The George Watts Montessori Magnet PTA

The Dream Is Alive at George Watts
Friday Feb 25 was the final school-wide celebration of Black History Month.  Lower El Teacher Ms. Meneca Davis led the assembly in the gym.  First up was a step team of 3 Duke undergraduates from Phi Beta Sigma, a fraternity founded in 1914. They explained the historical roots of step dancing, and they gave an exciting, upbeat, rhythmic show that got everyone cheering!  Next GW Music Teacher Ms. Suggs introduced Mr. Jesse from Duke, who sang Lift Every Voice and Sing. Ms. Suggs explained that the song was written by James and John Johnson in the early 1900s in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and has become the African American national anthem. The audience stood in respect during Mr. Jesse’s beautiful rendition. Next was a book drawing. Several students in each grade level who had turned in their author bookmarks were picked to win books by African American authors.  Also, one lucky teacher from each grade level won a copy of President Obama’s recent book, Of Thee I Sing. Thanks to the PTA for paying for the many wonderful books! The assembly ended with Mr. Rogers’ Upper El students giving a moving performance about Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech, explaining its significance and passionately reciting the speech itself.  Ms. Davis noted that George Watts is indeed an example of Dr. King’s dream coming true.

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RAISING DISABILITY AWARENESS
by Donna Beckmann, EC PTA Committee Chair

The Exceptional Children’s (EC) PTA plays an active role in helping George Watts meet this requirement. This past October, EC Committee Chair Donna Beckmann attended each of the weekly Professional Learning Communities (PLC) meetings, where grade level teachers meet for professional development.  She offered the teachers ideas about how they could help their students learn to relate to others who have a disability. For example, they could have their students try to complete tasks while blindfolded or without using their thumbs.  Also, she suggested that in dealing with parents of children with disabilities, the teachers try to put themselves in the parents’ position.  For example, consider how they phrase statements to parents and always start with something positive. Every parent wants to hear something nice about their child whether they have a disability or not.  Remember that exceptional children are children first – not children with disabilities; our similarities are greater than our differences.

Rounding out Disability Awareness Month, the EC Committee hosted a booth at Root Fest, where guests were challenged to find the radish in a basket of vegetables while blindfolded and to fill a pot with soil while wearing socks on their hands. Everyone had a lot of fun and realized just how important those thumbs really are.

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EDIBLE GARDEN: 5 Ways Our Edible Garden Helps Make Kids Smarter and Healthier
by Alice Bumgarner, PTA Edible Garden Chair

1. Kids are tasting more vegetables and fruits – and learning how to cook them. Tasting what’s growing in the garden is so essential, but it’s also a challenge to incorporate into the school day. At our school, tastings have happened as school-wide “celebrations” and also as individual classroom activities. This year, for example, classrooms gathered lettuce to make salads for a mid-afternoon snack. One class harvested broccoli for a recipe a teacher brought in. Other classrooms nibble from the plants as they pass through the garden on their way to recess. This spring, we’ll be trying something new. More on that soon!

2. Kids move more. Outside in the garden, kids can stretch, move and soak up some sunshine vitamins. But the biggest boon to students’ health? The .25-mile walking path that we installed during the garden expansion. As part of the school’s wellness plan, classrooms are asked to do a lap on the track before starting recess. It’s one way for all teachers – not just Coach B – to help kids reach the daily recommended level of physical activity, 60 minutes. A growing body of research shows the connection between physical activity and academic performance (not to mention the health benefits of exercise). So anytime a teacher encourages a run around the track, she or he is helping kids get smarter.

3. It’s a learning lab. You may have heard about the garden-based curriculum GW teachers created last summer for Lower El and Upper El students. But teachers don’t need customized lessons to encourage learning outside. Journaling, measuring, making real-world observations, conducting experiments, gathering specimens – it’s all possible in a garden.

4. It brings food equity to our community. We’re finding more and more ways to share the bounty. Over winter break, for example, 20 or so students and their families came to harvest spinach and carrots. We took loads of it to Urban Ministries’ soup kitchen, so the chef could turn it into a meal.

5. It builds community. The garden builds community every time a small group comes together to work on a bed, for example. But it builds community in a broader sense, as well.  So far, through the garden, we’ve forged partnerships with groups like Bountiful Backyards and SEEDS. We’ve worked closely with nutritionists from DINE for LIFE. We’ve helped and been helped by Duke students who want to make a difference. We’ve received grants and donations from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, NC Beautiful, Whole Foods, Burt’s Bees, Cabot Farms and our own school alumni group Friends of Watts. (And our PTA continues to provide the critical financial and volunteer support that sustains this program.)

With all those people and organizations helping to lift up our school, we’ve accomplished a bazillion times more than we would have alone.

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ARTS & CULTURE: Afterschool Arts, Improv Theater, and Summer Arts Camps at Watts
by Kisha Daniels, PTA Arts & Culture Committee Chair

The Arts & Culture Committee ended a successful fall session of Explore Afterschool Arts Enrichment in November and has just begun the new spring session on Feb 21. Explore is still enrolling participants, so please call 862-8866 to sign up if you are interested. The fall program was wildly successful, with more than 85 children.  Your generous contributions made through the PTA provided scholarships to more than 20 families!

In the spring, we are looking forward to a fun evening of family improvisation theatre hosted by the Common Ground theatre.  This event will help to raise additional monies for scholarships for the spring and summer arts enrichment programs. Look for more information to come home in backpacks very soon about this event, as well as the wide variety of summer camps (full- and half-day) that will be offered at Watts.

It is our hope to make the summer programming a real community endeavor.  We are looking for innovative, energetic and fun adults (teachers, teacher assistants and parents) to get paid to develop and teach summer classes! What’s Your Passion? Is it Singing, Chinese cooking, Gardening, Carpentry, Basketball, Hip-Hop, Painting, Foreign languages, Photography, Writing, or Video-gaming?  We want YOU to develop and teach an Explore class at Watts this summer! If you have an idea for a summer class, you want to contact us. Explore pays really well ($30-$60 an hour depending on enrollment) and you get a chance to explore your inner creative self!  Contact Kisha Daniels, kdaniels@nccu.edu, 530-7690.

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SCHOOL GROUNDS: Amazing Things Happen When the School, PTA, and Community Work Together
by Kellianne White, PTA Grounds Committee Chair

Over the five years that my family has been at George Watts, I’ve seen a lot of improvements to our grounds.  We came here in 2006, the year when the PTA Grounds Committee applied for and won a major grant from the Durham Open Spaces & Trails Commission, valued at over $50,000 (including matching funds raised by PTA and volunteer labor). Through this grant as well as additional awards from NC Beautiful, Keep Durham Beautiful, and Durham’s Urban Forestry Division, our school has since received many trees and shrubs, 90 azaleas and over 2500 plants and bulbs, as well as paving stones, materials for timber walls, and nine benches, all of which you can see in the front and side yards.

As for the back of the school: Did you know that in 2006 there was no play equipment that met safety standards for children under 5 years old?  Primary classes were not permitted to play on the existing equipment, but instead were limited to a barren courtyard (the area that is now our edible garden).  Through the DOST grant, the Grounds Committee had unsafe structures removed, and bought and installed a new play structure, rated safe for children as young as 2 (but still fun for older kids!). This is the structure closest to Dacian Ave. (pictured above) where Primary students now get to spend their recess.  More major improvements came in 2010: a walking trail, erosion-controlling boulders, and vegetable gardens, thanks to the school’s Wellness Committee and the PTA Edible Garden Committee.

So much work has been done, and George Watts has many wonderful parents, teachers, and community supporters to thank.  But there is more to be accomplished.  Please consider sharing your gardening and landscaping skills by joining the PTA Grounds Committee.

And come to our next Grounds Day, Saturday April 23 to be part of what makes George Watts Montessori a school to be proud of.

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