Four JHS Students Receive Early Acceptance In Person from Georgia Tech
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While 6400 applicants throughout the state waited eagerly to learn if they had received early action acceptance from the Georgia Institute of Technology admissions office at 4 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 9, four JHS students already knew that indeed they had.
Georgia Tech’s Assistant Admissions Director Christina Scott traveled to Jefferson to surprise the students at 9 a.m. that day with their early action letters.
Family, teachers, staff and friends were waiting for them in the media center when they were “called to the office.” When they arrived, it was an emotional scene, including smiles and tears of joy and gratitude, while the students heard “you have been admitted.”
Seniors Blake Alford, Nathan Gaddy, David Heard and Alexandria Lassister were four of about 20 students statewide to receive the news of their acceptance prior to the 4 p.m. release.
“We wanted to surprise some special students,” says Scott. “We have limited seats and have to say ‘no’ more than ‘yes.’ It’s very rewarding to say ‘yes’ in person to these students. They [students] were selected based on the caliber of the individual student and of the school. This is a culminating event of all the hard work these students put in the last 12 years."
She says she looks forward to having these students on campus. “These are leaders, thinkers and innovators who will continue to make Georgia Tech a great institution for society!”
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JES Named Title I Distinguished School
JES has been named a Title 1 Distinguished School by the Georgia Department of Education, a designation that recognizes the highest-performing Title 1 schools in the state.
"This honor recognizes the hard work of teachers and school staff to provide an excellent education to each and every student in their care," says State School Superintendent Richard Woods. "I commend the school leaders, teachers, parents and each school as they overcome barriers, meet challenges and open up opportunities for their students."
The Distinguished Schools designation recognizes Title I schools that are ranked in the top 5% based on combined ELA and Math Achievement Rate scores from FY 2021 College and Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI) Content Mastery data.
This is a tremendous honor," says Principal Chrissy Joiner. "We're proud of what the school has been able to achieve."
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JCS Spelling Bee
8th Grader Crowned District Winner
After 22 rounds, the Jefferson City Schools Annual Spelling Bee concluded earlier this month with Sam Arata, an eighth grader at JMS, crowned the winner. Arata will move on to the next round in February and represent the school system for Region 3. Connor Brewer, also an eighth grader, placed second and will serve as an alternate.
The field of 25 spellers from third through eighth grade competed for the title as they exhibited proficiency in the art of spelling. All students made it through the first round while only two remained at the beginning of the fifteenth round.
The Spelling Bee was coordinated and facilitated by JA Assistant Principal Samantha Barrett with this being her third consecutive year in the role.
“It’s such a great honor for each of these students to be here and represent their school, no matter the outcome,” she says. “I’m incredibly proud of and overjoyed for them.”
The JCS Spelling Bee was governed by Georgia Association of Educator official procedures, rules and regulations. The following students participated in the event:
- Fourth Grade – Brooke Boswell, Oliver Dyer, Katie Landrum, Wesley Lighty, Levi Miller
- Fifth Grade – Nate Bridges, Kaylin Hall, Avery Karoly, Maddie Lee, Jackson Orstadius
- Sixth Grade – Grayson Abernathy, JoElla DeFee, Brandon Gonzalez, Gia Littlepage, Kannon Rodriguez
- Seventh Grade – Rylee Brown, Vincent Grantham, Olivia Grimsley, Allison Hart, Dylan Knives
- Eighth Grade – Sam Arata, Connor Brewer, Brick Booth, Katie Grace Metzger, Libbi Tippins
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Your Child Belongs Here!
We love having your children at school with us! However, we also know this is the time of year when winter weather and illnesses, such as colds, viruses, cases of flu and fevers, take a toll on school attendance.
These absences, even if excused, break the routine of daily attendance that contributes to your child feeling connected and engaged in learning. We don't want them to miss out!
Please consider these steps to keep your child healthy and in school this winter:
- Encourage children to wash their hands before and after eating and after using the restroom.
- Avoid sharing cups and utensils with other individuals.
- Encourage healthy habits such as getting enough sleep, eating healthy foods, drinking fluids and getting exercise.
- Dress your children for the cold weather. If you need help with winter clothing, reach out to your child’s school.
- If your child gets sick, talk to your child’s medical provider or the school nurse for advice.
- Stomach pain and headaches can be signs of anxiety and may not be reasons for keeping a child home. If you feel that anxiety or stress is playing a role, talk to your child’s teacher, a school nurse, a school counselor or your medical provider about how best to support your child.
- Develop backup plans for getting your children to school.
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Pre-K Reads 3000 Books!
Prior to the December holiday, our Pre-K students were challenged to read 2023 books over the break to welcome the new year. Eagerly, they took that reading challenge home to their parents/guardians and handily surpassed their goal!
“One book per day adds up to big gains in learning for Pre-K,” says Annette Beckwith, Director of Early Learning. “We sent home books, a sheet to track reading and planned a great incentive!”
To the delight of the students, teachers and administrators kissed a pig to celebrate the students exceeding their goal!
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Read one book per day to your young child and watch their love of reading and vocabulary soar!
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Winter Sports Highlight:
Swimming
Young Team Finds Success
The JMS and JHS swim team program is fairly young compared to other sports at Jefferson, having only competed for about 10 years, but that has not stopped it from achieving great things!
"Getting a school team started was hard at first without access to an indoor pool in Jefferson," says Coach Tess Nunnally. "However, we had no choice with all the talent we have in our community!"
In the early days, and still today, JCS swimmers have gotten their start with the local recreation swim team, Jefferson Sea Dragons. Nunnally has coached those teams for 12 years, sparking a love for the sport in young athletes. Currently, all swimmers who have been part of our school team started as a Sea Dragon.
Many JCS team members swim all year and gain additional experience by joining club teams in surrounding counties to maintain a competitive edge. Swimmers who are not involved in clubs work out four nights a week at the YWCO in Athens at school team practices.
"Our program in its short tenure has produced a tremendous amount of talent," says Nunnally. JHS has had two swimmers sign with D1 schools and were state high school swimming champions (Camille Porter at Auburn and Jackson Harvin at Georgia Tech). Eight others also committed to swim at the next level: Will Guzman, Mackenzie Klinck, Haley Bartoletta, Fallon Bell, Macie Patridge, Brandon Hailey and Jacob Musgrove.
"This just shows the tremendous talent we have had in our past, she says. "Our current team is no different."
Our current boys' team is led by Kyle Davis (So), Justin Duke (So), Cayden Sheridan (Fr), Caleb Rudisill (Jr) and Decator Dunagan (Sr). Kate Dunagan (So), Ximena Young (So), Aubree-Clare Alweine-Flores (So), and Ansley Nunnally (Fr) makeup our girls' team.
Nunnally says that although the team is young, they have great potential to podium (among the top three) in individual events and relays in the upcoming state swim meet in February at Georgia Tech. Currently, the team has qualified all relays possible and has achieved around 30 individual state cuts!
The high school combined team has won each competition and our middle school swimmers have only had one combined loss.
"Our future looks very bright," she says.
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Counselors' Corner
Pass Along the Habit of Hobbies to Your Children!
By Holly McShane, School Counseling Coordinator
January is National Hobby Month and what better way to start a new year than spending time pursuing activities that spark our interest, improve our mental health and develop skills and knowledge?
Oftentimes, as adults, we avoid setting aside time to engage in activities that feed our souls. This may be due to lack of time, feeling guilty about spending time in activities that don't “produce” anything or thinking we don’t deserve to be indulgent in activities that just make us happy.
Here are three great reasons to pass along the habit of hobbies to our children:
- Time and again, medical research indicates healthy hobbies have major health benefits, such as lowering blood pressure, reducing stress, improving cognitive functioning and developing better relationship skills.
- Offering opportunities for children to engage in pursuits that bring them happiness and confidence is extremely valuable to their social and emotional development.
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Hobbies also can be a huge factor in how children and young adults develop an awareness of potential career opportunities.
All students in grades 6-12 have the opportunity at JCS to take YouScience, an assessment that reflects a student's aptitudes (natural talents) and interests. Aptitude refers to a set of skills the student has a natural tendency to be good at and tends to be more fixed, while a student’s interest is very flexible and changes as they increase their experiences. Based on skills the student has demonstrated within the assessment, YouScience provides information on current careers associated with those skills. This is extremely helpful in guiding discussions with students about career planning.
This is why hobbies are vital for children of all ages to pursue. The more experiences they accumulate doing activities they love, the more skills they accumulate while their internal motivation to learn increases.
Hobbies can encourage them to get out of their comfort zone and try new things as well since hobbies don’t always have the same expectation of “producing” something other than just participating in an activity because it is enjoyable.
It's important to note that extracurricular activities and hobbies are not the same things. Extracurricular activities are usually organized and have goals and a conclusion, such as an athletic season, a school club or music lessons.
Hobbies are purely meant to be pursued for the love of it and the happiness attained participating in them, such as listening to music, woodworking, hiking, etc. Some families research hobbies that can be done together with each member gaining a sense of enjoyment in their own way from the shared activity.
When our children observe us making time to enjoy our healthy hobbies, we are teaching them the value of taking care of oneself and that learning new things spans a lifetime.
It is important that children select their own hobbies, but providing them with ideas and opportunities is helpful to get them started. Simple google searches and researching community events can be a great place to start.
At JCS, our school counselors provide instruction to students in three primary areas: academics, career readiness and social-emotional development. Learning occurs via classroom guidance, small group instruction and individual advisement
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JMS Drama Dragons Present Shrek Jr.
What a show! The JMS Drama Dragons masterfully presented Shrek The Musical, Jr. this past weekend at the JHS PAC. The incredibly talented cast worked diligently for over four months with Lynn Mulvey, director, and Christy Walker, music director. The students learned music, choreography and blocking techniques during their rehearsals after school (three per week!).
“It has been amazing to see all the students' hard work come together,” says Walker. “Putting together a musical can be a huge undertaking, but seeing the results of their time and effort makes it all worth it.”
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Pre-K Registration for JES Center for Early Learning Opens Feb. 1
The quality of a child’s experiences in the first few years of life helps shape how their brain develops. Did you know 90 percent of human brain growth occurs before age five, which has a lasting impact on a child’s ability to learn and succeed in school and life? By enrolling your child in preschool, you are supporting that growth!
We offer fun and hands-on opportunities for learning that build creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
“Our goal is to make preschool an exciting place for students to learn, explore, grow and create memories that will last a lifetime, says Annette Beckwith, Director of Early Learning. “We hope you consider the Center for Early Learning for your child and visit us at Open House!”
When registration opens on Feb. 1, you can enroll online here after selecting the red "Student Registration" button under the slideshow.
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CTAE Student of the Month | |
NEW!
We are pleased to unveil a new section of our newsletter focused on providing helpful information to our parents/guardians! This new feature was created as a result of feedback from our families. We love partnering with you, and this is just one more way to provide useful information, news, tips and strategies as we both work to ensure your student's success. We hope you find the section useful!
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Sitting Down at the Dinner Table with Our Children Benefits Psychological and Physical Health
Over three decades of research have shown that regular family meals offer a wide variety of physical, social-emotional and academic benefits. While some of these benefits are also gained with other activities, eating together is the only single activity that is known to provide all of them at the same time. The Institute of Child Psychology recommends combining food, fun and conversation at mealtimes because those three ingredients are the recipe for a warm, positive family dinner and just the type of environment that makes these scientifically-proven benefits possible:
- Better academic performance.
- Higher self-esteem.
- Greater sense of resilience.
- Lower risk of substance abuse, depression, eating disorders, obesity.
- Better cardiovascular health in teens.
- More comprehensive vocabulary in preschoolers.
- Healthier eating patterns in young adults.
Source: Institute of Child Psychology
Did You Know?
Children pick up on our emotional tone milliseconds before they process the words that we say. It's our emotional tone as parents that conveys cues of safety or threat to children, no matter what you are talking to them about! This subconscious detection, known as neuroception, determines how we react to our environment, including other people. One of the most important features of human emotional communication is vocal tone. All parents/caregivers experience stress. When feeling upset or dysregulated, the most self-compassionate thing to do is to take a moment to feel better – to reset – before interacting. Even micro-moments of awareness and compassion help.
Source: Brain-Body Parenting, Dr. Mona Delahooke
A Quick Note for Your Teen/Tween
Dear Teens,
You are not defined by the number of likes or comments on social media. You are more than that. Don't change to fit the mold of what others want to see. You are perfect, just as you are!
Source: Hang in There Mama, Ali Flynn
Protecting Children from Cyber Criminals Targeting Personal Data
Children are highly susceptible to online schemes that target their personal information and possible answers to security questions. Social quizzes are popular "games" for children to play with friends and appear seemingly innocent at first glance. These quizzes involve answering questions such as "what's your favorite color" or "what's your pet's first name" and even "what was your first job/car." However, answering these quiz prompts leads many people, not just students, to reveal answers they provide for password recovery and can give others access to their accounts. Although fun, these quizzes provide a lucrative opportunity for these criminals to obtain personal identification information that will not change over time and may remain on internet servers indefinitely.
One way to mitigate this risk is for you (parents/guardians) to consider freezing your child's credit with all three major credit bureaus so that their personal identification information (PII) is less exploitable to cyber-criminals. Once children are old enough to monitor and utilize their credit, the accounts can be unfrozen.
While there is no known, current threat to students in our school system, recent data trends show many systems and students in Georgia are being targeted at an elevated rate compared to other agencies. Student PII is valuable and lucrative to cyber-criminals because juveniles are less likely to notice anything is amiss until they are old enough to access their social security number (i.e. employment, obtaining a passport, purchasing a home).
Protecting your child's PII is vital to ensure the safety, privacy and security of their data, helping to prevent identity theft and fraud which could lead to financial loss and damage to their reputation. Protecting PII is also important for the security of our schools. If a student's PII is compromised, it could be used to gain unauthorized access to JCS systems or to carry out other types of cyberattacks. This can have serious consequences for our schools, including financial loss and disruption of services.
Aside from speaking to your children about the importance of maintaining online security and freezing their accounts, here are a few additional steps you can take to keep their PII secured.
- Implement Multifactor Authentication (MFA) on any accounts, especially banking.
- Monitor your child's health insurance claim information.
- Secure and shred physical documents with PII on them.
Source: Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency Cyber Safety Bulletin/Jan. 2023
Trend Alert: "Innocent" Fan-Created Videos Could Negatively Impact Your Young Child
Students aged five to eight have shared unsettling stories at school about watching videos featuring characters from popular video games in scary and violent scenarios. The videos are easily accessed through platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Roblox and could have a negative impact on your child’s well-being. Some videos use child-like wording which allows them to slip through parental controls. The specific characters students talk about include these characters: Huggy Wuggy, Poppy Playtime, Mommy Long Legs, Kissy Missy, Pennywise, Jeff the Killer and Give Nights at Freddy’s.
JES shared this trend with their parents last month. (See memo.) Here are some of the ways students have been impacted by the trend:
- Students report they are watching the videos mentioned.
- Students are writing and drawing about these characters and scenarios.
- Students fall asleep in class, reporting they are having nightmares.
- Students re-enact character scenarios at recess/after school.
- Students have a distorted reality of death and coming back to life.
Source: Safer in Schools/JES Internet Safety Memo
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Looking for Sports Schedules?
Support your Dragons! You can find schedules for basketball, wrestling, dance, bass fishing and swim/dive at the link below. Come out and cheer for our outstanding athletes!
Winter Sports Schedules
Spring sports are ramping up and will begin soon! Find schedules here.
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ELL Family Engagement Night | |
Save the Date for our ELL Family Engagement Night on February 2 at Jefferson Academy. Doors open at 6 pm. We look forward to seeing you then! | |
Reserve la fecha para nuestra Noche de participación familiar de ELL el 2 de Febrero en Jefferson Academy. Las puertas se abren a las 6 pm. ¡Te esperamos! | |
Wrestling Team Crowned State Duals Champs, Capturing 20th State Duals Title and 43rd State Title | |
JHS Miracle Club Raises $11,640 at First-Ever Dance Marathon to Benefit CHOA | |  |
FFA Officers Receive $10,000 Donation from Akins Ford for Ag Barn Renovations | | |
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Basketball Teams Travel to Florida to Compete Against Top Talent at the Innisfree Christmas Tournament
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HOSA Receives $500 Grant from Piedmont Regional to Provide Homeless Community with Socks | | |
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Stay Connected with JCS
Dragon Digest newsletters are emailed each month through Infinite Campus to the parent email designated during registration. Have other family members who would like to receive this newsletter? Subscribe below.
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Upcoming Events
- Feb. 9: BOE meeting at 4 p.m.
- Feb. 20-21: Schools Closed (Presidents' Day)
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