Dear Oyster-Adams Families,

It was a pleasure to see so many of our Tigers out there sledding and trudging through the snow this morning in Rock Creek! It felt like Sunday morning recess time for both kids and adults. In classic OA creativity, we had everything from cardboard boxes to inflatables out there. Thank you for that moment of connection and joy--it was much needed right now.

I know that many of us are following the news with continued anxiety as events continously escalate in Minneapolis, Venezuela, and across the world. Especially with keeping our children home tomorrow (as a reminder, DCPS staff have a PD + Records Day), I want to share some resources coming from Minnesota about talking to our children about violence in the media. As they prefaced, "children may not have the words to describe what they are feeling, but they often absorb more than we realize..." Please reach out to any member of our Student Growth Teams (SGT) if your child may need more support upon returning to school--particularly if your family has been impacted directly by these injustices.

As I mentioned in my letter last week, in response to our global turmoil, at OA we are doubling down on the socio-emotional commitments required for a healthy democracy: empathy and perspective taking, harm repair and responsibility, listening deeply, and peer to peer solidarity. We do this in both classroom rituals and in content selection--exploring questions like: "How do we balance freedom and security?" (8th Grade's Unit Essential Question) and "How do citizens demonstrate leadership in their community?" (3rd Grade). We read texts celebrating civic leadership and resistance in Black and Latino communities, and expand our global horizons reading about role models like Malala Yousafzai--all while celebrating the little acts of ethical leadership among students in our own classrooms.

These pivotal bilingual experiences support our young graduates in High School, and make the world their home--and future responsibility to heal. We were so excited to welcome back our alums: Haniyah Syed (Walls), Leila Sheldon (Jackson-Reed), Nicolai Núñez (MacArthur), Satya O’Malley (Banneker), Lilu Artiga-Oliver (Duke Ellington) as they spoke to our Middle School families last week on their transitions to High School, what they carried forward from OA, and what they recommended we consider.Thank you to our panelists and Sweta Shah, Alice Dei-Sheldon, Ms. Alvarado, and AP Morad for bringing our alums together to support our graduating students!

Finally, we have lots of brilliant bilingual students to celebrate together! We want to congratulate our OA English Spelling Bee winners at Adams. Bravo on the win, but most importantly on the support and care all contestants showed for each other during the competition. The next phase of the Bee will be at THEARC in SE DC on Feb 11th!

• Jumana Mclennan, 5th grade (1st place tie)
• Alexander Ferris-Artiga, 8th grade (1st place tie)
• Maeve Newman, 7th grade (2nd place)

and congrats to Annika Pinol on her DC Metro Scholastic Writing Gold Prize for her poem the “Yellow Painted Door” and honorable mention for her poem “the Odds against Us." We'll be rooting for you in the juried National Competition!

Finally, don't forget the annual OCC Black History Month Celebration coming on February 20th at Oyster! Check out the link in the Parent Leadership section.

Un abrazo fuerte,

Carolina Brito, Directora