December Principal’s Message

“Teacher says, ‘Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings,’” a famous quote by ZuZu Bailey in “It’s A Wonderful Life” reminds me daily as our school bell rings at 8:50 am that an incredible team of 60 angels don on their wings and begin teaching an eager community of students.

As I’m sure our Canyon Crest families are aware, this school year teachers have been going above and beyond to engage their students in hybrid, in-person, and remote learning. With these new platforms and expectations, we’ve seen teachers adapt to every obstacle thrown their way in order to keep learning moving forward. I am so grateful and proud of our teachers who, with nary a complaint, have stepped up to the challenge of giving as solid an education as possible to each student in their charge.

As we head into the holiday season, it’s important that we, as a school community, continue our commitment to student engagement as a foundation for learning moving forward. One way we would like to keep students engaged in reading throughout the month of December is to encourage them to participate in the Principal’s Holiday Reading Challenge.  Students are challenged to read a number of pages, determined by grade levels, during the days we are out of school. Parent encouragement and follow-up are vital to helping students meet the challenge. Information will be coming home with students, and you can also find the Principal’s Holiday Reading Challenge on our school website. Students will be rewarded (in many ways!) for meeting the challenge.

A HUGE THANK YOU to all who participated in our Parents and Pastries this week. Although early, we had many families gather together in the school parking lot to “rub shoulders” (car-wise) with our community, get some fun reading in together as families, and support our school Book Fair. We also want to thank our special guest, Santa, for his appearance at our gathering. The report was that we had more participation at Parents and Pastries than ever before! Way to go, Canyon Crest!!!

We want to thank parents, in advance, for your help with Christmas Parties-in-a-Box. This is a fun surprise for students and a big help to teachers in preparing for the holiday parties prior to our break. We also have a little gift for our school families of the Christmas Sing-a-long video we will be sending out to our school community. In trying to keep with the Sing-a-long tradition and manage our CoVid guidelines, each class is preparing a song that will be videoed for a virtual school Christmas Sing-a-long. You can enjoy watching your child sing with their class virtually, and we will be streaming this for students’ enjoyment during their class parties on Thursday, December 17th.

We wish you all a very merry Holiday Season. Please know how appreciative of you we are for your support and many hours of service you extend to Canyon Crest. We are so fortunate to be able to serve your children. We love them so!

Rene Cunningham, Principal