Category Archives: Our community
Thank you PTA Officers!
Thank you to our lovely PTA Officers for 2016/2017. With the help of many volunteers they organized many fundraisers and parent-teacher support programs as well as Fall Festival and other fun events for our families. We especially want to recognize Mara Deutsch for her 4-year post (2 as PTA President and 2 as treasurer.) Latishia Futrell served for 4 years of PTA service, most recently as the VP of Communications, in which she helped with the print newsletter and also launched the newspaper club to involve kids in its maintenance. Thank you PTA officers for all of your hard work this year!
2016/2017 PTA Officers are given plants to say thanks at the last PTA meeting of the year. L-R: Latishia Futrell, Katie Donoway, Dina Niblock (incoming PTA president 2017/2018), Inessa Fannin and Mara Deutsch.
Disability & Inclusion Awareness Week
Forest View teachers and students participated in the second annual Together We Soar Disability and Inclusion Awareness Week March 20-24. Teachers read books about people of all abilities and how students can make everyone feel included in the classroom, on the playground and at lunch. There were also games created, poems written and other in-class activities that explained differences and similarities. Classes also created posters that were displayed all around school that show how much everyone is valued at Forest View.
The Accessible Icon Project of Durham came out and helped us update our handicapped parking icons. Note the active energy of the new symbol and make sure to ask your student why it needed to be changed!
Check out this video to learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H31puUbjBhgThank you also to Mr. Flippen and Ms Smith’s classes, Falcon Patrol, and Ms Johnson’s 4th grade class for decorating the parking spots and letting everyone know how important the spots are.
A Day in the Snow
The following is a story posted in Forest Views printed newsletter. The FV Newspaper Club helped produce this story with the guidance of coaches Eric Ferreri and Latishia Futrell. Eric assigned each of the kids an hour of the day to report on. The kids revealed amazing detail and humor in their everyday lives. The following is a real-time representation of what some of our 4th and 5th grade students were doing on this snow day, January 11.
Read the full English newsletter fvnews_feb_2017 or Spanish newsletter fvnews_feb_2017_spa from February 2017.
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On Wednesday, Jan. 11, as the remnants of a weekend snowstorm kept the Durham Public Schools closed for the third straight day, the Forest View Elementary School news club set out to document a snow day. Here is what they did, as reported by the students named in this story.
At 8 a.m. Claire Kimball was dreaming about sledding. She woke up at 8:05 and stayed there, trying to fall back asleep. She knew she didn’t have to go to school that day.
Soon she started reading over a chart she made of all the gods and demigods in the Percy Jackson book series, so she could keep everything straight while reading the books.
She got up at 8:15, put on her slippers and uncovered the bird cage revealing Disco, her green parakeet.
She took disco from his cage and put him on her shoulder.
Meanwhile, Annabelle Ferreri was waking up at her house and putting her hair up in a ponytail. She had breakfast – a cream cheese bagel – and got ready for a one-day camp at the studio where she practices Tae Kwon Do. She braced herself for a full day with her brother.
Katie Morgan woke up at 9:03 when her feline friend, Obi Wan Cat Nobie, came scratching at her door. She went downstairs, ate a banana and drank a peach iced tea. She then sat on the couch, opened her Kindle, set a timer for 30 minutes and read 39 Clues.
Mina Coers went to work with her mother on Wednesday and watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in her mother’s office at Duke University. Her ‘annoying’ brother, Miles, was at daycare and thus not annoying her.
At around noon, Landon Futrell and his sister, Lauryn, ate pizza poppers and apple slices for lunch. Lauryn watched a TV series called “Haunted Stories.” Meanwhile, Landon rested in bed playing a game called Pixel Gun 3D. Then he fell asleep because he wasn’t feeling well.
Tralai Taylor was at her grandparents’ house – with no WIFI! – for the whole day. She stresses that it wasn’t a particularly exciting day. In the early afternoon she ate lunch, washed dishes and created some artwork.
From 2-2:30 Louisa Weinard watched two Brain Games while her cat, Foxy, fell asleep in a bag. She, her mother and her little brother, Owen, went to a recycling center to dispose of some cardboard boxes.
Around that same time, Kendall Hancock and her sister, Raegan, set to work building a snowman with what snow was left on the ground. She ran into trouble when they realized there were no carrots in the house so she used two blueberries attached to a stick to create a very unconventional snowman nose.
Over at Yleana Rangel’s house, she and her friends Luella and Jared had a snowball fight. Yleana reports that the snowball fight got ‘a little out of hand’ and her friend Jared got hit in the eye with a snowball. But he wasn’t hurt.
Also in the afternoon, Aaron Sharkey went to Galaxy Fun Park in Raleigh with his cousin Isaac and his aunt and conquered his fear of Laser Tag. He said ‘okay, let’s do it. I tried it and it was fun.”
The park also had bumper cars, a ropes course and go carts.
By late afternoon, Trevor Blanton-Parke was baking two batches of chocolate chip cookies with pecans. He then got dressed for his musical theater class, where he learned the song “Painting the Roses Red” from Alice in Wonderland.
Meanwhile, Sofia Aballay was at home watching The Addams Family, during which time she took a snack break to eat chocolate ice cream with extra chocolate syrup. She did this while sitting on the couch wearing fuzzy socks and a robe.
Between 5-6 p.m, Palace Leonard had three friends over, Daziya, Destiny and Micah to watch TV and play games.
Over at Kaitlyn Simonson’s house, she and her father made dinner for the family. They made guacamole to serve with pita chips. The main course was sloppy joe and the dessert was cheesecake pie. Dad made the crust and Kaitlyn made the filling.
At 6 p.m, Peyton Yuan had dinner – elbow macaroni with butter and parmesan cheese. Two of her cousins were visiting. She watched a video on Youtube and did one of her Quick Write entries.
From 7-8, Naomi Coleman and her brother, Zahir, watched a movie called Alice Through the Looking Glass. She then built a toy car with her father, for her brother. It was shaped like a shark and was painted red and green and had menacing spikes attached to its front and back.
In the late afternoon, Durham Public Schools announced that schools would reopen Thursday on their normal schedules. And everywhere, parents breathed a huge sigh of relief.
WE VALUE OUR FAMILIES
DPS RESPONSE TO CONCERNS ABOUT IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
The Durham Public Schools Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution on Feb. 11, 2016, opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions that might jeopardize our students and schools, and opposing the deportation of Durham Public Schools students. That resolution remains in effect and is fully supported by our board.
We hear our community’s concern that ICE policy might change under a new federal administration. As a local education agency of the state of North Carolina, Durham Public Schools is required to follow the law. Any tightening of federal enforcement against our students, however, would be a violation of the values of inclusion and diversity that bind together Durham schools and the Durham community. Our students are our students, wherever they come from, and we will oppose any policy preventing them from attending, learning and growing in our schools.
Bert L’Homme, Superintendent
Where the world learns together
Forest View Elementary School, Where the World Learns Together, welcomed the newest members of our school community at a special event on Saturday, November 19. Led by the Forest View ESL Team, in partnership with Title 1, DPS ESL Resource Center, PTA, Book Harvest, Durham Literacy Center, DHS DINE Program, Girl Scout troops, and Forest View staff and family volunteers. We shared a meal and viewed a slideshow about school. Students selected books at our Book Harvest giveaway; shopped for toys, clothing and kitchen items at our “flea market”; and learned about community resources. It was am amazing day with 100% participation by invited families.
