South Jefferson Elementary School

JCS Communities: All JCS schools have been released from their SECURE or LOCKDOWN. WMS families will be picking their students up at Sam Micahels Park today. We ask that you follow your regular pickup practice, as not to overwhelm our schools or roads as law enforcement continue their work..

I love when I receive a Positive Office Referral because they often remind me how kind our students are…enter our latest recipient, 4th grader, Kanye Jones. He approached a teacher and asked to borrow tape. He told her that several other students had created posters in the building and he saw that they needed to be repaired after the constant student hallway traffic had ripped the edges of the posters. He didn’t want them to see the damage to their work. He gave up some of his free time to repair all of the posters. Many other people walked by these posters many times and didn’t notice. But Kanye did. That’s what matters. Noticing something that needs attention and doing something about it. What a fantastic role model for all of us. 💛💜

Sometimes, it’s the simplest things that captures someone’s attention. A perfect example is our latest recipient of a Positive Office Referral, Parker, a fourth grade student at SJES. He was nominated by a staff member who noticed that each morning, Parker takes the time to say good morning and start her day off on a positive note. I’d say that is DEFINITELY worthy of a moment in the spotlight. Imagine if each one of us just took a moment to say good morning and give someone a smile? The world would be an awesome place. Make someone’s day today—-be like Parker!

Earth Day at South Jefferson! 🌎

Our 80’s-themed Father/Daughter dance was totally awesome! 😎 Thanks to Mr. Atkins, our SJES K-Kids, the CTMS Builders, WHS Key Club, SJES staff and families for creating a memorable evening, filled with lots of fun! Our Dads were good sports and our special guests were adorable!! 🥳💃🕺🪩🎶

South Jefferson’s first Girls on the Run group participated in a 5k race on Saturday, as part of the Shenandoah Valley’s Girls on the Run chapter. It was an amazing day, filled with friendship and family support and every girl accomplished the goal of completing the 5k! Thank you to Ms. Brooks for her enthusiasm in bringing Girls on the Run to South Jefferson and for her coaching and mentoring our students through this incredible program! We were so proud to participate and watch our girls shine! ✨

Remember that attendance contest that we held at SJES for the month of March?? We challenged every student to miss 1 day or less so that their name could be entered into a drawing for ice cream with Ms. Mahoney. Almost 70% of our students achieved that goal!! All names were placed in a basket and ten names were drawn. Congratulations to Luke, Zedekiah, Airick, Kenzie, Grace, Zeke, James, Addison, Wesley and Ben for literally having the luck of the draw! Awesome parent, Mr. Siddoway, drove his ice cream truck to the school and we had a blast on this beautiful sunny day! I’m very proud of EVERYONE’s attendance! Well done, Roadrunners!

Our annual Fun Run was a huge success! We were running in honor of Bryce Tiong, a SJES preschooler, and collecting donations to support Believe in Tomorrow Children’s Foundation, a group that supported the Tiong family during Bryce’s extensive hospital stays. What I love about the Fun Run is that it teaches our students about compassion and helping others. It pushes them physically and helps them learn about other’s challenges and how they persevere. Thank you to our families and community for your support! We raised nearly $1,500 for this very deserving organization! 💜💛 #TeamBryce

What would you do if you found $50 in cash on the sidewalk?? If you’re Bianca Rivera-Santiago, you pick it up and take it immediately to the first adult you can find. Bianca’s quick thinking and honesty helped save a fifth grader’s field trip! These are the moments that matter. These are the actions that make you so proud of a student! Bianca is walking the walk of the respect and kindness that we teach every day at SJES! Way to go, Bianca! 🥳 I am so proud of you! 💜💛 Ms. Mahoney

JCS Families: Schools and offices are experiencing intermittent phone and internet outages. If you are unable to reach your students school please use the backup phone number found on our website: https://www.jcswv.org/page/secondary-numbers

Roadrunner Rock Star Alert! These students were nominated for Positive Office Referrals for their hard work in class and for being helpful to others. Kindergarteners Emma Goldberg, Sloane Fox and Ximena Perez were nominated for their writing improvement over the course of the school year. All three of them have shown incredible improvement with their free writing, tricky words and applying letter sounds in their writing. Third grader Ares Cunningham was nominated for jumping into action to help others without hesitation. All four of these students are extremely deserving and we are super proud of them! 💛💜 Ms. Mahoney

To recognize National School Librarian Day, let’s celebrate the incomparable Mrs. Moody! She is passionate about our library and instilling the love of reading in all of our students at South Jefferson. The library, under her care, has blossomed—-she has created a space that everyone can appreciate and where our students can thrive! Thank you, Mrs. Moody, for bringing our library to life! We are grateful for you! 📚

This week is National Assistant Principal’s Week and I’d like to take a moment to recognize and celebrate Mrs. Duggan, our incredible AP at South Jefferson! In just a short time, she has become an invaluable teammate and leader at our school and we are blessed to have her at SJES! Her passion and commitment to our students, staff and community is amazing to witness and she has established fantastic working relationships throughout our school. Here’s to Mrs. Duggan! 🥳

We have some very deserving students who received Positive Office Referrals for their kindness, their respect for our school and one another and for being responsible role models at SJES. Congratulations and job well done to Aubrey Vale, Cash O’Connor, Trey Dell, Erica Wiles and Molly McDaniel! Super proud of all of you! Ms. Mahoney 💜💛

Just a reminder that our Fun Run is tomorrow!!! Please remember to wear your tie dye shirt! We are running to honor Bryce Tiong and collecting funds for Believe In Tomorrow, an organization that supported the Tiong family during Bryce’s hospitalization. (Please make checks payable to South Jefferson Elementary. Tax receipts available upon request). Thank you so much for your support! Ms. Mahoney

To align with their unit on plants, Mrs. Fox’s kindergarten class took advantage of the beautiful weather and explored our school’s nature path, drawing pictures of the daffodils that have recently started to bloom (thank you, Mr. Jenkins!). They discussed the parts of plants and students labeled their pictures. They also discussed the life cycle of a daffodil and how bulbs are different than the seeds they’ve been learning about in class. 💐

Our 4th graders had an awesome day at Cool Spring Preserve, as a wrap up to their year long watershed study. The students explored our Bull Run watershed and were tasked with looking for macro invertebrates and identifying them using a diagram. They were challenged to create a water filter to clean up the "pollution" in the water using only items from nature. Finally, they gathered water from the run and tested for temperature, ph levels and dissolved oxygen levels. They used their findings to grade our watershed. It was unanimous that our watershed was very healthy and deserved an A++.

Just a reminder: Today is Spring Picture Day! 📸🧀😀

If you look up kindness in the dictionary, you will certainly see these two faces! Fourth grader, Ainye Taylor, and third grader, Colton Miranda, were nominated by their teachers for showing kindness and caring to others. Ainye helped a friend with her Career Day outfit and Colton wrote a welcome letter to a new student in his class. Both of these phenomenal young people did these things without prompting and completely out of the kindness of their hearts. They are walking the walk of our respect motto at SJES and I, for one, am super proud of them! 💜💛

We have a few slots available for our after school Code Ninja club (starting this Thursday, March 26th)! Don’t miss out! 🥳