Dear Parents,

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving break with your families. As we move
into the holiday season, I wanted to remind families of several events coming
up at Ryan Math and Science Focus School.

We have both a spelling bee and a geography bee for students in December.
Both of these events are preliminary and are followed by final competitions
after the New Year. If your child enjoys these types of opportunities, please
encourage them to participate.

It is not too early to be thinking about the Science Fair. This school year,
the actual fair will be held on February 2nd. We would love to see increased
participation this year as part of our new “Science Expo” program. Janet
Stellema will be sending home information and details about the exciting
new developments in this arena.

Many of our community partners will be helping us out at the fair. We are
pleased to continue our talks with Exempla Hospital as we work to define
our partnership. The University of Colorado has been working with us in
both the applied math and science areas with both the TEAMS program that
provides a weekly engineering fellow in all of our intermediate classes each
week and the MESA program which is working with 4th and 5th grade girls
to enhance critical thinking and engineering applications. We just spent
some time with the CU math department in conjunction with a conference
that brought renowned math educators from the Netherlands. It was
great to sit down and learn from this esteemed group of teachers. Please
check out our evolving web-site at ryanelementary.org for the latest on our
school.

Lastly, I wanted to thank our families for all of the ongoing and heartfelt
support for our students and staff. During the Thanksgiving break, I was
reflecting on how thankful I am to be working with such a dedicated and
skilled staff, and how fun it is to work with our involved parents and amazing
students. Enjoy your families over the vacation break.

Jim Armitage, Principal