This year we are excited to launch and celebrate Arab American Heritage Month. Thank you to Ms. Armouti for her efforts to help jump start this new tradition at our school by providing us with great information and resources. By being a proud Arab American herself, Ms. Armouti lead the way this month as we celebrated. We continued to direct our efforts to our own staff in the building! Since we can not celebrate with our students in person, we decided to get to know and honor our staff members by highlighting their own stories and posting them on social media for our school community to enjoy. We just wanted to show our appreciation to our Arab American staff for all that they have contributed towards the success of HSA McKinley Park! We do miss our annual celebrations with our students and can't wait to launch this new tradition once it's safe to do so.

Please check out this video that Ms. Bearden made to showcase Arabic Music in celebration of Arab American Month:

HSA McKinley Park's Outreach Department is honored and excited to share this month's Community Connections Podcast with our school community. In celebration of Arab American Heritage Month we found this to be a great opportunity to get to know more about the Arab American Institute and reached out to Maya Berry, the Executive Director. In 1996, she established AAI’s first government relations department, which she led for five years before becoming a legislative director for U.S. House of Representatives Minority Whip David Bonior, where she managed the congressman’s legislative strategy and developed policies on international relations, human rights, immigration, civil rights and liberties, and trade. With a deep knowledge of public policymaking, Maya has helped expand AAI’s work on combatting hate crime, protecting the rights of securitized communities, and strengthening the Arab American democracy. She began her career in public service working for ACCESS, the nation's oldest and largest Arab American human services non-profit and has then returned to continue her service with the Arab American Institute.

If you would like to know more about the Arab American Institute please head to their website at: https://www.aaiusa.org/

We were excited to celebrate Autism Acceptance Month this year with our very own school community. A special thank you to Mr. Patrick Hunter who has helped us understand the importance of this month of acceptance. He has helped us design and promote this month with some really great resources and information. In 1970, the Autism Society launched an ongoing nationwide effort to promote autism awareness and assure that all affected by autism are able to achieve the highest quality of life possible. In 1972, the Autism Society launched the first annual National Autistic Children’s week, which evolved into Autism Acceptance Month (AAM). This April, we continue our efforts to spread awareness, promote acceptance, and ignite change. The Autism Society of America, the nation’s oldest leading grassroots autism organization, is proud to celebrate Autism Acceptance Month this April 2021 with its “Celebrate Differences” campaign. Designed to build a better awareness of the signs, symptoms, and realities of autism, #CelebrateDifferences focuses on providing information and resources for communities to be more aware of autism, promote acceptance, and be more inclusive in everyday life. Here at HSA McKinley we are in full support of this month of Autism Acceptance! We Hosted a dress down day on Thursday, April 22nd to show our support! Check out a few of our participating students and staff in the picture above!

A special shout out to our elementary and middle school teams for creating different ways to motivate and encourage our students this last quarter of school. It has been a difficult year for our students to adapt to remote learning and we are in full support to help our students make it to the end of this challenging year. Our students have the daily opportunity to earn points for an end-of-the-quarter raffle! What a better way to enter summer vacation with a few new books and gift cards.

What better way to celebrate "Earth Week" than to host an interview with our Green Committee Chair, Maribell Saldana. We were so excited to sit down and chat virtually with Maribell to shine some light on all of the great "GREEN" initiatives she has worked on for our school for the past 7 years. We also wanted to take this time to thank her for all of her efforts, she has been a one-woman team for the past years and we are hoping to move forward by forming a larger green committee full of parent and student volunteers. Click on the link below to hear more about our Green Committee and Maribell Saladana:

Ms. Kuran at kuran@hsamckinley.org or

Mr. Yildiz at yildiz@hsamckinley.org 

This month's staff spotlight shines on Ms. Bayan Ghanem!

During this celebratory Arab American Heritage month, we wanted to shine the staff spotlight on Ms. Bayan Ghanem. Ms. Ghanem was born and raised in Chicago, IL, but her family roots are in Tul Karem, Palestine, and Irbid, Jordan! Before she started teaching at HSA, she was working at a private, all-girls school in Bridgeview, IL. She then joined our HSA family in 2018. She teaches U.S. History, Digital Photography, and Entrepreneurship to our high school students.

She didn’t always know she wanted to become a teacher. She later soon realized that she genuinely does love working with the youth, guiding them through life and that she can do so as an educator. She has had the privilege of giving them the chance to learn how to become active and productive citizens in this life to make their communities better on a local, national, and global level.

Other than teaching, she is currently getting her master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. As much as she loves teaching and appreciates the opportunities that she has as an educator, she believes that there is a much greater need for advocacy for mental health. Teaching has allowed Ms. Ghanem to provide a healthy environment for her students and has made her realize that she could take this to an entirely different and higher level, specifically by working in the mental health field.

We appreciate all of the great work Ms. Ghanem has done for our school.

Thank you Ms. Ghanem for inspiring our students!