Husky Herald Newsletter

October 4, Volume 5

A Message from Dr. J

HAPPY FRIDAY, HAW CREEK FAMILIES!

We had a great week back from Fall Break and enjoyed hearing stories of your adventures during our time off. There is A LOT happening this month, so be certain to mark your calendars and plan for all the things. We look forward to welcoming our families to campus throughout the month as we host conferences and have shared some tips below to help you prepare and ensure our conferences run smoothly this month.

Don't forget to click on the EVENTS section of our website for what's coming up at Haw Creek!

Wanting to get ahead of the planning for November? We added the Under Construction Calendar to the Events page so you can start planning now. Thanks for the feedback - we hope this helps your family stay organized and connected to Haw Creek!

The HCES Admin Team

Ashley Johnessee, Principal ajohnessee@forsyth.k12.ga.us

Jordann Aler, Assistant Principal 3-5 jaler@forsyth.k12.ga.us

Davis Barlow, Assistant Principal K-2 dbarlow@forsyth.k12.ga.us

Traci Avery, Assistant Administrator tavery@forsyth.k12.ga.us

HCES Homepage

HCES Handbook

Haw Creek PTO

Reserve the Rock!

HCES Lunchroom

Video: How to Navigate The Husky Herald Website

Seen Around Haw Creek

We started National Anti-bullying Month off with our September "Your Words Matter" Week! Our Counselors and our Specials Team came together to hold assemblies with our classes where students shared their ways to use positive words to build community in our school. We hope you will see if you can find YOUR child's great contribution in the photos from our posters. These posters will be in our hallways as a reminder and to offer suggestions on how to shine brightly with our positive words!

This month we will celebrate World Unity Day (October 16th) and Red Ribbon Week to further our work on making great choices.

Sign Up Now! Registration Closes October 11th

Math Kangaroo Competition Registration is now open - see the linked Letter for Parents for more information about participation in this event! Registration closes on October 11th and spots are limited. Good luck, Huskies!

Canvas

Thanks to so many of you who shared your feedback after Curriculum Night! Overall, you were pretty positive, but the biggest and most consistent concern shared was about CANVAS - the Learning Management System (LMS) that students throughout Forsyth County use to access lessons, review materials, complete activities, and see what is coming up in their classes. In an effort to better support your questions, our district has created helpful videos and handouts to support parents learning about Canvas. These materials are available here.

We also encourage you to log in with your student and have them lead you on a journey in navigating their class's page. We hope this helps you stay connected to Haw Creek!

Wouldn't It Be Nice...

Have you seen it? Have you heard? Haw Creek was nominated for the BEST of Forsyth 2025! And you know what stands between a nomination and a win? VOTING!! That's right! All we need is for YOU to vote! Wouldn't it be nice to see our school win the Best of Forsyth award? It's pretty simple, all we need you to do is:

VOTE DAILY - you can vote once per day (per device or email address if you're a cache master), everyday from now until October 31st
SHARE THE LOVE by posting this on social media, asking your family to join in the fun, and getting them to vote for Haw Creek - they also can vote daily!
KEEP IT GOING! Set an alarm, put it on your agenda, have an easy "to do" list mark off by keeping the vote going - we can do it!

Let's see if we can get the kind of support that shows Forsyth why Haw Creek deserves to be known as THE BEST!

Leader in Me: 7 Habits at Haw Creek

Parent Conferences

As we plan for Parent Conferences this month, we wanted to highlight our 7 Habits to help you plan for a successful experience!

You may notice we only have 5 Habits listed leaving out Habit 3: Put First Things First and Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw. While we can definitely apply those habits, we highlighted the top 5 to help you prepare.

A few other tips to ensure you have a great conference experience:

Please be on time - what we find happens is that people are just a minute or two behind and that puts the last conference of the day 30 minutes behind! We appreciate your help!
Conferences are a brief snapshot of your child's progress up to this point in the year. Teachers will share classroom performance, assessment data, and possibly discuss student social and emotional growth. These brief sessions are the highlight reel at this time.
Please know that it is incredibly important that teachers STAY on time - see reason 1. Should you find that your conference needs a follow-up, the teachers are more than happy to schedule another meeting with you for more information.

To help you prepare, we have also put info from Canvas above in case that helps you connect with your child's classroom information prior to conferences. Feel free to also check out our handbook (linked at the button on this newsletter) and website for more info!

Veterans Day 2024

Haw Creek is currently working on a Veterans Day video project, and we would love to honor all of the veterans in our extended Husky family.

If your student has a connection to a veteran (parent, grandparent, sibling, aunt, uncle, etc.), please let us know by filling out THIS FORM. Submission Deadline is Nov. 4th.

Media Center Volunteers

We would LOVE to have you help in our media center this year! Our team is working to build lessons, read alouds, experiences for students, and more that could use the assistance of parents! Please CLICK HERE for our volunteer survey. We wanted to extend this a little longer in case we missed anyone who may be interested in joining this opportunity. We will be reaching out to those who sign up next week with more details and to host a training session. Thank you for getting connected at Haw Creek!

Love & Logic

Ever feel like parenting is just....hard? Wish you had some opportunities for some training or to collaborate on ways to support your kids without being overwhelmed? Parenting with Love & Logic is a well-known , highly-succcessful, research based process for raising children. This intuitive approach is a great way to not only improve the behavior or our children, but to improve the climate in our homes when we have so many demands- work, sports, extra-curricular activities, homework, school, siblings...everything else! This three class series is a terrific way to build a toolkit for the work of parenting - with dinner and childcare provided! Please reach out to Paige Ashkeboussi at The Place to resrve your spot - we hope you will take advantage of this great community offering!

Food Fight!

As reigning champions, The South Vertical Team is working hard to collect cans to beat West! Your donations count and Haw Creek is CURRENTLY in the lead for the South cluster - let's keep it going!

We will take your donations through October 10th and celebrate our success with a School Wide Pajama Party on Thursday, October 9th!

Counselor's Corner

Haw Creek's Counselors, Ms. Avila and Ms. Maida, share their monthly newsletter with families in an effort for you to have the tools you may need to continue the conversation from school to home!

Did you know that October is one of the most difficult months for students and teachers in the school year? Yep. The first 9 weeks grading period is due, so many events and exciting things happening at school, and the post-Fall Break blues can all make it hard to bring our best selves to class - regulated and ready to learn!

The good news is that our counseling lessons, with support and reinforcement from our classroom teachers, work to support self-regulation skills and remind students of coping strategies when the going gets tough! Try using these reminders and strategies at home - you may be surprised how helpful the Zones of Regulation can be after a long day at the ball field where dinner is not quite ready and everyone is exhausted!

Local School Council

Our Local School Council met on September 9th and the minutes and our agenda are available for public review. CLICK HERE to see our September 9th Minutes. As always, you are encouraged to join us for our meetings as members at large. I do ask that you RSVP so we can add you to our meeting and plan to secure an appropriate size space.