Dear Parents,
We apologize for the short notice and hasty scheduling of tonight’s meeting. Primarily as your student’s science teachers, we wanted to meet with you to discuss a potentially detrimental situation that occurred with our NASA Field Trip when we lost about 8 chaperones over the last week. This occurred a few days before final numbers and money are due to NASA and our hotel, the Hilton Houston NASA Clear Lake. Originally we had planned the trip and figured up costs for the trip based on having 1 chaperone per students to supervise. Generally this would have meant each chaperone would have their own student and two others in a room with two double beds for the evening for a total of three students to keep track of and be responsible for during head counts and throughout our tour and activities at the NASA Johnson Space Center. Due to our present chaperone count of 37 and total of 163 students paid and clear academically and behaviorally to attend the NASA Field Trip as of today (4/22/09), those student/chaperone ratios were impossible to maintain unless we picked up 16 more chaperones in the next 24 hours. Fortunately a very realistic and perhaps preferable alternative room and chaperoning assignment was worked out based on the flexibility of the room arrangements at the Hilton Houston NASA Clear Lake. While the idea of having students in rooms without adults at any point was not a realistic consideration, the fact that many of the rooms we have reserved have the option of connecting doors, we devised a reworked chaperone and student room arrangement whereby some chaperones would be needed to supervise two rooms or in some cases three rooms of students with these adjoining room doors opened throughout to allow easy recognition of any potential problems and to closely monitor student behavior in the hotel rooms. To this end we now have three options for room arrangements:
Option/configuration #1 (Traditional):
* One room with two double beds.
* 1 adult chaperone, 3 students, one of the students would be the offspring
of the adult chaperone. The chaperone and their student share one double bed and the other two students share the second double bed.
Option/configuration #2 (2 Adjoining Double Rooms; 2 bathrooms):
* Two connecting rooms with two double beds in each room.
* 1 adult chaperone, 6 students, one of the students would be the offspring
of the adult chaperone. The chaperone has their own double bed. The chaperone’s student shares the second double bed with another student and the other four students share the third and fourth double beds.
Option/configuration #3 (3 Adjoining Rooms; 1 Double on either side of a King; 3
bathrooms):
* Three connecting rooms with two double beds in two rooms with a king bed
sandwiched between the two double bed rooms.
* 1 adult chaperone, 8 students, one of the students would be the offspring
of the adult chaperone. The chaperone gets their own room, bathroom, and king sized bed. The chaperone’s student shares the one double bed with another student and the other six students share the second, third, & fourth double beds.
The Option #2 configuration is available in 13 pairs of rooms, Option #3 is available for 4 triplets of rooms, and the remaining of our rooms would be in the Traditional arrangement (Option #1). All room assignments will be configured and assigned by the 6th grade Science Team (Mr. Dunn, Mrs. Hall, & Mrs. Potysman), but we would like feedback from any chaperones that are not comfortable with eth Option #2 or option #3 arrangements so we can plan and assign chaperones accordingly. If you are not comfortable with 6 or 8 students and multiple connecting room responsibilities, please contact your student’s science teacher and inform them about your reservations.
Additionally we wanted to give everyone dates of upcoming releases of new information about our NASA Field Trip:
· Our Next NASA Field Trip Meeting will be on Monday, May 18, 2009 @ 7 p.m. in the Lecture Hall.
The first part of the meeting will be a general meeting where the finalized itinerary and details of the trip, including a packet of information, will be presented for ALL parents of students going on the NASA Field Trip.
Directly following the general meeting will be a mandatory NASA Field Trip meeting for ALL CHAPERONES. If you are chaperoning the NASA Field Trip you MUST be in attendance at this meeting. Of you can not make it, please contact your student’s science teacher as soon as possible.
· Room assignments will be released on Friday, May 22, 2009 and will go home with all students through science classes.
We would all like to thank you for all of your support, patience, and understanding as we all work diligently to plan what we feel will be an amazing educational and enjoyable experience for your student’s. As this is our binaural NASA Field Trip, of what will become an annual CTMS 6th Grade Team tradition, we greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and assistance in our trip so far!
If you have any questions, as always, please contact Mr. Dunn directly at (817) 456-7775 (his cell) or via email: nate.dunn@gcisd.net, Mrs. Hall at jennifer.hall@gcisd.net or (817) 251-5320, or Mrs. Potysman at mary.potysman@gcisd.net or (817) 251-5320.
Thanks again for your continued support for the science program at CTMS! Have an awesome day!
Sincerely,
Your 6th Grade CTMS Science Educators:
Mr. Dunn, 6th Grade Pre-AP Science
Mrs. Hall, 6th Grade Regular Science
Mrs. Potysman, 6th Grade Accelerated Science
Go to Mr. Dunn’s website to sign up and subscribe your email address and/or text message enabled cell phone number for the NASA Field Trip NewsFlash to receive regular updates and information about deadlines, changes, and upcoming meetings for the upcoming CTMS NASA Field Trip:
http://TeacherWeb.com/TX/CrossTimbersMiddleSchool/MrDunn/
The webpage above can also be accessed through the Cross Timbers Middle School website. When you get to Mr. Dunn’s website above, scroll down to the NASA Field Trip NewsFlash icon (an astronaut of course!) and click on the icon. You will be redirected to the NASA Field Trip NewsFlash webpage with directions which detail how to subscribe to the NASA Field Trip NewsFlash feed for your email or text message enabled cell phone so you’ll always have the latest breaking NASA Field Trip news & updates!