Weekly Email May 12, 2005

Dear all,

This is proving to be a particularly fruitful year in terms of the High School's service to the community. In last week's email, I talked about the community service-themed Buddy Day activities and the large number of High School students who will be walking in Sunday's AIDS Walk New York. However, the High School has become affiliated with a number of other organizations and will be providing a variety of services over the next few weeks:

* City Year: From their website: "An Action Tank for national service, City Year seeks to demonstrate, improve and promote the concept of national service as a means for building a stronger democracy." Senior Philip Ellison is doing his Senior Internship with City Year, and his experience has been so successful that he will be joining their corps for a full year (Americorps modeled their year-long program on CityYear's). He will also lead a group of LREI students on Saturday, May 14th to participate in City Year's 2nd Annual One Harlem Service Day. Activities will include painting, creating murals, and landscaping.

* Earth Celebrations: From their website: "Earth Celebrations is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering ecological awareness through the arts." Earth Celebrations has its annual Rites of Spring Pageant on Saturday, May 21st. Many LREI students have volunteered to help with the pageant itself, which for 15 years has involved bringing costumes, giant Puppets, Samba bands, and art performances to the community gardens of the Lower East Side and the East Village. Students have also volunteered to help with pre-pageant publicity and even with a puppet-making workshop the day before the pageant.

* The Community Service Roundtable spearheaded the effort to raise money for the Tsunami Relief Drive. The Benefit Concert raised over $17,000 for UNICEF. In addition, the donation drive which was carried out in stores and restaurants around The Village as well as in the corridors and classrooms of the school buildings netted another $3,000, which was distributed to five organizations: Heifer Project, CARE, Habitat for Humanity, Knightsbridge International and Save the Children.

* In the evening on Saturday, May 21, we will have our last Coffeehouse of the year, and it will have a Human Rights theme. Stay tuned for more details ...

* Finally, in Tuesday's assembly, the new President of the student body Michelle Hererra presented Biology and Environmental Science teacher Bhawanie Singh with the 2004 President's Call to Service Award for the volunteer work he has done on child abuse, spousal abuse and literacy for immigrants. Bhawanie raised awareness of these issues through his weekly radio show to the community - The Bhawanie Singh Sunday Night Show - which is aired every Sunday night from 9:00 – 11:00 PM on WWRL 1600 AM Radio. He was nominated by the North American Institute for Psychotherapy and Counseling on behalf of the Indo-Caribbean community of the tri-state region. Congratulations, Bhawanie!!

Other announcements:

* Reminder: Parents of tenth and eleventh graders - and interested others - please see the attached letter from Director of College Guidance and Eleventh Grade Dean Amy Shapiro about the NYU offerings available to Juniors and Seniors in Fall, 2005. Applications are due on Tuesday, May 17. I am attaching this in both .pdf and MS Word format for your convenience!

* LREI High School films are once again getting noticed! This Saturday, at the Westport Youth Film Festival, the following films are playing:

Haavisto, Samuli: "Let It Ride" (Naked Riot music video, starring Matt Levinson)
Rodriguez, Jerelyn: "I Never Loved Him" (Minimester poetry film)
Zhang, Alex: "Protest? What Protest?" (Documentary about the protests surrounding last year's NYC Republican National Convention)

Jerelyn also has another film playing at the Festival, "A Sweet Affair," which she made last summer at the Ghetto Film School.

* The High School Jazz Band gave bravura performances last Wednesday at the Big Auction and again last Friday with tap dancer and LREI parent Derrick Grant ("Bring in Da Noise ...") at a special Lower School assembly. You can catch them again at the Spring Concert on Thursday May 19 or at the Coffeehouse on the 21st!

* As promised, attached you will find a list of our High School seniors' college acceptances for the past two years and this year's list of the seniors' plans for next year. We are proud of their accomplishments and excited about their choices. Our Dean of College Guidance has already begun her work with this year's 11th graders and their families. As I reported in my April 28 Weekly Email,the students spent two days visiting colleges in and around Philadelphia in order to help them to begin to formulate their ideas, goals and questions as they move into their senior year. Once again, congratulations to our seniors on their excellent choices and good luck to our juniors as they enter an important time in their lives. For more information on our college guidance process please see the College Admissions Process section of our web site.

* Finally, once again, please note the upcoming events listed below, including the Spring Chorus Concert (see attached flyer) on May 19 and the RESCHEDULED COFFEEHOUSE on May 21. Note also that the May 18 Parent Reps Meeting HAS been rescheduled for Monday, May 23.

Take care,

Tony


UPCOMING EVENTS

Thursday, May 19, 6:30PM - Spring Chorus Concert, Charlton Street PAC

Saturday, May 21, 7:00PM - Coffeehouse, Charlton Street PAC - NOTE NEW DATE!!

Monday, May 23, 6:30 PM - High School Parent Reps Meeting, Charlton Street

Tuesday, May 24, 6:30 PM - High School Sports Awards Evening

Thursday, May 26, 6:30 PM - High School New Families Evening

Wednesday, June 1, 6:30 PM - Senior Project Evening

Thursday, June 9, 6:30 PM - Senior Banquet

Friday, June 10, 1:00 PM - Graduation!



As always, please browse the web site at www.lrei.org. Also, note the links to the Middle and Lower School weekly emails on the right. Please take a look at what the students in the other two divisions are up to!

All 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.
If you are having trouble opening the attachments, go to http://www.lrei.org/weekly/ms/ to access the files.