Dr. Danita Ishibashi

2099 Pennington Road

Ewing, New Jersey 08618

(609) 538-9800 Ext. 1402

dishibashi@ewingboe.org

Welcome to the 2022-2023 school year!

We are excited to welcome your children back to school. Let me take this opportunity to share with you exciting news for this school year.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL)/Mental Health Support

The district has expanded its SEL (Social Emotional Learning) and Mental Health support over the past few years to develop a more structured tiered support system. Classroom counseling lessons are provided at all grade levels, as well as student and parent check-ins. The next level of support includes small group counseling focused on grief, anger management, student success, conflict resolution, substance abuse support, social skills and crisis follow up. Based on student needs, behavioral intervention plans, referral to alternative programs (OBA or Endeavor) and when necessary, students may be referred to outside agencies for specialized support.

New SEL and mental health resources are being implemented by our counselors to support their classroom instructional and small group sessions. We will continue family support with the evening parent presentations and newsletters which will share additional resources with our Ewing families.

Instructional Technology Devices

An outcome of the pandemic was the district implementing a one-to-one device initiative. Beginning with the 2022-2023 school year, all Kindergarten through twelfth (12^th) will be issued a district Chromebook in September 2022, providing parents have completed the Student User Device Agreement. While all students will have access to a digital device to promote learning, instructional technology is not a panacea. Core instruction should be rooted in high quality instructional pedagogy and engagement. As such, many courses have implemented both hard copy plus digital resources, e-books, and digital textbooks to support instruction.

To support our technology initiative, promote learning and address social emotional learning concerns, the district has implemented the following changes:

• All K-12 classrooms are now outfitted with Chromebook charging stations. This will provide each classroom with a secure location to store and charge devices.
• Elementary Schools will implement Tech Free Friday’s - all chrome books will remain in classroom charging stations. (Except when concerned with inclement weather or another emergency situation)
• Kindergarten – 1^st grade student chrome books will remain in the classroom daily (except when concerned with inclement weather or another emergency situation)
• Grade 2-5 students will take home chrome books 2-3 times per week as communicated by the classroom teacher (except when concerned with inclement weather or another emergency situation)
• We will encourage our elementary students to enjoy reading a book or playing a math game on Friday.
• Grade 6-12 students will have access to take home chrome books daily.

New Courses

This school year, the elementary school “Computer” special has been renamed to Computational and Design Thinking, reflective of instructional alignment to the revised Technology standards. Students will participate in coding, digital and media literacy as well as engineering design learning experiences at the elementary level. All 6^th grade students will attend a Digital and Media Literacy elective this fall. Digital and Media Literacy will be infused into all grade 7-12 technology courses.

Through the Opportunity Meets Innovation Challenge (OMIC) grant in collaboration with The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), Ewing High School students have a new, innovative dual enrollment opportunity. Students who meet the dual enrollment criteria can participate in Intro to Digital Media (Fall 2022) or a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Creative Design (Spring 2023) course held at Ewing High School but co-taught by a TCNJ professor and an Ewing High School (EHS) teacher. Students enrolled in these courses will receive a transcript from TCNJ acknowledging the college credits earned through the course. This is a fantastic opportunity for students to engage in an in-person, college-level course within the walls of EHS.

Parent Engagement

We are looking forward to the release of parent involvement opportunities around technology and social emotional learning. Our website will post parent resources to support student learning. The opportunities will include expanded digital resources such as instructional videos, pdf instruction, webinars, and workshops to share information about the instructional technology students are accessing and social emotional skills.

We wish all families an exciting and engaging 2022-2023 school year!

Dr. Danita Ishibashi

Assistant Superintendent.