Congratulations! You and your son have made a great decision to be an active part of the Durham Nativity School family! We are committed to the next eleven years of your son’s educational life! It is our intention to provide an outstanding instructional program that focuses on developing a standard of excellence in mind, body and spirit for the next three years! After your son graduates from Durham Nativity School, we are committed to assisting with the high school admissions process, emotional support during his high school years, and guidance throughout his college experience.
As we strive to give our best each day toward building strong DNS men, we are asking for your support! Please remember that Durham Nativity School is YOUR school and your son’s success is dependent upon how well we all work together to ensure excellence in every aspect of the DNS educational program! Remember to show your DNS pride!
Sincerely, Ingrid Medlock

PARENT PARTICIPATION STATEMENT

Parental involvement is essential to the success of each young man who participates in the DNS educational program. Therefore, all parents/guardians are expected to fulfill the contractual agreement of volunteerism and authentic active involvement in all aspects of the DNS educational program. Parents must volunteer at least 4 hours per trimester or 12 hours per school year, not including attendance to Teacher/Parent/Student Conferences and Parent Empowerment Program (PEP) Meetings.
The cost for each student to attend Durham Nativity School is approximately $20,000.00 per year and is completely covered by private donations. Therefore, it is not inappropriate to mandate that all DNS families pay a minimal monthly activity fee of $10.00 by the specified due date. Please be sure to read, review and sign the DNS Parental Agreement giving further details regarding this contractual agreement. We are sure that all parents understand the exceptional education and enriching experience that each student at DNS is afforded and, therefore, will uphold the tenets of the DNS Parental Agreement and the Parent/Student/School Compact. Thank you for your continued support and cooperation!

The daily curriculum offerings at Durham Nativity School include:

• English/Language Arts (Humanities)
• Mathematics (Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometry)
• Science
• Social Studies
• Religion
• Foreign Language (Latin and Spanish)
• Arts Exploration
• Health/PE 

In addition, all Durham Nativity School students will receive Homework Help/Study Skills, Student Advisory, Arts Enrichment, Team Sports, and Community Service Learning Instruction during the extended day hours from 3:40 – 6:00 Monday – Thursday.  All students are dismissed at 4:45 every Friday afternoon following their DNS Friday Clubs block.  It is imperative that all parents assist their sons to follow all policies regarding class work and homework assignments.
Durham Nativity School will follow a Blocked Instructional schedule.  The schedule is set up in three morning instructional blocks and three afternoon instructional blocks.  This block scheduling of 90 minutes is to allow for effective facilitation of instruction which invokes critical thinking, discovery/problem-based learning, differentiated instruction, reading and writing across the curriculum addressing the various learning styles of students in whole group, small group, or individualized formats.  You will notice on the following page that all core content areas are scheduled in 90 minute blocks and ancillary courses are scheduled in 45 minute blocks.   Please see the following schedule for the 2008-2009 school year.

Extended Day Enrichment/Community Service Schedule
1st Trimester

Extended Day Enrichment/Community Service Schedule
2nd Trimester

Extended Day Enrichment/Community Service Schedule
3rd Trimester

A+ (100-97)                              
A   (96-93)              Excellent performance                                              4 = Excellent Effort

B+ (92-89)            
B    (88-85)              Good performance
                                                                                                                 3 = Good Effort

C+ (84-81)              
C   (80-77)              Satisfactory performance
                                                                                                                 2 = Unsatisfactory Effort

D+ (76-73)              
D   (72-69)             Unsatisfactory performance/Significant weakness
                                                                                                                  1 = Poor or No Effort

F (68 or lower)        Failing or inadequate performance

Students will receive communication and information concerning their academic progress in the form of a “Mid-Trimester report” and a “Trimester Report Card”.  There are three (3) marking periods per year equaling the three (3) trimesters that the students are in school.  Each parent will receive the “Mid-Trimester Report” in person at the school from their son’s teacher on specified “Parent Conference Days” as noted in your master school calendar.  This gives the parent and teacher an opportunity to discuss the progress of the student, develop an action plan for improvement, and communicate any praise or concern.  All parents are required to participate in “Parent Conference Days” and, by law; employers must grant parents time to visit their child’s school for this specific purpose.  Each “Trimester Report Card” will be sent home to parents at the end of each trimester on the dates listed on the master school calendar. 

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Service Learning

OVERVIEW
At DNS, service learning plays a significant role in developing young men into tomorrow’'s community leaders. Every Thursday throughout the year, each grade enters the community to serve, themed around certain issues each year; this service is supported across the curriculum in the classroom.

While “Service Learning” has been become a frequently touted term in education in recent years, in practice such programs can fall away from an integrated education model and become unsupported “menial” service work. DNS seeks to more fully empower our youth with an integrated and supported service 3-year service learning curricula, emphasizing community involvement, supported across academic disciplines, an awareness of current social justice issues, and the development of young leaders who are able to initiate and plan community projects.

For the Themed Yearly Service Learning Project, each grade spends time in year-long service to a single partner organization or project. Occasional Thursdays will be spent on a Class-Based Service Learning Project on curricular and timely shorter term projects.

• The 6th grade year-long project is “Direct Service” at the Durham Rescue Mission serving homeless men dinner as part of a Victory job-training program.
• In the 7th grade partner project, students are involved in “Indirect Service” by tracing community partnerships while sorting eggs and food at the Durham Food Bank.
• The 8th grade will be involved in “Asset-Based Community Development” (ABCD) by working with Durham City and County Housing departments to renovate houses that have not passed previous inspection for habitation.” Students from Duke University’'s Youth Ventures program will assist 8 th graders by communicating with city officials to identify appropriate homes for renovation, work under the direction of a local developer/builder, develop a budget, timeline, partners, and proposal to obtain all necessary materials.

This training in a more active and intra-community service model brings the students great and varied leadership skills and provides the Durham Community a regular, yearly, and committed development project.

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Sports & Activities

A healthy mind and body leads to better classroom performance. Although Durham Nativity School does not have a gymnasium in our current school facility, our students are fortunate to be able to engage in sports and activities at the Lakewook YMCA . DNS fields competitive teams in basketball and soccer, playing other area middle schools.

Durham Nativity School receives scholarship funding from the Y's "We Build People Campaign" funding to have use of the gym facilities and physical education instruction from a YMCA staff member, who also provides grading and comments on our students' participation and progress.

The Emily Krzyewski Family Life Center in Durham is another community asset that supports DNS. Our boys have been the beneficiaries of one of Family Life Center’s first initiatives, the Dream-Do-Achieve program. This program’s focus is to close the achievement gap of at-risk youth by giving them the skills, confidence and capabilities to set and achieve goals.

In whatever sport we field a team, we desire not only to have our students develop the skills to compete against other area private and charter schools, but to develop great sportsmanship.

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