Dear HKMS families,

Happy New Year! As you have read or heard from me in the past, I am a big believer in a screen-free nightly family dinner.  There is substantial evidence that family meals around a table (rather than the couch) have a significant impact on nearly every outcome we want for our children (and for the adults too).  From improved health and wellness, academic achievement, social-emotional well-being, to financial security, and family cohesiveness, all are positively impacted by dinner together. Some research says that eating dinner with your children is the single most important thing parents can do (see a great Washington Post article on this topic here).  

With this research in mind, the Clapp family decided to engage in a family resolution this year.  Our goal is to have family dinner every night and diversify our dinner menu. If your family is like ours, we seem to get into a rut of dinners that work for everyone’s tastes, but do not expand our pallets very much.  We have already checked off a few staples (Italian, Mexican, Chinese, and Irish) and are looking forward to adding Ethiopian, Korean, Thai, and Japanese cuisine in the coming months.  It's been a fun twist on typical resolutions that are usually so individual. We hope this makes our commitment to family dinner even more central in our busy days, it also adds some new flavor to our family! We're in it together and it just might get us to try some meals that are outside of our comfort zone.

After a very well-earned vacation, students returned to school with high energy, enthusiasm, and interest. They were met with teachers equally refreshed and eager to get to business! Overall, it was an exciting week full of engaging teaching and learning all over the school! As you check out the over-full classroom peeks section, look for all the exciting work students are participating in from FPAs to all academic classes!

In the happenings section, we are featuring our student newspaper, The Keller Courier, with its first full edition of the school year linked.  We are entering our winter concert season, with the various bands, orchestras, and choirs set to perform in the coming weeks. All the dates are posted in the upcoming events section.

I hope you and your family are having a great start to 2023! 

Sincerely,

Steven Clapp, Ed.D.

Principal

Helen Keller Middle School

Find your strength, build upon it, and share it!