counseling

Our terrific team of Saxe MS School Counselors (Ms. Beltran, Mr. Lepisto, & Ms. Nettleton), met with their students this week to help them “consider the ways in which the media may distort images they see, and how unrealistic portrayals can shape, and often undermine, how they see themselves”. In my opinion, these are great reminders for all of our students. As the Dad of two daughters, and one son, I am happy to see “body positive” messaging from companies that care more about “people” than just selling a product.

As we are aware, the body is “ever-changing”, especially at this age! How media impacts body image, self-esteem, & social pressure are important topics to discuss with our students, and, parents may benefit from reminders, too!

If you happened to watch the Super Bowl this year, you may recall seeing the following commercial from Dove:

This is one company that has been consistently sending this positive message to our “youngsters” over the past decade or so…

Math

Students in Mrs. Pelatowski’s Algebra class worked collaboratively to discover exponential relationships. Through hands-on investigations and group discussions, they explored how these functions model rapid growth and decay in real-world scenarios.

Mandarin

February 17th started the first day of the 2026 Chinese lunar new year: The Year of the Fire Horse. As the tradition unfolds the celebration for 15 days, the Lantern Festival on March 2 made the last day of it. In class, students had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the gist of the rich Chinese culture. Our 7th and 8th grade Mandarin students demonstrated their curiosity and passion for learning through various activities. They were engaged to observe, wonder, think, and then to draw the conclusions or form perspectives of their own.

Students also engaged in the mini-demonstrations to describe the twelve Zodiac animal signs. It was exciting for students to create banners with the lunar new year’s best wishes and make the 福 (fú) character, which symbolizes good luck and prosperity. Taking photos together with friends with lunar new year decorations was another festive moment for students to enjoy. Let’s feel our students’ celebration vibes through the gallery of photos and their smiling faces!

Grade 8 to 9 Orientation at NCHS

Thank you to NCHS for putting on such a terrific 8th to 9th Orientation evening for our Saxe MS students & families! There was a great turnout & quite a bit of excitement all throughout the building! Whether it’s academics, the arts, athletics, or anything else in between, everything is done at the highest level at NCHS… Top-notch programming & personnel make the best experience possible for our students!

NCHS is a “Class Act” all around… Nice touch to have the live music around the building – great vibes!

PS – it was GREAT to see so many of our former students doing so well and volunteering to help out throughout the evening!

Women’s History Month:

March is Women’s History Month. During the month of March, we will celebrate the many contributions women have made throughout history and continue to make in our communities, our country, and around the world. Join us this month as we recognize Alice Paul, Hannah Bunce Watson, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson- who have made a lasting impact

Hawks Gazette

Check out the latest edition of the Hawks Gazette! Thanks to our students and staff advisor, Mr. Myers, for this fun, interactive format in which to learn more about, or engage with, Saxe Middle School. We enjoy seeing Saxe through the lens of our students!

Or check it out by accessing the Hawks Gazette Google Site, directly.

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

Today, we are “unplugged” at Saxe MS & we encourage everyone to strike a healthy balance (or, fully unplug) as we go into the weekend, too… Enjoy the “break” from our ever-increasingly busy, more connected lives!

Not only is Saxe MS “unplugged” today, but our students also did a nice job reflecting on the impact of digital devices in their own lives. Here are a few insights that may inspire us to think before mindlessly picking our own devices (again….). Thank you for the thoughtful responses!

It’s the best when our Saxe MS (Click to watch!) students take pride in their work & want to come back to share their finished product (after seeing an earlier version a couple of weeks ago)! Nice work with the functionality, design, & execution of your plan!

What happens when the goal is to take what you are learning & “crowd source” the findings of a Science scenario? A wide assortment of life skills are put on display! Mr. D’Alton prompted them periodically, but the class was self-directed and practicing evidence, reasoning, compromise, listening, communicating, refined thinking, & so much more… Talk about student engagement!

Students in Mr. D’s Social Studies classes have been reflecting on PERSIA GT & Evidence-Based Claim Testing. Mr. D also has students working in randomly selected groups & moving around the room… All great combos to more deeply engage in their work!

So fun to watch robot trial runs during grade 7 STEM (click the link to watch!)Workshop this week… It’s fascinating to watch our Saxe MS students create, collaborate, iterate, & so much more during these lessons. Not only are they learning/practicing great life skills, but they are also having fun along the way!

The Saxe MS 8 Red board has been updated for March & there are some insightful & inspiring messages for all to see!

The weather wasn’t the most cooperative this week, but we had activities for our Saxe MS students to enjoy the time spent inside during lunch/recess, especially Ms. Ording’s card tricks!

Just a friendly reminder from Saxe MS to adjust your schedules for Sunday morning (3/8) as we prepare to “spring ahead” for DST!

The Saxe MS morning crew was back at it this week! With the time change this weekend & warmer weather on the way, we should have the “full court” back soon (no more snow piles)… 🙂

Have a great week, see you next Friday!

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

Saxe Resources (live links)

Website: https://www.ncps-k12.org/saxe