Angie Debo Elementary -

Due to the threat of severe weather, all Edmond Public Schools will move to remote learning for Monday, November 18. Students should refer to information sent by their school site for assignments that will need to be completed for attendance to be counted.

🇺🇸Veterans Day might be on Monday, but we couldn’t wait to celebrate our Dolphin Veterans!🇺🇸 We had a little breakfast, a micro-parade, and a super intentional Dolphin Splash! We got to sing along with veterans who served across all branches of the military! We were also visited by special guest and veteran, Adam Pugh! And we would have been remiss not to shoutout out very own 🐬Mrs. McArthur🐬 for her service to our country! ❤️🤍💙Thank you, veterans, for all you have sacrificed for us to be able to live the lives that we do! We love and appreciate you!💙🤍❤️ Show our servicemen and women some love in the 👇comments below👇!

Bedlam 🏈football🏈 might be a thing of the past, but our Bedlam Food Drive is forever! Did you know that our school food drive directly benefits 🐬Angie Debo🐬 families? Talk about a school that functions like one giant family! All the donations collected will be assembled into boxes to help families through the holiday season! So if you’re missing the (mostly) convivial Bedlam rivalry, start collecting those new food items because each item donated is a 👆point👆for your team. The winning team not only gets bragging rights but they also get to see the losing principal decked out in their opposing team’s gear for a day! As of the end of Day 1, our ❤️Sooners❤️ are off to a strong start, but with so much time left on the clock, who knows what will happen! Check out our teachers displaying their grade-level donation items below: ✔️Pre-K - boxes dessert mixes and icing ✔️Kinder - peanut butter and jelly ✔️First - boxed rice, stuffing mix, and cornbread ✔️Second - spaghetti noodles and mashed potatoes ✔️Third - canned meat and butter ✔️Fourth - pasta sauce, mac & cheese, and gravy mix ✔️Fifth - pop top cans of fruits and veggies So who is it going to be - America’s 🧡Brightest Orange or Crimson and Cream❤️? Stay tuned for updates!

All schools will be CLOSED today, Monday, November 4. All activities are cancelled. Please stay weather aware.

Tonight might be peak 👻Spooky Season👻, but there were no spooks to be found at The Debo today as the ever-elusive 👓Waldo👓 roamed the hallways! 🔴So where’s Waldo?🔴 Can you spot Waldo in his 📷pics📷 around the school? Is he surreptitiously lurking in the shadows or hiding in plain sight - you tell us!

We love our✨ Word of the Month Awards✨ so much that we just had to add some more! This year we have added to ourcelebrations by incorporating the four Core Value of Edmond Public Schools - 🧡belonging, collaboration, integrity, and hope💜. Coming off of an incredible Belonging Week, we saw students all over the 🏫school🏫 re-commit to and re-focus their efforts on belonging not just as a noun but as a verb with actionable follow-through. We know that the foundation of any successful community is built on the idea that everyone is loved and valued for the contributions and potential that they bring to the table, on the idea that everyone belongs to and is part of something larger than their individual selves and identities, and these 🐬Dolphins🐬 are paving the way toward that reality each and every day! To our ✨Belonging Award✨winners, you're doing great things! Keep doing the hard work, the good work, and the inclusive work! We're so proud to call you ours! Give our inclusive Dolphins some love in the 👇comments below👇, and check out some of the sweet words their teachers wrote about them!

🍬Inclusion sure is sweet!🍬 This month, Special Olympics Oklahoma and Unified Sports challenged Oklahoma schools to participate in a 🧦silly sock 🧦 day to promote awareness, acceptance, inclusion, and love of our friends with Down Syndrome! Today kids and adults across the building showed off their silliest sock combos, and our sweet fifth graders and A.D. Sparkle Cheerleaders,✨Alissa and Cate✨ran around the building making friends, sharing laughs, and taking pictures with as many Dolphins as they could! We love what 🐬Alissa and Cate🐬 add to our building, and we’re so glad to call them ours! Show them some love in the 👇comments below👇!

❓Did you know that October is National Down Syndrome Awareness Month?❓ Our ✨A.D. Sparkle✨ did, and they even kicked off the month with a performance at the Down Syndrome Association of Central Oklahoma’s Festival and 5K! Like we learned during Belonging Week, Down Syndrome isn’t scary, and it isn’t a topic of conversation to avoid. While each Down Syndrome diagnosis may manifest differently, we’ve learned that through ✔️awareness, ✔️education, and ✔️intentional effort, we can reframe the way we interact with everyone around us by focusing on capabilities rather than disabilities! During Belonging Week we met students and guest speakers with Down Syndrome, and we learned they aren’t any different than us - they just have an extra chromosome! We also got to see ways in which school leaders and community leaders have embraced individual capabilities to foster inclusion and provide safe places for everyone to 💗contribute and flourish💗. ⁉️So our action item this week?⁉️ If we were to look at a karyotypic representation of chromosomes, we might observe that the 🧬pairs of chromosomes look like socks🧬, which is why silly sock days have become a staple dress-up day to bring awareness, attentio, and love to our friends that have Down Syndrome! So this Wednesday wear: 🧦a silly pair of socks to acknowledge, accept, and appreciate our friends with Down Syndrome and how they make our lives more whole! 🧦OR a mismatched pair of socks to show that you know every individual person is different and you’re committed to fostering inclusion and belonging! 🧦OR EVEN an extra sock because our friends with Down Syndrome have an extra chromosome! And take some time to commit to the cause in an intentional way because at Angie Debo there is 🌌SPACE for everyone to BELONG🌌!

Congratulations to kindergarten teacher, Jeralin Salafia, on being named Angie Debo’s 🎉Teacher of the Year🎉! Give her some love in the 👇comments below👇!

🙌…everyone’s reaction when the Book Fair opens…and you get all the Scholastic prices in the comfort of your school while directly contributing to your library’s “fun money” account!🙌 All of the proceeds from our Book Fair help Ms. Ashcraft build a 📚library collection📚 that’s responsive to our student body. Not only does she have a suggestion box for students to submit titles for her to purchase, but she goes above and beyond to facilitate activities throughout the year to help our school get excited about reading! Check your grade-level newsletters for Grandparent 🍕Bite and Buy🛍️ Days, and be sure to notify your student’s teacher if they have Book Fair money to spend. Every dollar goes toward building a love of literacy from the ground up! Drop your Book Fair buys in the👇comments below👇 and show Mrs. Ashcraft some love for all that she does for our Dolphin family!🐬💜

🏃‍♀️…on your mark, get set, GO!🏃‍♂️ Our Fun Runs were today, and our little 🐬Dolphins🐬 ran their hearts out! But the race isn’t over yet - we still have a little ways to go to reach our $50,000 goal! Head to mybooster.com to donate this evening! Our 👟little track stars👟 need a trail around our playground, and after today, we know it would be well-utilized! 📣A huge shoutout to Edmond Santa Fe Athletics; our DJ, Scott Seretean; our emcee, Mr. Goodrich; and of course, our fabulous Angie Debo PTO - you carried the vibe today, and we 💜 you!📣 Drop your Fun Run pics in the 👇comments below👇, and continue boosting our fundraiser efforts to get us to our goal!

Our Dolphins showed up dressed to the nines for 📸 picture day 📸 yesterday! Be on the lookout for proofs coming home, and if your student was out, be sure to make note of picture retake day when that date hits your grade-level newsletters! In the meantime, check out these sweet smiles!🐬💜

Last week was a huge week for belonging and inclusion, but it also seemed like an appropriate time to start the celebrations for our 💜Word of the Month Awards💜 ! For those of you who don't know, each month we focus on a different word that is a character attribute we value within our school family. This past month, students have been learning about ✨kindness✨ and memorizing its condensed definition - "the quality of being friendly, considerate, and generous". As we spend the month deconstructing each word, our faculty and staff look for students who can take their abstract denotations and use them to inspire conscientious actions around the building. At the end of the month, individual 👧students👦 are recognized by their teachers for living out each attribute. With kindness being at the root of all belonging and inclusion initiatives, what better time to 🔦shine a light 🔦 on our kind kiddos than at the end of a Belonging Week! So to our ✨Kindness Award✨ winners, you're doing great things! Keep doing the hard work, the good work, and the kind work! We're so proud to call you ours! (👀Peep those new Dynamic Dolphin t-shirts - we're looking sharp📌!)

Day🖐️ - the final day of Belonging Week, and what a unifying week it has been! Our belonging celebrations culminated with a visit from our vertical leaders! Athletes from 🐺Edmond Santa Fe's Unified Partners Club🐺 came back to visit for the second year in a row to share with us a little bit about what belonging looks like to them (PSSTTT: We spy some former Dolphins and Dolphin siblings!)! With activities that include basketball🏀, softball🥎, and volleyball🏐 there is something for everyone to try out and enjoy. But more than that, we love to see the cross-discursive lessons of athletics applied to inclusion initiatives. Sports are such a great way to marry conceptions of competition and collaboration in a way that benefits athletes in their day-to-day lives and prepares them for their immediate futures and beyond! It's all about using 💪individual strengths💪 to work toward a common goal - and that's exactly what our Belonging Week has been all about! Speaking of Unified Sports, Oklahoma Special Olympics and Unified Sports challenged 🏆Unified Schools🏆 to use students to spell out the word UNIFIED - check out our pictures below (Peep the full school pic - how cool is that?!)! This is where belonging starts! Another huge thank you to our Angie Debo PTO, Blue7, Not Your Average Joe, Torchy's Tacos, and the I-35 Crumbl Cookies location - your donations this week made for the perfect guest-speaker gifts🛍️! If you and your family are looking to create a belonging plan, we'd love for you to join our committee! We want to keep taking 👣steps forward👣, so go ahead and use the Google Form below to sign up! Our first meeting will be on October 7th; more details will be sent via email. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdnBDxxuVZav7bVFkrCDR2xYObHbXJIwir-bVWqweU-AEGjTQ/viewform?usp=sf_link Thank you for a great week, Dolphin family. Share your highlights in the 👇comments below👇. Now go out and make "belonging" a verb!

Day four of Belonging Week and our Dolphins came creative as could be from their heads to their toes, which was fitting since we got a chance to revisit our friend Kacie who is the ✨queen of sparkly accessorizing✨ from head to toe! Kacie returned for her second Belonging Week to share a little bit about her life post-graduation. For those of you that don't remember, or are new to Angie Debo, Kacie is one of our own - she started at Angie Debo on her 3rd birthday! She graduated from Edmond North last year and is now currently enrolled at the Edmond Transition Academy! When she's not at ETA, she also has a job as a Sparkle Stylist at 💎Feed Me Gems💎 (Give a round of applause to Feed Me Gems for inclusive hiring practices!)! We learned last year that Kacie is a TikTok star, but even taking social media media out of the equation, her fame doesn't just have a local reach. Fittingly, Kacie is a national gem. This month she was featured on a billboard in 🌆Times Square🏙️! The National Down Sydrome Society sent out a worldwide call for photos of individuals with Down Syndrome, and of the 3,000 entries, Kacie was one of ten Oklahomans chosen to be featured in the campaign! The NDSS has an incredible mission that aligns with our celebration of this week - their goal is to “empower individuals with Down syndrome and their families by driving policy change, providing resources, engaging with local communities, and shifting public perceptions”. Kacie is a true testament to challenging public perceptions of Down Syndrome, and 💜our community is better because of her presence and advocacy💜. Change doesn't happen spontaneously; it takes extraordinary individual efforts! Of course, none of this week would be possible without the support of our 🐬Angie Debo PTO🐬 and local businesses that have graciously contributed to guest-speaker goodie bags this week: Blue7, Not Your Average Joe, Torchy’s Tacos, and Magnolia Soap and Bath Co.! Give Kacie some love in the 👇comments below👇, and get out there and practice belonging because we're better when we all work together!

Day three of Belonging Week was all about peace☮️, love❤️, and grooving🕺 with our new friend, James! James graduated from Edmond North in 2007 and has stayed plenty busy with all sorts of activities and his two jobs (Shout-out to Sonic🥤 and Jo's Famous Pizza🍕 for walking the inclusion walk!)! Margo, James's mom, also came today, and we got to hear about her advocacy and trailblazing efforts to ensure that James always felt a sense of belonging while he was going through school despite having an autism diagnosis. She never wanted him confined to just Special Education classrooms, she wanted him to know his possibilities were limitless. During his time in middle school and high school, James helped with the wrestling🤼 and baseball⚾ teams, and he was also a member of vocal music🎼! We don't want to speak too soon, but we don't think James is done with EPS - he might have to join our ✨A.D. Sparkle✨ team in some capacity. As soon as he made it to the school this morning, without missing a beat, James picked up some pom poms and sang and danced while greeting Dolphins at drop-off! We know that Belonging Week and related efforts are important, but it's so affirming to hear speakers like James and Margo because change doesn't just happen overnight; it takes the dedicated work of a whole community committing to take steps forward. So to all the families and individuals who were doing this work before us and to all of those we hope to inspire to continue this work after us - we see you, we value you, we appreciate you, and we will continue taking steps forward with you👣. A special thank you to our 💜PTO💜 for coordinating guest-speaker goodie bags with donations from Blue7, Not Your Average Joe, Torchy's Tacos, and Magnolia Soap and Bath Co. We appreciate your time and donations to help make this Belonging Week extra special! Show James and Margo some love in the comments 👇below👇, and continue going out into the world to practice belonging!

For day two of Belonging Week we met some 🛸"out of this world"🛸members of the recently-established Edmond Transition Academy! If you didn't know, the ETA is a school space for EPS students ages 18-22 with disabilities where they can practice skills that will enable them to live independently, participate in the community, and acquire jobs after leaving EPS! They even have their own 🎁gift shop🎁 (See the link below!)! Henry, Jayden, and Joy were able to share a little bit about themselves and their jobs (shout-outs to Beehive Salon, Ida Freeman Elementary, and Uptown Grocery for creating space for EVERYONE to BELONG). We were also able to hear from other ETA students about how we can all play to our own 💪strengths💪 and learn to lift up others around us in the process. The ETA is an incredible extension of what we hope Belonging Week inspires - working together to build a more inclusive community from the ground up, acknowledging individual strengths and utilizing them for the collective good, and creating the 🪐space for everyone to belong and thrive🪐. Thank you, ETA for sharing your work with us and for leading by example! We also owe a huge thank you to 🍪Crumbl Cookies🍪 on I-35 for donating some sweet treats to our new friends - we so appreciate you contributing to our Belonging Week! Show the Edmond Transition Academy and Crumbl some love in our 👇comments below👇! And if you're looking to get a little Friday surprise for someone special, consider the ETA gift shop (https://www.successfund.com/ETA?fbclid=IwY2xjawFXD1FleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHdg0i); they have pick-up options in addition to delivery to all EPS sites! 🐬We're better together🐬! PS: We spy a serendipitous twin duo! We love an on-theme graphic tee!

⭐The first day of our THIRD ANNUAL BELONGING WEEK was a showstopper!⭐ Students and staff came Red Carpet Ready, and fittingly so because our guest speaker today, Jocelyn Manjarrez, in addition to being an Angie Debo alum and barista, is also a local theater star! Jocelyn came back to Angie Debo today to share a little bit about what her life has looked like since graduating from EPS. We learned that: 💜Jocelyn is a lover of animals - she has four dogs and nine guinea pigs! 💜She's performed in the musical versions of Spongebob and Madagascar! 💜Her dream role is to play Princess Fiona in Shrek the Musical! 💜She works at Not Your Average Joe! 💜Her favorite part of her job is meeting new people and writing messages on their cups! 💜She was Autism Oklahoma's Lady Ambassador when she was 20! Aside from her accolades. Jocelyn shared some poignant words with us about her lived experience. To Jocelyn, all autism means is that she learns and sees the world a little differently. She also shared some words of wisdom we can all live by - three rules she's learned through summer camps at Oklahoma Children's Theatre - "Be kind, be safe, and be brave". 🐬So let's all take a page from Jocelyn's book and go out into the world being kind, safe, and brave in paving the way for belonging!🐬 And of course, Belonging Week wouldn't be possible without help from our community, so a huge thank you to the Angie Debo PTO for coordinating guest-speaker goodie bags with donations from Blue7, Not Your Average Joe, Torchy's Tacos, and Magnolia Soap! 💜We truly are better together!💜 Give Jocelyn some love in the comments below, and let us know your student's favorite part about today!

Are you ready for some football?!🏈 Our Dolphins were surprised by some special guests waiting to greet them at drop-off this morning!🐬 Good luck tonight, Edmond Santa Fe! GO WOLVES!🐺 Are you headed to the game? Drop your pics in the comments below!👇

Ain’t no party like a Pop ‘N Play party!🎉 We’ve loved having families out to Pop ‘N Play! If you have any pictures from recess with your student, drop them in the comments below!👇 We’re looking forward to seeing Pre-K and 3rd grade families tomorrow!🐬