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Inside Billings
March 19, 2026
| | 🎒 What's Happening at Billings? 📚 | | As we say goodbye to winter, our community looks ahead to a season filled with energy, growth, and new opportunities! | | |
Mike on the Mic 🎤
Mystery and Mayhem is almost here! We are excited to see the richness of the Billings community come together next weekend including current families, alumni and their families enjoying what makes Billings so magical. Reminder that our show times are next week at 7:00 pm Friday, March 27 and 7:00 pm Saturday, March 28.
Remember that we have no school on Monday, March 30th for teacher inservice.
Congratulations in advance to the entire cast, artists, singers, and musicians for an amazing production! We’re excited that students incorporated their very own creative twists into the story and its characters and I strongly believe that drama is a critical part of middle school growth, creativity, and empathy-building. We are also excited to hear our musicians and singers take the stage as well!
Deep appreciation and gratitude in advance to Gillian, Sabrina, Birch, Greyson, Amira, and Blake for the countless hours and many months of planning leading to such a beautiful community event. Also, our sincere thank you to the many families who have volunteered or will volunteer doing set building and more.
Thank you for your support,
Mike
| | ☀️ Billings Summer Program 🎣 | | |
We have so many exciting adventures planned this summer! Check out the offerings in detail HERE.
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Exploring the Backcountry | June 15-18
- Billings Backpacking Adventures | June 22-26
- GeoloG&D: Journey to Mt. St. Helens | July 7-10
- Gone Fishin’! | July 13-17
- Survival Showdown: Innovate, Create, DOMINATE! | July 13-17
- Cancelled: Nature Art July 20-24
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We are reviewing best uses of school email accounts with our 6th grade students, with a focus on separating “professional” and “personal” communication. School email accounts can help track assignments, send messages to teachers, and communicate to peers about academic activities or group work. They should not be used for casual communication or sharing links, pics, etc. that are unrelated to school activities. The multitude of reasons include academic organization, cybersecurity, respecting personal boundaries, and avoiding the social negativity and exclusion that often occurs on social media. Navigating modern technology is hard! We’ll continue our conversations and appreciate you checking in with students at home as well. A belated Happy Pi Day!! Ask your student about Pi and our cookie-measuring activities in math earlier this week!
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In advisory this week,7th graders have gone over the student packing list for the upcoming Central WA trip running April 8-10. If your child needs any gear, please submit the gear request form by this Friday (3/20). Additionally, please remember that the 7th graders will be off campus next Thursday (3/26) for a field trip to Heron’s Nest. We are so excited for these upcoming adventures!
In advisory this week, we checked-in with 8th grade students on their 8th Grade Projects. It was fascinating to learn about the variety of inquiries the students have - from exploring mental health in sports to analyzing recipes. We are excited to see how their topics develop for their final products! Additionally, students were given “Office Hours” this week to review their Winter Term work and catch up on missing assignments.
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✒️ Deans on the Scene 🎓
With the upcoming Winter Production comes the end of winter term! After the teacher inservice day on 3/30, students will return to the Fall and Spring schedule. 7th and 8th graders will return to the arts rotation and 6th graders will welcome back classes like Warm and Fuzzy and their grade-level arts programming.
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🎾Sports 🥅
Bowling
Registration is on-going for Bowling Season! Please see the program details below.
Program Details:
- Bowling will be on Mondays from 3:45 PM - 5:30 PM
- Location: Spin Alley Bowling. Transportation is always provided to and from Billings
- Season: April 6th - May 18th
Please complete the registration form and concussion waiver (on the second page) HERE. Once registration is complete and turned in at the Front Desk, parents will be added to GameChanger via email invite. GameChanger will be used to share the full schedule including games, provide updates and communication. Please install the app to stay connected.
Ultimate Frisbee Update:
We had an awesome game on Saturday 3/14 and Wednesday 3/17. Our next game will be:
- Saturday March 21st at Georgetown Playfield Soccer South 4:30 - 5:30 PM please be 30 minutes early for warmups. For the 6th and 7th grade boys, Team B will be playing.
Tennis Update:
Tennis practice will be held alongside the play practice this week!
| | In Health class students are wrapping up their “mental health poster projects.” Today students participated in a “poster session” where they exchanged information, completed a paper questionnaire about each disorder, and then engaged in a friendly competition to determine how much they had learned. Moving forward, 7th graders will be studying “Substance Abuse” in Health class, before moving on to our final Science unit: “Cells & Genetics.” A reminder that next Thursday (3/26) 7th graders will be headed to “Heron’s Nest Outdoor Education” facility for a full day field trip! | | |
We’re in the midst of our small-ish unit on circles in our 7th grade math classes! This aligns very nicely with Pi Day, which we will be celebrating in both classes next week with some fun games and some circular foods. Both classes clearly recall quite a bit from Ian’s class last year! Both will also have a quiz early next week. FTAT will likely wrap up this unit a bit before break, with Prealgebra finishing a bit sooner - in fact, the latter may have the opportunity between next week and break to take on some spicier high-school level trigonometry challenges!
Arts Department
Family Work Parties & Volunteer Opportunities
We’re in the final stretch for the Winter Term Arts Production and everything is coming together! A huge thank you to families who joined us for last Saturday’s work party and thank you in advance to those joining us this Saturday, March 21st, from 11am-2pm. It’s not too late to sign up! This Saturday is our final push for work.
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We are also looking for parent volunteers to support our two dress rehearsals and two evening performances (jobs are in shifts within the following times):
- 1st Dress Rehearsal: Wednesday, March 25th, 3:45-6:45pm
- 2nd Dress Rehearsal: Thursday, March 26th, 5:30-9:00pm
- Opening Night: Friday, March 27th, 5:30-9:00pm
- Closing Night: Saturday, March 28th, 5:30pm-9:00pm
There are assorted jobs–from costume support to snacks to post-show clean-up–all of which make the experience a great one for our students and staff. Please join us if you can! Sign-up below:
| Wondering about how to get tickets for the shows? It’s easy-peasy! Show up at the door, sign-in, and make your PWYC donation–that’s it! If you are coming with family that needs extra support with seating, please email Gillian. Gillian is also happy to answer any questions you may have about any aspect of the production. | |
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Upcoming Events: 📅
- All-School Production: March 27-28
- NO SCHOOL: Teacher In-Service Day, March 30
- 7th Grade Central WA Trip: April 8-10
- NO SCHOOL: Spring Break, April 13-17
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Holy Names Academy
Walk & Talk Tour for 7th Grade Parents
April 14 from 9:00-10:30am
HNA Walk & Talk Tuesdays are 90-minute events specifically for parents of 7th grade students. Parents have the chance to meet our administrative team, learn more about the high school application process, tour our beautiful campus, and see classes in action. Click here to sign up.
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Hands-on, social, and screen-free.
Register at squirrellyworkshop.com (spots are limited, invite a friend!).
Located in NE Seattle at: 5414 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105.
| | Embodied STEAM and/as Liberation:
Science, Imagination, and the Right to Be Free in Learning | | |
What happens when education honors the full humanity of every learner—their bodies, their cultures, their histories, and their radical imaginations? In this powerful address, Dr. Christopher Emdin calls us to reclaim education as a site of embodied liberation. Rooted in his work at the intersections of race, science, justice, and the arts, Dr. Emdin explores how learning environments that celebrate the rights of the body—movement, rhythm, expression, rest—and center imaginative thinking can transform not just classrooms, but communities. This is more than a talk. It’s a blueprint for rehumanizing education—and a celebration of what’s possible when we teach and learn with our whole selves.
Join us on Wednesday, March 25, 2026 from 5-6:15 PM (PT) to welcome Dr. Christopher Emdin, a writer and professor at Columbia University’s teacher college who holds a Ph.D in Urban Education with a concentration in Mathematics, Science, and Technology. He is best known for his book For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education, which he wrote from his own experiences growing up as a young person of color feeling undervalued in the classroom. He will be speaking to us about his writings, Hip Hop, and much more! “Education is not memorization. It is the activation of the imagination and a path towards liberation”- Dr. Emdin. Learn more about Dr. Emdin at his website.
This event is free and open to the public hosted by POCIS Northwest. Please RSVP to get our Zoom Link.
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Executive Function Workout!
Join me (Greg: Director of The Learning Center at Billings) for a regular morning EF workout from 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM on Mondays. Developing EF, or Executive Function, requires the exercise of the brain in specific ways. Drop in on any Monday morning to share stories and explore strategies for strengthening our EF muscles and by extension, that of our students.
Think of EF (Executive Function) as the CEO of the brain, helping us improve our self-regulation and aid our ability to make both short and long-term plans that enhance our performance in many aspects of our life. At a middle school pragmatic level this includes things like: doing your nightly HW, working on long term projects, or doing chores around the house. This is not a class. This is an opportunity to share collective wisdom. While 30 plus years as a middle school educator has certainly allowed me to garner some wisdom, I am really a facilitator on Monday mornings. Regular attendance is not a prerequisite. I don't need advanced notice. Drop in as you are able.
We will be meeting in person in Mercury during advisory and the beginning of first period. If you do not want to attend in person and prefer Zoom, let me know and I will send you a recurring Zoom link. Masks are not required but can be worn upon request.
And if Monday mornings are not a viable option for you but you want to learn more, don't hesitate to e-mail me, and let's find time to chat 1-1.
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