Armour, SD

November 7, 2007
The Armour PTT met at the Fire Hall at 7pm. Alyssa Larson, School Psychologist from Mid-Central COOP was our speaker. The topic was on child Depression and Suicide. Some of the highlights from this presentation were: Disorders (mood, anxiety, psychotic, behavioral, eating, obsessive compulsive, and conduct) to name an few. Statistics and treatments were presented for these disorders. Teacher/Student/Counselor/Parent involvement were discussed and ideas given on how to detect and manage these disorders. One very good suggestion was to have parents and teachers work as a team and be positive. Early detection is the best treatment. Various cartoons and television shows influence a lot of how our children learn and what they learn about today’s society. Another influence is video games and information overload. Alyssa also discussed Depression signs and symptoms. This diagnosis is becoming more common in younger children. They can detect some of these symptoms in preschool children all the way through adolescence and adults. Discussion involved what we can do as parents and teachers to get involved and detect these areas of concern in our children. Suicide was also talked about and statistics given including various risk factors, warning signs, prevention, and protective factors. They now have a committee called S.O.S. Signs of Suicide, which was formed to assist in early detection and prevention of suicidal students.

Remember that November 12-16 is Education Appreciation Week. Please remember to THANK our teachers and ancillary staff for all they do to educate our children on a daily basis. We have a wonderful teacher student ratio and the support shown by our teachers for our school is beyond what many parents can expect. Thank you to all our educational staff!!

Armour School will be starting their Breakfast Program soon. Start date is tentatively set for November 19. We are just waiting to get all the menus out to the parents to get a head count of the students that wish to participate in the Breakfast Program. The first day will be Belgian Waffles for all of those students that wish to get a warm meal at the school before your day begins. Parents should be looking for those forms to fill out and get back to dietary just so we can have an average count of how many to cook for. Breakfast will be served from 7:45-8:15 daily. We are hoping the schedule will work out to have town kids there and about done eating by the time the bus kids get in so there is not such a waiting line. Things are subject to change and we are open to suggestions. The menus for breakfast will be sent home and posted on the school website if you lose your copy.
Nicole

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 10:05 pm and is filed under 09. Community: Knowledge and Awareness, 11. Community: Action, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.