Our end-of-year student letter.
As you know, our East Prairie mission - our fundamental purpose as a school - is to “value the uniqueness of all and ensure the highest levels of learning.” That success is defined in many different ways, using many different measures, and is all about the journey. Here is an overview of successes we wanted to highlight as we begin to wrap up the year:
- Increased community partnerships to provide opportunities to our students and families, while also ensuring coordination to collectively support the academic, emotional, and physical wellbeing of our students. Examples include: University of Chicago, Niles North High School, PTA, EPS, Foundation, Preferred Dentistry, Ronald McDonald Health Clinics, Niles Township Food Pantry, Skokie Public Library, behavioral health clinics, and much much more.
- Implemented a new state of the art STEAM curriculum, providing truly transformative learning opportunities to our K-8 students in the STEAM lab, Community Connections Center (our makerspace), and classrooms (through FUSE).
- Addition of tier 3 - intensive remediation - support for both math and reading in kindergarten through eighth grade to ensure that all students are making progress towards grade level standards.
- Implementation of i-Ready as our new curriculum resources for K-5, as well as, enhanced professional learning opportunities in partnership with the University of Illinois-Chicago to ensure our high-leverage instructional practices within our mathematics instruction.
- Ongoing professional learning and improvement to our systems and structures for supporting multilingual students and students entitled to an IEP; including co-planning, co-teaching, co-assessing, and co-analyzing partnerships between teachers and teams.
- A focus on strengthening the elements of the writing process at the middle school level, with an emphasis on instructional practices and feedback to students - we look forward to continuing this work K-5 next school year.
- A new website with enhanced content and features to more fully convey the transformative happenings within our school community.
- Implementation of a new research and play-based curriculum focused on academic and social-emotional growth for our preschool students. Additionally, we are now a Preschool For All program - providing high-quality early childhood education at minimum or no cost to our families.
- Continuous improvement with respect to the practices and resources utilized to support the social and emotional growth of students. Use of five anchor tools to provide students with enhanced SEL competencies, supported with increased professional development and additional resources to support this work explicitly as part of our 30 minute SEL time, while also embedding it throughout the entirety of the school day across all learning environments.
As we begin to reflect upon and continue to learn from this school year, we want to extend a sincere and significant thank you to YOU - our families. Without you, none of what we do would be possible. Thank you for entrusting us with your most precious gift every single day. Thank you for entrusting us to help your children learn and grow into thoughtful, compassionate, and caring young people. Thank you for helping to build a sense of community that extends beyond the walls of any building, connecting us together in profound and meaningful ways. Thank you for never settling on what school is, and what it can be. Thank you for striving, encouraging, and supporting us to reach new heights. Thank you for keeping the needs of kids first, front, and center. We look forward to continuing to do this important work together.
