October 2025

Updates and Announcements

🏫 Our district believes in fostering a sense of belonging for all. It is important for each staff and student to know they belong in Evergreen regardless of any differences we may have. We all represent the EP family. Spread the word that You and #iBelonginEvergreen 🤗 Use the #iBelonginEvergreen on X (twitter)! The 'I Belong' pins will continue to be distributed this month. You can place it on your lanyard or bag!

🏫 Our district-wide Hispanic Heritage Month event is October 2nd at 6pm at Northeast Elementary School. All students, families and staff are welcome to attend!

🏫 Equity Unleashed, South Cook ISC's equity network, will be having their 1st meeting of the year on 10/15. Equity Unleashed is a network for all 66 district's in South Cook area; the first meeting will take place at the Intermediate Center.

🏫 Our first #iBelong welcoming group (supported by Teach Plus+) took place on 9/23. Our affinity group believes in community, advocacy, support, and professional growth. Our next gathering will be October 23 at 4pm.

🏫 DELT members will be attending the National PBIS Leadership Forum in Chicago on October 22nd. PBIS is an award-winning protocol for effectively engaging, sustaining and deepening interracial dialogue. Through their Framework for Systemic Racial Equity Transformation, they help individuals and organizations address persistent racial disparities intentionally, explicitly, and comprehensively.

🏫 Know a dad that wants to volunteer as a watchdog? Email me their name and contact info or send them this Google Form. Watch D.O.G.S. (dads of great students) is a national program to involve dads in their child's education. The volunteers help with supervising throughout the day!

#iBelonginEvergreen

Each month, there will be 1 of 8 key strategies you can use to help you cultivate a sense of belonging for your students on a daily basis. Use these strategies each month so we all know that you and #iBelonginEvergreen.

Strategy #2: Invited

What can you do to make students feel welcomed?

Invitational Teaching
High Expectations through Grouping
The Opportunity to Learn

Your school social worker(s) will present these action items monthly!

Hispanic Heritage Month (ends 10/15)

🎃 Here are the October 2025 Significant Days Slides: Celebrate and Learn!

🎃 Have extra time with students throughout the day? Students can check out these FALL and HALLOWEEN virtual rooms to explore, relax, and engage!

🎃 Check out these audio books for Fall, Halloween, Indigenous Peoples' Day and Día de los Muertos: Click Here

🎃 CMS teachers! Need a Halloween lesson? Check out this ELA "How to Sell a Haunted House" activity or this "Spooky History" Social Studies activity. Do you want a lesson related to a culturally significant day? Email me ahattar@d124.org.

🎃 Looking for games? Check out this Fall Scavenger Hunt or this choice board.

🎃 Looking for an SEL check-in? Check out the pumpkin check-in.

🎉 Resources 🎉

The AI Revolution

The AI Revolution is already here. But how will schools respond? Traditionally, schools typically default to one of two extremes: embrace tech uncritically (techno-futurism) or block it entirely. But there's a third way. This sketch video explores the big ideas around how schools will respond to AI in the future.

Check it out: HERE

Strategies to Enhance Student Engagement

The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. The goal of UDL is learner agency that is purposeful & reflective, resourceful & authentic, strategic & action-oriented.

Explore the research and strategies for student engagement, representation & action and expression HERE!

Tech Tips

Did you know the Google Chrome browser has a built in QR code generator? All you need to do is right-click anywhere on the page and click 'generate QR code for this page'. Want more tech tips? Check out these easy Tech Tips!

Staff Shout-Outs!

Let's celebrate all the hard work our staff does to provide an equitable and inclusive education for our students👏🏼

Students and staff at Southwest honored the start of Hispanic Heritage Month with a Spirit Day wearing something to represent their culture or school pride!

Miss Banks celebrated kindness day by giving each student a paper with their name. Their classmates filled the page with kind words! #iBelonginEvergreen

Miss Ramazinski planted seeds of kindness with her students on kindness day.

Shout out to Miss Lorenz, Miss Grazevich, Sara Bledsoe, Diana Guzman, Colleen McGovern, Camie O'Shea, Jane Ramazinski, Miss Smith and Miss Banks for using #iBelonginEvergreen on social media! Thank you for sharing the message in person and digitally! 💚

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