Weekly Email March 17, 2005

Dear all,

As we head toward Spring Break, some important attachments:

* Parents of Juniors: Please see the attached note from Director of College Guidance Amy Shapiro on the April/May SAT prep course and the April college trip.

* Please also read Director of Education Nick O'Han's message about a wonderful community event scheduled for April 9th.

* Also, an important word about Senior Projects. Back in January, I emailed the calendar for the Senior Projects (note - this is now the final calendar, and not a rough draft as indicated on the document). The 12th graders have been hard at work securing internships or other manner of field work on which their written papers will be based. Also as I wrote then, last year's field experiences ranged from spending time in LREI's Lower School to working at Otto Ristorante to interning in the psychiatric ward of a hospital to traveling to Poland to investigate pockets of resistance during World War II (and of course I could go on and on). I would like to outline the process for parents of students in all grades, as I think that it is important that everyone understand how we structure this concluding progressive educational experience:

1) In past years, some projects were less successful than they might have been because seniors picked a topic for their paper first and then were not able to find the most appropriate field work. After a great deal of discussion, the Senior Project Committee became convinced that it makes more sense for the students to find their field experience first, and then decide what aspects or facets of that experience they will research and write about. We believe that this process will help to ensure that each senior's project is an appropriately connected mix of academic study and engagement with the real world.

2) During the first two weeks, of the trimester, seniors will be in a single seminar class each day that will help them through the process of choosing a paper topic and getting a good way through the research and writing process. The students will engage in a great deal of peer review of each other's ideas and writing as they prepare for the upcoming field work. We will expect seniors in at 10:25 AM each morning, Monday through Thursday of both weeks. During these two weeks, seniors will also begin to meet with their Mentors. Each senior has a faculty Mentor who will help to ensure that the field work is going well and generally help to see the project to fruition.

3) During the field work, Seniors are committed to doing at least twenty hours per week - preferably closer to 25 to 30 - Monday through Thursday for the four weeks. On each Friday, seniors will once again come in to school in order to share each other's experiences and work on incorporating their journal entries into their papers.

4) After the field work period ends, the students will spend the next two weeks polishing their papers and preparing for Senior Project Presentation Evening on Wednesday, June 1. In groups, the seniors will spend much of this time reading drafts of each others' work and helping each other to hone their presentations. The exact schedule of these two weeks will be established early in the new trimester.

The Committee has spent a good deal of time adding structure to the Senior Project process in order to make sure that each senior has a rewarding and meaningful experience that will act as the capstone to their progressive high school education.

As always, please browse the web site at www.lrei.org for updates and information about goings on around the school.

Have a restful break and take care,

Tony


UPCOMING EVENTS

Friday, March 18, 12:00 PM - Spring Break begins

Monday, April 4, 8:30 AM - School resumes; start of Trimester III

Saturday, April 9, 7:00 PM - COFFEEHOUSE AT CHARLTON STREET!!

Friday, April 15 - School closed - High School Professional/Planning Day

Tuesday, April 19, 6:30 PM - High School Parent Reps Meeting, Charlton Street

Wednesday, May 4, 6:30 PM - The Big Auction



(Attachments are in .pdf format. To view these files, please download Adobe Reader, if you do not already have it. Click on this link or paste it into your browser: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html.

Weekly Email March 10, 2005

Dear all,

In last week's email, I wrote about leadership, choice, and risk as they relate to some of the outstanding achievements of our students. I am happy this week to continue this theme with more details of our students'' (and school's) accomplishments:

* From Media Arts Director Chris Reed: Five LREI High School students' films were selected for the Urban Visionaries Film Festival at the Museum of Television and Radio on March 23 & 24.

This is a great event for our kids.

Here are the films that were selected:

1. NEW YORK - Experimental 2:10 minutes
Produced by: Nick Heller and Kortney Hartz
This visual poem explores the expansive landscape of New York City.

2. MUSIC IN WORDS - Experimental 52 seconds
Produced By: Brunnell Velasquez
A poem about a young man's passion for playing the saxophone.

3. PROTEST? WHAT PROTEST? - Documentary 9:10 minutes
Produced By: Alex Zhang
Zhang investigates civil rights abuses and manipulation on the part of the NYC government during the Sunday Republic National Convention protest.

4. THRUSTING - Experimental 2:24 minutes
Produced By: Matt Levinson, Sam Haavisto, Adam Schroeder
A video poem displays a cacophony of images surrounding a boy's unrequited feelings for a girl.

5. BREAKTIME - Narrative 14:50 minutes
Produced By: Alex Coles
This is a comedy about three high school friends that cut class everyday. One day, one friend is late for their usual “break time.” The two other friends journey on a perilous path to find their buddy before they are caught by the villainous principal and get sent to the dungeon, uh, detention.

In addition, Jerelyn Rodriguez, also an LREI student, had a film or hers, from last summer at the Ghetto Film School, accepted as well.

6. SWEET AFFAIR - Narrative 5:45 minutes
Produced By: Jerelyn Rodriguez
A short narrative about a married man's affair and how the choices he makes changes three lives.

The first three films, plus Jerelyn's, are screening just once, on Wednesday, March 23rd, from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm

Films #4 & #5 are playing on both Wednesday, March 23rd, 1:00-3:00pm and Thursday, March 24th, 10am-12pm.

Chris notes that LREI is the group/school with the most films at the event!

* A record number of students have signed up for Honors Projects in the Spring. These projects will occur in Science, History, Writing, Photography, Spanish and Philosophy. When the time comes, I will be happy to share the results of these endeavors.

* Stefan Holt, a senior at LREI and President of the Student Body, spent ten days in Washington, DC, from February 26 until March 5, as one of two representatives of the state of New York in the 43rd Annual United States Senate Youth Program, sponsored by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. Stefan visited Capitol Hill, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, and the State Department. The program awards participants a $5,000 college scholarship for undergraduate studies as well.

The program began with a reception at which current representatives could meet alumni of the program. The alumni were arranged at different tables by profession with a table each for business, medicine, government, and journalism, among others. Some of the most famous alumni of the program include Senator Susan Collins from Maine and Karl Rove of the Bush White House. Stefan especially recalls a conversation with a Michigan delegate from the late seventies who is planning to start up his own brokerage firm. He advised Stefan that in business or in any other field, it pays to be “a qualitative person as well as a quantitative person.” Stefan has attended a number of student leadership programs but felt that this one “by far granted students the most access to the real world of politics.” The group met with President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, long-time White House Correspondent Helen Thomas, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and many other luminaries from Washington, DC. Stefan feels that the overall goal of the week was to “get the students excited about a life of public service.” He feels that the week really changed his life: “I feel that I learned how to become a better leader – by being around so many student leaders as well as real-world leaders.”

* The High School play - "And You Thought You Had Problems...A Contemporary Retelling of the Oedipus Cycle based on Sophocles' ancient Greek trilogy-Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone" - was masterful. Congratulations to Director Meghan Farley Astrachan and to a magnificent cast and crew.

* Last but not least - The School Spirit game was a wonderful event - students from all LREI basketball teams played against a conglomeration of faculty from all three divisions. A terrific time was had by all!

Take care,

Tony

Announcements/attachments:

* Reminder - Final exams/presentations will occur Tuesday, March 15 through Thursday, March 17. The school day Tuesday through Friday will start at 8:45 AM.

As always, please browse the web site at www.lrei.org for updates and information about goings on around the school.

Take care,

Tony


UPCOMING EVENTS

Tuesday, March 15, 6:30 PM - High School Parent Reps Meeting, Charlton Street

Tuesday, March 15 - Thursday, March 17 - Trimester II Final Exams/Presentations

Friday, March 18, 12:00 PM - Spring Break begins

Monday, April 4, 8:30 AM - School resumes; start of Trimester III

Saturday, April 9, 7:00 PM - COFFEEHOUSE AT CHARLTON STREET!!

Friday, April 15 - School closed - High School Professional/Planning Day

Tuesday, April 19, 6:30 PM - High School Parent Reps Meeting, Charlton Street




(Attachments are in .pdf format. To view these files, please download Adobe Reader, if you do not already have it. Click on this link or paste it into your browser: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html.

Weekly Email March 3, 2005

Dear all,

I would ask you to consider the following:

* A Roundtable group of high school students takes applications from and donates funds to worthwhile child-centered neighborhood programs. To fund these grants, the students go to the W.T. Grant Foundation and the Norcross Wildlife Foundation and obtain their own grants. After the Asian tsunami disaster, the group expands their programs to include international organizations.

* Two high school students join two faculty members to give presentations on their views of human rights education from the local, state and national to the General Assembly of the UN on Human Rights Day, December 10th.

* Two high school students, along with seven middle school students, speak at the American Library Association’s annual conference in Boston to of the Young Adult Library Services Association’s (YALSA) Best Books for Young Adults (BBYA) committee about their favorite selections from the growing body of young adult literature. Each student has read at least twenty, and in many case upwards of forty, books.

* A high school student, on his own (that is, not as part of a school program), applies to the United States Youth Senate and is chosen as one of two students to represent New York State.

* Two high school students, responding the tragedy in Asia, conceive, plan and bring to fruition a benefit concert involving off-Broadway stars that nets over $11,000 for UNICEF. In design and in results, this effort outstrips the combined efforts of all of the educators at the school.

What do all of these examples have in common? While some of the activities involve more adult involvement than others, they all demonstrate, for lack of a better word, leadership. In all of the above instances, LREI High School students have shown initiative, confidence and poise, and in each of these examples, they have earned the admiration of the adults around them. But how does a school teach leadership? Let me suggest two crucial elements:

Choice: One of the hallmarks of progressive education in general, and of the particular brand of progressive education practiced here at LREI in particular, is that students are given opportunity after opportunity to choose their own path. This happens in many ways, large and small, both inside and outside the classroom. In all classes, the projects that serve as the cornerstones of the curriculum all involve some element of choice – of content, of style, of approach. Some projects, such as a presentation in a foreign language class or a calculus population prediction project, may have a proscribed form but involve a choice of country or province. Other projects may allow students to choose to be biographical or autobiographical, fictional or non-fictional, often controversial, always thought-provoking. Outside the classroom, student activities are truly student-driven and run, from the ever-successful Step Team to the newly formed Chocoholics Club to the above-mentioned Community Service Roundtable.

Risk: The faculty and administration at LREI spend a great deal of time talking about taking risks. Being a laboratory school in the truest sense is at the heart of LREI’s history, and Elisabeth Irwin’s philosophy hinged on trying new things. Faculty members continually tweak their ideas for student projects and for pedagogical approaches; some inevitably work better than others. For every successful club (see the Step Team and others listed above), there are some that wither and fall away (the Ping Pong Club famously never survived the school’s lack of a Ping-Pong table). Progressive education can be, in a word, messy. Of course, taking risks does not mean anything goes. For all of the educational innovation, students must leave high school capable of writing an outstanding analytical essay, armed with a mass of historical and scientific and mathematical knowledge, able to speak and write a foreign language, proficient in the basic skills of the arts. However, when faculty test new things, they model for students what it means to lead rather than follow, to take the harder path rather than the easier one, to lean into the discomfort of an effort that may ultimately prove unsuccessful.

I am reminded of these twin pillars of choice and risk as I see our Seniors thinking about the field work they will do in April and May as the foundation of their Senior Projects. Needless to say, some of our Seniors need more direction than others, since teenagers – indeed, all of us – develop in different ways and at different rates. And, of course, those students who need more guidance will receive it. However, the number of students who have taken the initiative to go out and get internships or other work on their own – working in a recording studio, at Planned Parenthood, in a restaurant, in an auto shop, and on, and on – speaks to the habits of taking risks and making choices that they have developed during their time here. Maybe you can’t teach leadership, but you create an educational environment in which it can flourish in a hundred different ways, large and small. It’s art more than science, and I believe it’s happening here at LREI.

My evidence is the list above.

Best,

Tony


Announcements/attachments:

* Come to the High School play - tomorrow night and Saturday night! See below for details.

* Please see the attached letter from Director Phil Kassen to the LREI community.

* Reminder - Final exams/presentations will occur Tuesday, March 15 through Thursday, March 17.

* See the attached note invitation to the School Spirit Game, a friendly match between students and faculty/parents, occurring on Wednesday, March 9 at 3:30 PM.

* Honors Projects proposals for the third trimester are being accepted - the deadline is Monday, March 7 - see the attached note for details.

As always, please browse the web site at www.lrei.org for updates and information about goings on around the school.


UPCOMING EVENTS

Friday, March 4, 7:00 PM - The High School Play, Opening night !- And You Thought You Had Problems...A Contemporary Retelling of the Oedipus Cycle based on Sophocles' ancient Greek trilogy-Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, Chalrton Street PAC

Saturday, March 5, 7:00 PM - The High School Play, Closing night!-And You Thought You Had Problems...A Contemporary Retelling of the Oedipus Cycle based on Sophocles' ancient Greek trilogy-Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, Chalrton Street PAC

Tuesday, March 15, 6:30 PM - High School Parent Reps Meeting, Charlton Street

Tuesday, March 15 - Thursday, March 17 - Trimester II Final Exams/Presentations

Friday, March 18. 12:00 PM - Spring Break begins


(Attachments are in .pdf format. To view these files, please download Adobe Reader, if you do not already have it. Click on this link or paste it into your browser: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html.