Our Story

Joshua 4:6-7 "In the future your children will ask you, ‘What do these rocks mean?’ 7 Tell them the water stopped flowing in the Jordan when the Ark of the Agreement with the Lord crossed the river. These rocks will always remind the Israelites of this.”

We are a group of God’s children who have been assembled here at South Side for such a time as this. God has placed children in our care. Children who need understanding, nurturing, patience and love. God is willing to use us: our arms to hug, our hands to hold, our mouths to smile, our lips to tell His story to teach about His world, and our hearts to share His joy and love with these children and their families.

The water shifts around us. Sometimes, the sand we stand on feels loose and unsteady. But we place this rock in our midst to remind us that our work belongs to God. He has placed us on this path and we are answering His call. He has called us to work here today, to deliver Holland Christian’s mission to the best of our ability with our children. It takes perseverance. It takes patience. It takes willingness to see the big picture. It takes forgiveness. It takes offering help and sharing guidance to one another. It takes identifying and using the strengths that God has blessed us with. It takes God’s mighty strength and hope living in us. But we are doing it. We are growing His children for Him.

So with this rock, we tell our story. If children ask, what is this rock for? We can tell them, we are standing on God’s solid foundation and growing YOU! Teaching you that God loves you so much, he sent his only Son to die here on earth to forgive our sins. He is using us to teach you and show you that you are His child and that you are dearly loved!

This is our story. This is our rock!

The following is our agenda for Monday:

8AM-11:30AM Report Card Work (snacks provided during the morning)

• Talk and decide as a grade level, what are 2-4 questions (mission-related) per grade level to send home with report cards for parents to consider and prepare for conferences? These are suggestions to get your wheels turning, edit, and use, as desired:
• How does your child feel about coming to school
• How is your child doing socially?
• Are there particular subjects that are favorites or not?
• Anything going on at home that I should know to effectively teach your child?
• What is a typical night like at home?
• How have you seen your child grow since the start of the school year?
• How has your child’s faith grown since the start of the year?
• Has our theme focus made it home in specific actions and words?

• Discuss and walk away with any common content-specific comments that can be copied and pasted into your students’ report cards.
• Begin entering any specific comments or data you may already have for any of your students on report cards.

11:30-12:45 LUNCH

• We insist that you take a lunch break after working so hard in the morning, and anticipating more good work in the afternoon. You have the freedom to go wherever you like with whomever you like.

12:45-3:00PM Reading Workshop and Rubicon

• Take a look back over your first unit of Reading Workshop and discuss one essential question that demonstrates an intentional faith integration into the unit. When you have decided, please enter it into your Rubicon map.

• Discuss your next unit teaching points, faith integration essential question, and plan and enter into your Rubicon map.

• We will be doing Report Cards with comments for Quarter 1 (all but K).

• Report Cards are due for completion by October 16, 8AM when we will print all report cards for you from the office (even though quarter end has been pegged for October 31).

• Report Cards will go home with students on Friday, October 17 so that parents have the weekend to examine them before conferences.

• Part of Monday's PD day next week will be designated for some report card conversation and preparation at grade levels, for writing some of the curricular "what students have been learning this quarter in...." comments, as well as preparing any other segments of your Report Cards that you desire. Dan Vos will also be present and available for any refreshers or training any may need for accessing and preparing Report Cards. Dan will also be sharing, likely today yet, a screencast of how to begin your Report Card work again this year so that you can begin as soon as you desire.

Report Cards
We want the best possible experience for parents, students, and staff for effective, timely, and helpful communication affirming our partnership with parents all year long, but especially during this critical time of parent/teacher conferences. 

• We will be doing Report Cards with comments for Quarter 1 (all but K).
• Report Cards are due for completion by October 16, 8AM when we will print all report cards for you from the office (even though quarter end has been pegged for October 31).
• Report Cards will go home with students on Friday, October 17 so that parents have the weekend to examine them before conferences.
• Part of Monday's PD day next week will be designated for some report card conversation and preparation at grade levels, for writing some of the curricular "what students have been learning this quarter in...." comments, as well as preparing any other segments of your Report Cards that you desire. Dan Vos will also be present and available for any refreshers or training any may need for accessing and preparing Report Cards. Dan will also be sharing, likely today yet, a screencast of how to begin your Report Card work again this year so that you can begin as soon as you desire.

Dates for your Blog:

Sept. 29: No School: Staff Development Day

October 9: Grandparents' Day

October 21 & 22: Parent/Teacher Conferences

October 22: No School

October 23& 24: No School: CEA Convention

Please know, my door is always open...I may not be there, but it's nice to know the door is open ;)

Nuts and Bolts

I'm going to keep this one short and sweet, girls. Sheri and baby are on bed rest beginning tonight so we're busy preparing her class for a nice, smooth transition. Let's each please remain in prayer for Sheri and her precious little one. We can also pray for Elaine's capable hands and tender heart ready to love our second graders and continue their growth.

Sorry this post wasn't published until tonight and it's brief.

Thank You
Please remember to thank your parents for their support of the walk-a-thon in your blog this weekend. What a success! The total from all three schools is more than $38,000. Thanks be to God for a loving, supportive community! We will seek God's wisdom in being good stewards with this funding. If you have a parent team member in your classroom, a grateful email might be in order for all their time and effort. There was a load of work put into pulling this off, and what a success it was!

See You at the Pole
Wednesday, September 24 is See You at the Pole day. We will have a sign up on the white board in the staff center for you to bring your class outside for a devotional or prayer time. This is a unique opportunity to seek God outside and pray for our country and our leaders.

Parent/Teacher Conferences
Our times slots have been decided upon. Parents are not yet aware of the specifics. They will be invited via Powerschool to assign themselves to a slot. Our times are the same as last year. If you are unable to fit your number of parents into these slots or to ease your load on a particular night, please feel free to create your own 20 minute slots outside of these windows.

• Tuesday, October 21 from 4:20 PM to 8:40 PM
• Wednesday, October 22 from 3:00 PM to 8:40 PM

Grandparents Day
Please alert your parents to our upcoming grandparents day. Thursday, October 9 from 10:15-11:30. We'll run our program very similar to the past. An order of events will be given to you next week and we can pick it apart, add to it, change it up. I'm open to anything and everything...well, ALMOST! ;)

Jean Day
Dan has offered all HC staff the option to wear jeans on Fridays if you're willing to pay $1 which will go to our Tuition Grant Fund. Enjoy!

Dates for your Blog:

Sept. 29: No School: Staff Development Day

October 9: Grandparents' Day

October 21 & 22: Parent/Teacher Conferences

October 22: No School

October 23& 24: No School: CEA Convention

Settling Into Excitement!

Thank you for your patience as we're getting more and more settled into this new year. Our schedules are beginning to take shape, children are settling in to procedures (excellent job holding them to a high standard!) and God is being glorified!

It's our first 5-day week. Can you relate? ;)

Tech Talk

In order to help us continue to grow and learn from one another or perhaps even discuss WHAT to begin to ask of those "in the know", I would like to invite anyone to the staff center on Thursdays during afternoon recess for what we'll call Tech Talk. If you have an app, lesson or technology integrated idea to share, please come with your idea or a sample. If you have questions or have a creative idea and don't know where to begin to pull it off, let's pick each other's brains. 

Discovery Assessment 

We'll roll it out on Monday. I'll begin with my class on Monday afternoon and let you know if we sank or swam with the testing on the iPads! 

Tailgate Game

If you volunteered to work at the pre-game party, you should have received information from Amanda Brouwer. In light of this, let's have tomorrow be an optional jean day and maroon and white day (some of us can't get all the way home to change in time to get back on duty ;)

Walk-a-thon Reminder

Please remind your parents in your weekly communication to ask students to bring their collected money to school on Monday, September 15. The parent team will be counting the money Monday evening.

School Pictures are Thursday and Friday

Sheri, we'll get your skinny side while it's still looking sassy!

Dates for your blogs:

Sept. 15: Walk-a-thon

Sept. 18/19: School Pictures

Sept. 29: No School: Staff Development Day

October 9: Grandparents' Day

October 21 & 22: Parent/Teacher Conferences

October 22: No School

October 23& 24: No School: CEA Convention

While we're still shifting our schedules and support staffing, please don't hesitate to communicate necessary changes or reworks. We need to respond to our children's growth and will work toward that end. 

Full Steam Ahead

Thank you to everyone for the extra effort and hard work it takes to get the year started well. Children's little hearts are settling in thanks to your patience, energy, hugs and smiles (even in the heat and humidity). Parents are happy and grateful. Students are learning procedures and transitioning from summer to school beautifully. THANK YOU! Very clearly, you are each using the gifts that God has uniquely blessed you with to teach, love and guide your students. South Side is a welcoming, warm, energetic, joyful place to learn and grow!

Substitute Calendar

Pat has invited you to a Google calendar for substitute teacher listings. This allows you to see when your opening has been filled and who you can contact to communicate specific arrangements if necessary. 

Dave Watch

Ruth 1:16 "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God." In a nutshell, that will be our motto to help Dave learn how to play and interact well with others. The first name listed on the Outdoor Recess Duty calendar for each recess will be responsible to stay near Dave with a watchful eye at all times during that recess. If you need to switch your recess duty, please communicate that additional responsibility as well if it is yours. 

CEA Attendance

CEA will be at Holland Christian this year on October 23 and 24. All certified teachers from our district, full and part time, are expected to attend CEA. Because CEA is at Holland Christian and because it is good for our teachers’ development/improvement and engaging as part of our learning community, all certified teachers K-12 are required to attend this year.

Discovery Assessment

Discovery Assessments are now natively compatible with iPads starting with this first testing cycle this year.  They have converted everything over to HTML5. I will try this assessment with my class in math on Monday, September 15 to find any possible bugs lying in wait. If it rolls smoothly, we'll sign up for a time to have Thea come to our classroom to help log students into the correct test. Then, they should be able to complete the work independently. A sign up for Thea's support will be made available tomorrow, Friday the 5th.

Walk-a-Thon

The Walk-a-Thon committee asked that if you have any other parent volunteer names for this event, please pass them along to Michelle Becksvoort. Additionally, in your weekly blog to parents, please remind parents to bring the collected money to school on Monday, September 15. Parents will be counting money that evening. I'll remind them in the South Side blog as well, but the more sources we can remind them from, the better the return rate will likely be.

Dan Meester

Dan would like to get to know us, our students and what we do in an up close and personal way. He would like to visit South Side the first Monday of every month, with our first visit being Monday, the 8th. Keep doing all the great things you're doing and just know that a friendly face may wander into your room for a bit. If you are able, he'd like to talk a bit, just friendly get-to-know-you stuff, at recess in the staff center.

Dates for your blogs:

Sept. 15: Walk-a-thon

Sept. 18/19: School Pictures

Sept. 29: No School: Staff Development Day

October 9: Grandparents' Day

October 21 & 22: Parent/Teacher Conferences

October 22: No School

October 23& 24: No School: CEA Convention