March 16, 2026
Important Dates…
Thursday, March 19: Overfield Family Partnership (OFP) Meeting, 6:30 p.m. in the Gathering Place.
Friday, March 20: OFP Trivia Night, 7-10 p.m. in the Gathering Place.
Saturday, March 21: Storytime and Songs at Jay and Mary’s Book Center, 11-11:45 a.m.
Friday, March 27: Last day before Spring Break.
Tuesday, April 7: School resumes after Spring Break.
Tuesday, April 7-Thursday, April 9: Grandparents/Special Friends Days.
Letters from Leadership
We are inspired by the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, a pedagogy that has several guiding features–one of which is a robust dialogue between home and school. As I wrote via email to our families last week, this conversation takes place through many avenues. There is communication between teachers and parents at drop off and pick up. We send home a daily journal that features various aspects of the daily life of the classroom. There is documentation on the walls and in the classroom spaces detailing the children’s voices and their learning. We have parent-teacher conferences where individual children and families are the focus. There are numerous events that can be social and/or specifically centered around the growth and development of the child and family unit. One such event will be coming up this Thursday, 3/19: the March meeting of the Overfield Family Partnership (OFP).
During this OFP meeting, we seek to provide an impetus for conversation among the triad of parents/teachers/children. Our primary hope is that this be an evening where the child can be the guide for their parent(s): sharing about their work, or where they like to play, or various stories of their time here. We will provide some general prompts to promote dialogue of this sort, and will have what we call provocations set up to spur reflection and conversation. We invite children and parents to read the classroom walls, to look through their child’s portfolios, and to examine any other forms of documentation/display that may be present in the space (books/binders/mobiles, etc). We hope that parents will do this with their child–reading contexts to them, asking them follow up questions about their work or their classmates’ ideas, and so on, but will prioritize giving their child the leadership role, while the parent plays the role of active listener. We will also weave in our area of research on digital interfaces to support this dialogue. As we discussed this topic of digital life at previous OFP meetings, we have reflected on how technology both inhibits and promotes voice, connection, and creativity. We will use expressive materials to try to harness the positive side of this dynamic, and to encourage reciprocal sharing among children and parents about this very subject.
We hope you will join us this Thursday, March 19th at 6:30 pm in the Gathering Place WITH your child(ren) as we work to create a school where parents, teachers, and children are co-participants and co-researchers who listen to each other, exchange ideas, connect, question, marvel, and play together!
Beth Poronsky – Program Lead
Friday, March 20 – 7:00 PM The Gathering Place
Form a group of 6 adults or sign up individually and we’ll provide the friends for an exciting evening of trivia!
Feel free to bring your own snacks, drinks, and festive adornments as we battle to see which team will take home awesome prizes!
Get Tickets Here!
Artwork from some of Overfield’s 2nd and 3rd graders is now on display at the Troy-Hayner Cultural Center as part of the annual Young Masters exhibit. This show highlights the creative efforts of K-12 students from Troy City Schools, Troy Christian Schools, St. Patrick School, and Overfield. It features nearly 400 pieces of student artwork. The exhibit is open during Hayner’s regular business hours through Sunday, April 22. Exhibits at Troy-Hayner Cultural Center are always free and open to the public.
