Hello Pathways Families!
I hope this letter finds you and your family well, and that each of you have been able to have a relaxing, fun, and enjoyable summer with family, friends, and loved ones. There have been great things happening at Pathways throughout the summer I’d like to share with you, along with some updates regarding the 2023-24 school year.
We were very fortunate to continue our incoming 9th Grade PREPS Program. The first portion of the 9th Grade PREPS welcomed students in late June. Students engaged in team and community building and learning all about what Pathways has to offer. This included a panel and help throughout the week from our upperclassman, who did an excellent job of leading and representing Pathways. We also will have a second portion of 9th Grade PREPS on August 21st and 22nd. This will be followed by our New Student and Family Orientation. The flyer and sign-up form can be found here: Pathways August New 9th Grade PREPS Flyer and Pathways August New 9th Grade PREPS Sign-Up Form
We had an excellent turn out of students in June and hope to have the same in August. We would like to thank Ms. Theriault, Mr. Hayes, Ms. Ciccio, Ms. Burstein, Ms. Chamberland, and Ms. Pokorny for their hard work in making these sessions a reality and for supporting our students!!!
In addition, this summer we held our Second Chance Program here at Pathways. This was designed to be an 8-day program to help support students who were on the cusp of passing but were not able to for a variety of reasons. The program offered opportunities for students to get the help they need to display their learning and recover their credit. We would like to thank Ms. Generis, Ms. Lessard, Ms. Langley, Mr. Mumford, and Mr. Stroop for their hard work, flexibility, and support of our students to help them to be successful during this program.
As a Distinguished NAF school, we continuously embrace our NAF Model to enhance our curriculum and course offerings, and to build the skills and knowledge to prepare our students for college and their career. The biggest part of our model entails our work-based learning opportunities. We are very thankful and fortunate to have our amazing business partners to allow us to have had another successful internship program this year. The students did an outstanding job at different businesses and corporations. We had many students who engaged and succeeded in high level and high-quality paid internships!!! A big thank you to Yvette Morales our ReadyCT Program Manager who has done a great job, and to our Advisory Board, and all of our partner companies for helping our students to engage in these paid internships that are the true foundation of our NAF Model, in which students can apply what they are learning in school to the real world.
We are very thankful and appreciative to all of our staff for taking the time during the summer to engage our students and themselves in these amazing programs and opportunities!
Communication:
Our main platform for communication will be Parent Square. You will receive important information regarding the school, events, updates, and more through this platform. We have set a year-long calendar of events and programs and we will be embedding them in the Parentsquare platform. We will also have these dates on our website and you will receive Parent Square reminders regularly. Families can always get information about the school on our website as well as through our social media platforms, or if you need help getting signed up for Parent Square please call us at the school. Below is the link to our new school website:
https://www.hartfordschools.org/o/pathways
Parent Engagement:
We are a true family here at Pathways and we love engaging our families as part of the school community. In addition to our quarterly Parent-Teacher Conferences, we will have dozens of fun events, programs, and workshops for our families. Dates will be sent through Parentsquare. We also have an amazing PTO and SGC. A big thank you to Ms. Monika Snow our PTO President, and Ms. Madelene Cameron our SGC Chair, along with our parent members for their hard work and dedication to our school community. If you are interested in joining either of these organizations, please contact us at the school and our Family and Community Support Provider Ms. Zoraida Maldonado at maldz001@hartfordschools.org
Schedules:
Students and families will have access to their schedules through Powerschool. If you have any questions about accessing Powerschool please contact us at the school. The schedule will go “Live” the week before school starts. I will send out an email when they are accessible. The reason for this is to ensure to the best of our ability that schedules are updated to address any staffing changes, results from summer school, or any shifts necessary for students to receive the classes they need. Our school counselors will be here the week before school starts and will be fine tuning schedules to match student’s needs. Feel free to reach out to the school if you have questions. The login for Parent Portal for Powerschool is below, if you need any helping getting logged in please contact us at the school:
Powerschool Parent/Student Login
Here is the link to the Weekly Bell Schedule for students: Pathways Weekly Bell Schedule: 2023-24 It is the same schedule as last year. In the schedule you will see our POWER2 Block and Panther Block. POWER2 Block will occur every Tuesday and all students will have access to academic support in all areas of need. In addition to subject and content specific help, students will also have PSAT/SAT support. Our Panther Block will be held again every Friday. This will allow ALL students the opportunity to engage in Clubs and Enrichment during the school day. Every staff member will take part in leading a club so students will have a wide variety of options. Students will get the opportunity to take a survey to share their interests and the clubs they want during the first week of school. After that, students will have access to view all of the club opportunities and select the clubs that they are most interested in. Students can switch clubs each week if they want to experience multiple opportunities throughout the year.
Uniforms:
School uniforms will be in place this year. It will consist of the light blue/white short or long sleeve polo, as well as the navy blue fleece, black/khaki/blue pants OR on any day students can wear a t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, or sweatshirt that has the Pathways Logo/Name on it as part of our School Spirit focus! Students can not have open-toed shoes due to safety. Important: we have embedded dress down days on Fridays and half days that will be a combination of fundraisers for different grades, clubs, and teams, as well as free dress down days. Students are expected to dress appropriately on dress down days, including no tank tops, no inappropriate messaging or symbols,, no headgear of any kind, or pajama pants (*except for designated “PJ Days”) . You will also get a link for our School Spirit Fundraiser when the site opens to allow students and families to order a wide variety of Pathways Gear that students will be able to wear. The details and information will be sent as soon as the site opens. Again, students can wear their Pathways Gear on any day or they can wear the light blue/white polos or the navy blue fleece. Students will also receive Pathways Gear during the first week of school as part of our Welcome Back to Pathways! We know there is some delay with some orders, if you have any questions, please let us know how we can support. Uniform flyer can be found in the link below with all necessary information:
Transportation:
Transportation is handled through the CREC Transportation and East Hartford Transportation offices. We anticipate that they will send notifications and information out the week before school starts.
ATTENDANCE: We need you here, we want you here!!! Attendance will be a major focus this year to ensure students are in school and engaged at a high level. It is essential that our students are here each and every day to allow us the opportunity to teach them, help them, and support them in every way possible. We will have regular recognitions, awards, and competitions to acknowledge great attendance and the importance of being with us here at Pathways each and every day.
POWER2 REMINDER: Who we are…Just prior to Covid, as part of our goal to improve Pathways, I met with the Public Service and Leadership students. During that meeting, the class was presented with our School Improvement Plan, which includes all of the goals for the school to improve achievement. The class engaged in a “Noticings and Wonderings” activity to analyze the school’s goals and plan for improvement, what resonated with them, and to ask questions about those goals. One question was, “Do these goals represent who we are as a school?” This led the group to ask themselves the bigger question of “who are we as a school and what do we want to be?” In other words, what is our Mission and Vision. As a school, we needed to develop a Mission and Vision that every student, parent, staff member, and community partner knows about and believes in. It should be BOTH what are our current strengths (what we are good at) and what we aspire to be (what do we need and want to get better at). We then conducted circles in Advisory in each area to share and discuss what each should look like in our school and what students and staff can do to continue to effect positive change through these beliefs. In addition, the SGC, PTO, and Industry Advisory Board were engaged in input and feedback as well. The results of all this work:
POWER2
Professional
Opportunities
Work-Ethic
Empowerment
Respect & Responsibility
You will continue to hear a lot about this as our goal is to have POWER2 be the one thing that every student, parent, staff member, business partners, and member of our community can rally behind to say “this is Pathways!” We will be recognizing students daily, weekly, and monthly, who exemplify one or more of these areas.. Show your POWER2!!!
Intramural Sports are back at Pathways!
We are very excited to announce that we have re-established our partnership with Connecticut River Academy, located on the opposite side of Goodwin. We will have a co-op intramural program with them as we did prior to Covid that will include Co-Ed Basketball in the Fall, Co-Ed Volleyball in the Winter, and Co-Ed Soccer in the Spring! More information about intramural sports will be available for families and students at the start of the school year regarding sign-ups, times, etc. We are very happy to offer this opportunity once again.
Welcome Back!
We are looking forward to welcoming all of our students, staff, and families to start the 2023-24 school year. Along with our returning staff, please join me in welcoming our new amazing staff to the Pathways Family:
Marissa Mastroianni, School Social Worker, Room 315
Aliya Carta, English Teacher, Room 421
Laura Chiara, Special Education Teacher, Room 329
We are so excited to have these outstanding educators join our Pathways Family!!!
Upcoming Important Dates:
Monday August 21 and Tuesday August 22, 2023: 9th Grade PREPS: 7:30 - 11:30am
Tuesday August 22, 2023: New Student and Family Orientation: 6:00pm
TUESDAY August 29, 2023: FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!
Monday September 4, 2023: NO School: Labor Day
Wednesday September 6, 2023: Early Dismissal for students at 11:30am, Staff PD in the afternoon
Thursday September 7, 2023: Meet the Teacher/Open House Night: 5:00 – 7:00pm at Pathways!
More information will follow in the upcoming days and in the first weeks of school. If you have any questions, concerns, or ideas, please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to seeing our students on Tuesday, August 29th to kick off the 2023-24 school year!!!
Sincerely,
Mike Maziarz Principal