• June 30 Fifth Grade Graduation, Last Day of School ends at 1:25 PM

Hello Thornton Creek Community!

We did it! I hope this final week of this extraordinarily full, very long school year is filled with memories of the year and happiness of the celebrations at the end. Our students have worked so hard and have experienced so much positive self-discovery in the process. I know I am reflecting on all that I've gained and learned as a parent and school leader and I hope you find time to do the same in the coming days.

If you're up for reading, I am sharing our year-end summary!

Thornton Creek Parent Group (TCPG) is a non-profit corporation organized under the laws of the State of Washington. The non profit purposes of TCPG are to provide financial, volunteer and creative resources to ensure the equitable access of all students and their families to the educational program of Thornton Creek. In practice, our intentional work is to partner with the school to ensure needs are met with supporting educational mission, community building, parent engagement including volunteers and parent education, and fundraising. We take our mission very seriously and we appreciate your commitment to help us succeed through your engagement with us. Please reach out with any questions or ideas!

This will be our final TCPG newsletter of the 2022-2023 school year. This communication was made possible this year by our TCPG Communications Chair, Betsy Rathwell, and we are so grateful for her leadership and invaluable sense of humor. Thanks to her work this year we will also be sharing a redesigned TCPG website in the fall. This will be a key place for families to learn about opportunities to engage with our school. Please stay tuned!

This year, TCPG supported TC and the parent community in several ways including engagement of parents for community building and friendship, organizing parent volunteers for more than 2 dozen school events, raising $148,000 from you (!!), to support our school's needs next year, and building a leadership team in the TCPG Board to help stabilize our community.

I want to extend a huge thank you to all the humans in our school working to support our students. I want to start by saying thank you feels wholly insufficient for the gratitude I feel for our community, our staff and the abundant joy that our students bring to us every day. We have accomplished so much this year together and I thank each of you for all you have done to contribute and to help our students and community thrive.

On behalf of the TCPG Board, I want to say thank you to all of our staff for their tireless commitment to our students and to each other. While this year provided greater opening and engagement, we definitely were still in transition from the pandemic emergency phase. The residual exhaustion and other challenges you faced and worked hard to overcome were inspiring. You've really shown your heroic strength to support our kids. To our leaders, Principal Kischner and Assistant Principal Miller, you are amazing. As a community, we are so incredibly fortunate to have you at the helm of our great school. Please do not hesitate to let us know how we can support you. Thank you to all of our TC school staff and leaders!

Thank you to all of our families! Thank you for everything you do for our community every day. If you volunteer in classrooms, in the library, for field trips, special projects, school events, landscaping work parties, serving as room parent, or any other leaning in to help, we see you, we appreciate you, we couldn't make our school a success without you!

Thank you to our amazing and dedicated TCPG Board of Directors and Project Leads - Jessica Knaster Wasse (Vice Chair), Roddy Theobold (Treasurer), Kristi Straus (Secretary), Sterling Maximo (Fundraising Chair), Kelsey Johnson (Volunteer Chair), Jana Dilley (Facilities Co-Chair), Sarah Stempski (Facilities Co-Chair), Sarah Tien (Yearbook), Jeanette Fiess (Spirit Gear and Field Day), Chelsea Lin (Hospitality and open enrollment tours), Jenny Pinto (volunteer support, DJ, hospitality) and Jenny Sanders (5th-grade panels).

Finally, thank you to our TCPG Finance Committee members: Ishita Jariwala, Joy Paraiso, David Lin, and Mudeem Siddiqui. Your willingness to engage in important discussions about the TCPG budget is beyond appreciated.

Thank you everyone for our collective success this year. Whatever you participated in, it matters and is appreciated. Looking to next year, your participation is welcome and needed! Please reach out to me (chair@thorntoncreekparentgroup.org) or Kelsey (volunteer@thorntoncreekparentgroup.org) over the summer or during the school year if you'd like to talk about ways to engage in supporting the school through volunteering. We are crew, not passengers, and we would benefit from more of us joining in to advance our school's success in the years to come. We have a few key TCPG board roles we need a leader for:

• Communications Chair or Co-Chairs (produces newsletters and maintains website, serves as TCPG board member)
• Assistant Treasurer (partners with Treasurer to learn role then serves as Treasurer the following year)
• Hospitality Chair (coordinates welcoming and appreciate events for parents and staff)
• Multiple opportunities to support committee leads

Best wishes to all of our 5th grade graduating students and families! Your impact on our community will be lasting, good luck in middle school! And to our departing families, take good care and thank you for being a part of our community.

It has been a joy to serve as TCPG Chair this year. Wishing each of you a summer ahead filled with family time, joyful moments, and lots of water play and popsicles.

In gratitude,

Erin MacDougall

TCPG Chair, 2022-2023 School Year

chair@thorntoncreekparentgroup.org

We are lucky to be bringing you another fantastic interview about our wonderful staff, conducted by our very own students. Enjoy!

For this issue we had the honor of interviewing one of our Instructional Assistants: Lorenzo Kettere. Lorenzo grew up in East Orange, New Jersey, and New York. He lived there with his mom, dad, and sibling. His favorite sports are boxing and martial arts. Lorenzo’s favorite food is ribeye steak and fries, and his favorite pastime is cooking. His favorite number is sixteen, and his favorite animal is a Doberman Pinscher. His favorite book is the Bible, and his favorite movie is I Can Do Bad by Myself. Lorenzo says his superpower is his strong voice, and his secret talent is that he can see you before you see him. In college he studied to be a substance abuse counselor. Lorenzo says his favorite parts of Thornton Creek are the students and the staff and his hopes and dreams are to see kids from Thornton Creek later in life to know that they are doing well. Also, to make it to Africa! Lorenzo is an amazing person and teacher, and we love having him at our school!

Interview Questions

If you could meet anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

It would be Bruce Lee. When I was young, we grew up with him a little bit and knowing that he lived here in Seattle was great. He has so much knowledge about worldly things and he was from Hong Kong.

What is the hardest thing you have ever done?

There are quite a few things, but the main one is becoming a Marine. I never had anybody in my face like that before. I never had to do a lot of things the Marines had you do. But I’m glad I did it. Boot Camp teaches you how to put all your awareness together so that your whole surroundings are observed, and you’ll know if your partner is hurt or not running beside you – and then you’ll go back and look for him. You’re constantly in hot sun, you deal with sand fleas, you’re doing a lot of exercise most people will never do. You get kicked out of bed at 2 or 3 in the morning. It makes you tough, it makes you strong, it makes you more disciplined. Because you know sooner or later something is coming. We were called out to Beirut, Lebanon where I lost a lot of friends. We had to be the ones to take them home. It was hard.

If you could choose another job besides teaching, what would it be and why?

Cooking. When youth learn how to cook with different ingredients, spices and oils that takes them a long way. They can always say, “Well I learned how to cook. At least I won’t go hungry.” My mom and my grandma inspired me to cook so that whenever I was hungry, I could just go in the refrigerator and pull out a piece of bologna and fry it. That’s good. But I did a lot of bad stuff as a kid, and I used to walk past a diner every morning on my way to school. There was an older gentleman there who used to pull me aside and say, “Lorenzo. Just stop doing that

stuff. If you want to come work for me, you can have all the hamburgers and French fries you want.” That’s when I started learning how to use a grill, fryer, the professional part of it. I worked as a chef in Vegas before I moved to Seattle. I like to cook many things. If I am cooking for someone else, I let them decide, I just put extra love in it. If I cook for myself, I cook steak and French fries.

What did you want to be when you were in 5th grade? Why?

Whoa 5th grade! That’s a long way back! I wanted to be an FBI agent. I used to see a lot and do a lot of stuff where police or agents came. And I used to see many agents, and I said I want to be an FBI agent. I almost made it! But things happen when you don’t listen. I did work for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and from there I was going to be a US Marshall. Those guys wore suits, and they travel…but like I said, when you don’t listen, things go wrong.

What is the best thing you ever learned from a student?

Patience. I have a strong personality and a strong voice, and some kids would say, “Why do you talk so loud?” I don’t think I really talk loud, my voice just comes out. So now when I talk to kids, I am still stern and firm - it gets more done that way - but with patience so students know I’m listening too. When you kids see me coming you wonder, “What did he see?” Well, I see everything. I observe all the students and am very patient with them.

Respectfully submitted,

Thornton Creek Interview Squad

Gwen

Marisol

Emaan

Meet the parent volunteers who have stepped up and are ready to continue TCPG's mission - to support the programs and staff at Thornton Creek Elementary School.

Treasurer (officer)

Roddy Theobold

Roddy Theobold is the parent of rising 3rd grade and 1st grade students at Thornton Creek and has served as TCPG treasurer for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. He does education policy research for American Institutes for Research in Seattle.

TCPG is seeking an Assistant Treasurer (who will train next school year and then transition to Treasurer in 2024-25 school year). Please email Roddy if you might be interested.

Board Member at Large - Fundraising Co-Chair

Sterling Maximo

Sterling is very excited to serve the TC community in a more active way this upcoming year! With a rising 4th grader, a rising 2nd grader and two younger kids who will one day walk the halls of TC, she's very interested in the long-term success of the school. Her goal is to do everything she can to support a truly exceptional learning environment for every student that is sustainable year after year. She loves to play outside in the garden, build things and goof around with her family.

Interested in volunteering at Thornton Creek?

We rely on, and are thankful for, our volunteers at Thornton Creek. If you have not filled out your volunteer paperwork this year, there's still time to make that happen. Your application is good for two years. It can take up to two weeks to process the necessary paperwork, and with expecting staffing shortages at the District it might take longer next year. Please fill out your paperwork to volunteer today!

If you have any questions about the newsletter please email: communications@thorntoncreekparentgroup.org

This newsletter is from the Thornton Creek Parent Group and does not represent Seattle Public Schools or Thornton Creek Elementary School.