As we enter the home stretch…
As we enter the home stretch towards the end of the school year, we enter a time at LREI, and I imagine in most schools, when we see the results of the students’ hard work over the past eight months. While this growth did not occur overnight, there is something about the spring that allows this development to shine.
I watched two members of our Fours class carry the attendance to Eileen at the reception desk the other morning. If this had been September they would have walked nervously towards her not sure of what to do, where to go or how to get back to class. They likely would have been holding the one slim sheet of paper together, with four hands, as if the weight of the responsibility it represented was too heavy for any one mere mortal. When our paths crossed this week, these rising Kindergarteners strolled down the hall, chatting away, handed Eileen the attendance and then skipped back to class. They are fully at home in the school, confident of their abilities and a little full of themselves. The fourth graders seem a little too big for the lower school as they write their original musical based on their study of immigration, ready to go to the new world of the middle school, while the fifth graders seem right at home there and are moving about the building on their own with none of the timidity displayed in the fall. They are ready to welcome their replacements rising from the lower school and to stop being the youngest students in the brownstones. At our weekly middle school assembly we watched the leads in the middle school musical perform for their division-mates. I remember when these two first stepped onto the stage, two years ago, as sixth graders. Talented even then, yet nowhere near as self-assured nor as charming. (Bugsy Malone, Jr. will be performed Friday at 7PM and Saturday at 2PM and 7PM, all in the Performing Arts Center, 40 Charlton Street.)
In ninth grade English today, as the teacher checked in with each student to make sure the past evening’s assignment had been completed, the group discussed the growth in their ability to annotate a text. Some students had developed their own method for doing this; others followed the teacher’s technique. The teacher asked the class to reflect on where they are now, “Is this where you want to be in tenth grade?” A great question and one that indicates expectations for each school year while acknowledging the ongoing, multi-year development that school holds for all students.
In classrooms throughout the school, we see evidence of all of the skills honed, content absorbed, talents fostered and a deepening of the students’ understanding of the world and their role in it. Most excitedly, we watch the seniors come and go, as much members of our alumni body as they are high school students. These young adults are prepared and ready to go.
Another project that has blossomed this spring is the work on our expansion project in the Charlton Street building. What was a hole in the ground is now clearly the foundation for our future Arts Pavilion. The townhouse is becoming its former self and will be completely renovated and restored this summer. Soon after work ends, the high school’s Science Lab B will receive its first ever renovation and the lobby of 40 Charlton Street will grow into its new, more mature self throughout the summer. We will also see newly renovated classrooms in the Sixth Avenue building when we return in the fall. More on the growth and development of our spaces next month.
Best,
Phil