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


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