Learning to Speak so Your Friends Can Listen

First graders are practicing and modeling how to give and receive messages following active high-emotion times (such as recess or PE).  Children take turns giving feedback to individual friends or the whole group, first asking if the recipient(s) would like to hear what they have to say. Choosing to listen is an agreement to open your ears and your heart to what your friend has to say. Sometimes the message is a compliment and sometimes a request for something to change. Either way our young friends are learning to listen and to deliver messages clearly and kindly so that their friends can understand how their actions impact the group.

photo credit Paola Nogueras

Finding Joy in Diversity Work

Members of the PMFS staff took advantage of the school’s membership in the Greater Philadelphia Diversity Collaborative (GPDC) to take part in the 2022 Preschool-2nd Grade Educators Diversity Summit on Saturday. GPDC is committed to “addressing issues of diversity, equity, and social justice” in schools for young learners and the biennial Diversity Summit is an integral part of this work. Listening to keynote speaker Rosetta Lee set the tone for the day, reminding attenders that this work is hard and ongoing, and joyful too. PMFS staff will be bringing ideas back to school from engaging workshops, including “Deepening Identity and Inclusive Practices through Place-Based Learning”, “Teaching and Learning Equity in Early Elementary Classrooms” and “Building an Anti-racist Library for Your Elementary Classroom.”

Many thanks to teachers Leann Stover Nyce and Trish McBride for their leadership roles in the GPDC Advisory Council and for bringing this important focus to our staff and our students.

Visitors to Campus

It has been two long years since we’ve welcomed visitors to campus. During that time we have welcomed many new families, and thought now would be a good time to remind everyone, new and old, of our procedures for visiting campus. All visitors should stop by the Main Office to sign in and receive a visitor sticker before moving on to their campus destination. This lets us know who is on campus in case of emergencies, and signals to the rest of the community that you are an official visitor.

Reminder: Masking Policy Update

After careful discernment, the faculty and administration recognized that eight consecutive weeks of negative test results for all students and staff, and “low” COVID risk levels in Montgomery County inform the following adjustments to our health and safety protocols:

• Beginning Monday, April 18, masks will be optional for PMFS students, staff, families and visitors during indoor classes and activities.
• Masking will be required during all indoor assemblies or group gatherings (including Meeting for Worship), all-school events and community gatherings.
• On-campus community events will include current families, household members and extended families, as well as newly accepted PMFS families. Spring events will not be open to the general public outside of our PMFS community.  
• Masks will continue to be optional for PMFS students, staff families and visitors when outdoors on-campus.
• Community members who choose to wear masks indoors and/or outdoors will be supported to do so.

Weekly on-campus COVID testing will continue. We ask that families continue to monitor their children for symptoms and follow these protocols in the event of exposure to COVID:

• If an individual tests positive, they will stay home and isolate for 5 days.
• If there is exposure to COVID in school, the whole affected class will mask for 5 days at school.
• If a partially vaccinated or unvaccinated individual is exposed to COVID, that asymptomatic individual will mask to stay at school for 5 days.