Since starting the year, I've heard numerous questions like, What are the school's values? What is the mascot? What in the vision of BWU? All are fair questions, and we're in the infancy of trying to define ourselves as a community.

Over the course of this year, we'll do some intentional visioning work with our staff, school council, and in time, the larger BWU community. As staff, we've collaborated to come up with Hopes and Dreams for the year. To that end, we've produced a blueprint of those and plan to edit it a bit once we receive more feedback. We will do similar work with our School Council.

We're creating a visioning committee to focus on what we'd like to aspire to- who do we want to be? What should we stand for? What are our non-negotiables? Eventually, we'll create a mission, vision, and values to guide all we do at BWU. In addition, we'll work on a mascot down the road, likely next year.

As students have become more comfortable in our building, we've noticed some are still navigating the environment and finding "their place" in the school. In the process of jockeying for social status, some are making choices that aren't ideal to support learning.

Please remind your student about expectations throughout the building. Please remind them that while they're at school to have fun and make social connections, their number one job is to be a student and put forward their best effort. We appreciate your help!

In this update:

Wednesday, October 21, 2026--Conferences 

***Note about conferences: Conferences are intended strictly for parents and caregivers. If your child comes, they'll be asked to work outside of the conference. We look forward to seeing you beginning next week.

As part of our November community meeting, we will be creating a slideshow of Veterans from our community for the whole school to enjoy. If you or anyone in your family has served, we would love to add their picture to our presentation. Please email Mr. Wolpe (lwolpe@abschools.org) and include the  following information:

Photo

Name

Rank

Branch of Service

Connection to BWU

On November 18th, we'll welcome The Organization for Social Media Safety to Boardwalk Upper Elementary School.

They'll give three presentations (one for each grade level) and a family presentation at night. 

Some topics they'll cover:

 Violence

 Cyberbullying

 Social Media Habit/Addiction

 Hate Speech

 Privacy Invasion

More information will follow, but we wanted to make you aware. We will be offering opt-outs; however, please consider having your child view the presentations.

There’s a lot happening in fifth grade! In ELA, 5th graders continue to read Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan and connect the themes to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Math, students wrapped up their learning about volume and are exploring the multiplication and division of fractions. In Social Studies, the students are learning about the different perspectives and motives of European nations and Indigenous cultures around land. In Science, all fifth graders finished up the first unit of study, Systems, and are using their science skills to conduct investigations. 

Shout out to our fifth graders who took part in a skit highlighting the importance of respect during the All School Meeting! We are continually building and reinforcing respect in our classrooms and across the grade level!