MLS School News

On Thursday, 10/6/22, students participated in their first seasonal festival of the school year. These "fests" are an opportunity for students to explore new activities and challenges, build and strengthen relationships within and across grades, develop social skills through play, cultivate joy, and strengthen students' sense of belonging without our school community. A personal highlight was watching our 3rd graders cheer each student on as they tackled the ninja line. This cheering lasted a full 40 minutes!

Ensuring that students feel a sense of connectedness and belonging at school is foundational to our work. We are continuing to explore and establish additional ways to strengthen these connections for students, in part because of the significant disruptions to school during the past two years. We continue to see particularly high levels of student absences and chronic absenteeism (students who miss 10% or more of the school year), which impacts students' socially and academically at school. We value your help in reinforcing daily attendance at school by limiting vacations to non-school days and avoiding late arrivals and early dismissals except when necessary for appointments which cannot otherwise be scheduled outside the school day. Additionally, please utilize the guidance from our nurse (see below) to guide decisions on when to keep a child home. Common cold symptoms often do not require a student to remain home. Please reach out to our school nurse Erika Skiff (skiffe@rsu5.org) if you have questions.

This is such an important role and we could really use your help. If you have considered this in the past but felt unsure about how it works we can help answer any questions you have, and we always provide a couple of days of shadowing to build confidence first. The teachers at MLS really support “Guest Teachers” in having successful experiences.

If you are interested in becoming a substitute teacher at Mast Landing School please email or call Sara in the main office. Sara can be reached by phone at 865-4561 or by email at handspickers@rsu5.org.