Welcome,

The mission of Lou MacNarin School is visually captured in this design:

In the 21st Century, our students need specific knowledge and skills to be successful citizens of a global community. This requires us to build skills in literacy and math as well as social consciousness. As an elementary school, our academic learning focus is on progress monitoring in the following areas:

► helping our children learn to read so that they can read to learn.
► working diligently on our number sense.
► becoming better writers.

Our Bucket-Filling theme captures our vision of fostering a community of caring learners. Every child in our school learns how to fill someone’s bucket and what to do if he/she sees or hears someone dipping into someone else’s bucket. Our children have been working on helping with real world issues– bringing the world into the school and taking our school out into the community to find ways to make our world a better place. Our community has supported families and each other through local and international events that bind us as caring citizens of our community. For example, we worked to bring in food for the annual Fill the Bus campaign, raised funds for Jump Rope for Heart, donated clothing, furniture, and funds to support our local families in need, sang carols at a local nursing home, and worked to clean up our school yard. For the international community, we collected funds for the 2010 earthquake disaster in Haiti and the 2013 typhoon disaster in the Philippines.

Preparing our students for the 21st Century requires the support of the entire learning community. Daily our students are engaged in learning with the support of dedicated, skilled teachers and administrators. Students also spend their school day working with other conscientious members of our school community: bus drivers, custodians, administrative assistants, librarians, guidance counselors, teaching assistants, and behavior interventionists. In addition, we are fortunate to have dedicated volunteers and our PALS from the Irving Group who come into the school to help support the global growth of our students– social, emotional, and physical. Parents and guardians also play an essential role in helping the learning community to achieve its goals.

What can you do to help your child’s learning?

► Being well rested plays an important role in being prepared to learn.

► You and your child’s teacher are partners who by working together help your child to achieve success. Being engaged in your child’s education supports their efforts to be the best they can be.

► Focus on the positive. What are the good things that happened at school today? What did you learn?

► Help your child to set goals. What are you working on? How will you achieve these goals? What can I do to help?

► Communicate with your child’s teacher when your child has made accomplishments or if you have concerns.

By working together, our students will find school meaningful and enjoyable– a rich experience that allows them to experience a variety of learning opportunities in and out of the classroom.

Our school is working to ensure that our children are empowered to face the challenges of 21st Century living. They are learning to use their reading, writing, and math skills to solve problems with compassion and to connect with the larger global community. I am honored to be part of this process and want to thank everyone for their contributions to our community.

Respectfully,

Gordie Kline