News from the Head of School

An exciting first week of school has passed and students, parents and teachers have settled nicely into the rhythms of life at GAIS. This year we will be focusing on our traffic and parking situation.  This is important not only because of the growing school population, but also as a condition for increasing our enrollment cap from 300 to 330.  To this end we have launched a program to promote carpooling.  By creating more carpools we can reduce the traffic and parking congestion. I encourage all parents to quickly complete the forms we sent out last week which are essential to the success of this program. Our thanks to Laura Vaughan and Laura Gottsman for their work on the GAIS Traffic Taskforce and to Rachel Parikh for volunteering to be Carpool Coordinator.

This year the GAIS staff will be parking in the designated staff spots or at the far end of the lot.  This will allow parents and students to park closer to the school.  My thanks to all the GAIS staff for their wonderful collaboration in this.  I would like to thank all the parents involved thus far for the effective traffic monitoring on Elliott Dr. Our neighbors do appreciate our consideration. Please be attentive to residents trying to leave their driveways in the morning and stop your cars for them. I also recommend that you sign up early for your traffic duty.  Waiting till the end of the year could result in not finding any open slots 

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Director of Student Services by Maike Silver  

This year I added the position of the director of student services to my role as a PYP coordinator. As such I took on the oversight for both the student council (SMV) and the student leadership academy. The SMV is made up of 1-2 students per class that are elected by their peers to represent them during the approximately six meetings per year. During the meeting the class representatives can bring in any suggestions, grievances or ideas collected in their classes. The SMV meetings are lead by the president of the leadership academy with the help of Frau Strasser and myself.  The leadership academy on the other hand is an extra curricular program that meets every Wednesday to discuss, plan and later execute school wide events or organize student services as discussed with the SMV.  During our first meeting we have agreed on the following positions for the leadership team. Serena Grown-Haeberli will take on the presidency during the first half of the year. Robert Rochel, who was treasurer last year, will transition Goeffrey Glass into this position before taking on the role of the president during the second half of the school year.  Franziska Wendker is the new secretary, while Henry Herz is our new vice president. As this is the year of collaboration the team is planning to organize a variety of school spirit days as well as several fun events. Keep your eyes and ears open for further announcements.

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PYP Corner by Maike Silver  

During the first few days of school the teachers focused on establishing essential agreements that will help guide the students through their daily classroom activities. These will be posted in each classroom and include the attitudes and attributes of the learner profile promoted in the IB Programs. It is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the two, but it might help to think that the attitudes (respect, tolerance, appreciation, commitment, cooperation, confidence, empathy, enthusiasm, independence, creativity, curiosity, integrity) are how we want students to act. The attributes of the learner profile (knowledgeable, balanced, responsible, reflective, inquirers, caring, principled, communicators, risk takers, thinkers) show what we want our students to become. The IB Learner Profile is an integral part of all three IB programs.  It is the heart of international education and through it the IB aims to develop international minded people who, recognizing their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help create a better and more peaceful world. It is a high aim, but we believe that all our students will be playing an important role in the future and we want them to recognize their responsibility towards a global community.  

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Preschool Corner by Heike Schmalstieg     

Thank you for coming to the Back-To-School night. We hope it gave you good insights into what the children do on a daily basis. Yesterday, the preschoolers experienced their first fire drill of the year. After careful preparations during circle time, the children were ready to walk to the school's soccer field with their class and meet up with the entire school. Considering that the fire alarm can be startling for the little ones and the fact that many of the children just started preschool for the first time last week, all did a fantastic job and weren't fazed at all.

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Volunteer Corner

Many thanks go out to the 16 families that showed up for our first Saturday workday on August 20th.  At the moment we are organizing the volunteer committees for this year and will inform you shortly about committee assignments.   

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Carpooling at GAIS  

Going forward, this section will regularly include updates, answers to questions and feature interesting carpool stories from GAIS Families.  Since the "Getting to GAIS" letter sent last week, the Traffic Taskforce has received numerous questions about the parking placards being issued by GAIS this year.  To clarify, all GAIS family vehicles used to transport students to school should have a parking placard starting this Fall.  To receive parking placards please return the "Vehicle Registration Form" for each of your family cars by October 1st, 2011.  Note that the GAIS Carpooling website will be updated with forms and information starting September 6th. In addition, all parents will be receiving the GAIS student directory sorted by city via email next week.  Please continue to address carpooling questions to either laura.gottsman@healthea.org or lvincentvaughan@yahoo.com. Thank you all for your contributions and patience as we launch this program at GAIS this year.

Featured this week is the Weikert/Staufenberg/Smith carpool, which is going into its fifth year and is still going strong.  Three days a week, Sybille Smith drives 5 kids from 3 families to school because she has the room in her mini van and is driving there anyway.  The carpool saves the Weikert/Gawlitzek family, where both parents work at Genentech, the trip from Redwood City to Menlo Park and then back to South San Francisco for work and reduces car trips to GAIS by two cars during the morning rush.  Stefanie comments "We are very grateful to have this carpool in place 3 times a week as it is not only fun for the kids to ride with their friends in the morning but also reduces our commute time to work significantly."  

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Library Hours

The library will be open each day from 8:00 until 12:00. On Mondays it will stay open until 15:00 and on Wednesday & Thursday until 14:00

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Please come and join us at our annual Beach Party at Half Moon Bay on Saturday, September 10. This is a fun event and a great way to meet other parents in the community and make friends. The invitations have been sent out by email this week. Come prepared to join in the fun activities.

The school's lost and found box is placed behind the school, next to the bathrooms. Please check for items on a regular basis. Clothes that are not picked-up will be washed and given to charity at the last Saturday of each month. Labeled clothes always have a better chance of being returned to its owner.
 

Labor Day 

September 5 is Labor Day and the school will be closed. We do not offer Daycare/Hort.

If your child will bike to school, you might consider a bike safety class. Some local cities, including Palo Alto, offer these classes to residents and non-residents. The Palo Alto one is called "Middle School Bike Skills."  It  holds these classes regularly and residents and non-residents can sign up through the "Enjoy" catalog of city classes. The next one day classes are on Saturday 9/17 and 10/1.

For details see:  

http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/recreation/enjoy/default.asp and look for the class called "middle school bike skills".

NJB Winter Basketball registration is now open at www.redwoodnjb.org.   This Redwood Chapter is starting its 9th year and many former players are playing for area High School teams including St. Francis, MA, and Menlo School.  Come join us this year for a positive experience in competitive basketball.   We offer a rookie league (D4) for grades 1-2 with the ability to form your own team (note friends during registration).  There are no boundary restrictions for D4/rookie league.  For grades 3-8 we offer 3 leagues D1 (grades 3-4), D2 (grades 5-6), and D3 (grades 7-8).  D1-D3 utilizes a draft to ensure equality on every team and players are restricted to Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley, Woodside, or East Palo Alto.  All teams are parent coached and the league affords pre-season coaching clinics.  All Divisions (D1-D4) will play a 9 game schedule with a one or two weekend playoff.