Adolescent Issues

Dear Families:

The Adolescent Issues program is an important part of the LREI middle school educational expereince. In general, The Adolescent Issues program has three goals. They are:

  1. to help students develop good discussion skills. This includes the ability to explain themselves clearly and the more difficult skill of active and effective listening.
  2. to provide factual information about, and opportunities for discussion on, a wide variety of topics important to pre-adolescents and adolescents.
  3. to provide the skills for, and opportunities to practice, reflective and informed decision making.

We achieve these goals through our weekly Adolescent Issues meetings. These meetings are led by the homeroom advisors, me (5th and 6th grades) and Phil (7th and 8th grades). During the first half of the school year, the faculty and the students choose the discussion topics. Throughout the year the 5th Grade will continue to have their weekly meeting with a wide range of topics. Starting in January, the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades will begin the sexuality, substance abuse, and personal safety portion of the Adolescent Issues program. Below you will find a list of the general areas of discussion for these meetings.

  • Values and their role in decision making
  • Sexuality and sexual/gender stereotypes
  • Puberty, reproductive anatomy, and physiology
  • Responsibilities of sexual activity
  • Relationships
  • Peer Pressure and refusal strategies
  • Substance abuse
  • Personal safety

Though the general topics are the same throughout the grades, the actual content and activities differ with the age of the students. However, all of the discussions are based in the belief that as we cannot make all of children’s decisions for them, we must help them to become informed and responsible decision makers. Current discussion and activities include:

Fifth Grade — The fifth grade spent much of the first two quarters discussing issues related to the transition to middle school. These discussions focused on the responsibilities that come with the independence that is part of the middle school experience. We have also spent a fair amount of time talking about friendships and the many pressures that can exert a push or pull on these relationships. Most recently, our attention has turned to the upcoming middle school dance and the many questions and issues associated with this important middle school event. In future discussions, we will talk more about issues of school culture, personal safety, and social justice.

Sixth Grade — The sixth grade recently finished an extended unit on the people and forces that influence us. Throughout the unit, we explored the positive and negative aspects of peer pressure. In small groups, students created original skits that showed situations where individuals were being influenced to do things that they didn’t want to do. This led to several discussions on refusal strategies and using peers for positive support. Over the next few weeks, we will explore issues related to personal and home safety. After the Spring Break, we will focus our discussion on substance abuse and puberty and sexuality.

Seventh Grade — The seventh grade is currently involved in a “Values Auction.” This exercise helps the students to define the values that they rely on to make decisions and to examine what happens when their values conflict with those of their peers, their teachers or their parents. Discussion in the next few weeks will include a unit on Substance Abuse and, after Spring Break, a series of discussions on puberty and sexuality.

Eighth Grade — The eighth grade spent much of November and December discussing Substance Abuse. We began this year looking at how teens can foster a healthy lifestyle. The students are working individually or in small groups to research and present lessons on topics including fitness, nutrition, stress and eating disorders. The teachers will also address some of these issues and others that the students did not choose to investigate. Upcoming topics include puberty and sexuality and gender stereotyping.

We feel that an important part of this program is the on-going discussion and learning that will hopefully take place at home. We encourage students to discuss the week’s topics with you. To support these home discussions we are planning a number of Parent Adolescent Issues evenings. They will take place on the following evenings:

  • Thursday, February 24th from 6:30PM to 8:00PM: 5th Grade evening
  • Monday, February 28th from 6:30PM to 8:00PM: 6th/7th Grade evening
  • We will do an 8th grade evening towards the end of the year, which will focus on issues related to the transition to high school

I look forward to seeing you on these evening. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the Adolescent Issues program.

On another front, I’d like to say a few words about the upcoming ERBs: As you are aware, students are currently preparing for the ERBs, which they will take the week of February 14th. The ERBs represent one piece of the assessment puzzle at LREI and it is important that they are seen in this light. They convey useful information, but not the full-picture of a child’s achievement. While the content of the ERbs is generally aligned to grade-level expectations, there are areas where this is not the case. For example, a math concept that appears on the 6th grade test, may not be addressed in our curriculum until the 7th grade and teaching this concept out of context may not always make sense. Your child’s teachers will make every attempt to identify these particular alignment areas. So while much of our ERB prep is focused on reviewing concepts that have been addressed in the curriculum, teaching general test prep skills, and helping students to feel comfortable with standardized testing conditions, our focus tends not to be on “cramming” new concepts. In the attachments below, there is some specific grade-level information about the ERB and our preparation process that you should find useful.

This Week’s Attachments

(Click on the links below to open the attachments. If you are having trouble opening the links, go to http://www.columbia.edu/~mis14/ to access the files.)

1) 5th Grade ERB Letter

2) 6th Grade ERB Letter

3) 7th/8th Grade ERB Letter

4) Middle School Dance Permission Slip

5) Information about the Middle School Musical

6) Tsunami Benefit Concert

7) Middle School Literary Festival

8) On Colds: A Note from Nurse Kitty Highstein

Of School-wide Interest . . .

1) For those who are interested in the Middle School Musical, please read attachment #5.

2) To all 5th Grade Families from Melissa, Gina, and Heather: Tomorrow, Friday, February 4th, the 5th grade will be taking a trip to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. We will be leaving at approximately 10:00 a.m. in order to meet our 11:00 a.m. appointment. While at the museum students will view the Egyptian Collection. They will make observations by participating in writing and sketching activities. We will return to LREI at approximately 1:30. Please have your child bring a bag lunch to school next Friday.

3) The LREI Art Auction 2005 ends tonight 8:30PM. The auction is being held at the I-20 Gallery, 529 West 20th Street – Thursday, February 3. Reception and final bidding will take place on Thursday, February 3rd from 6:00pm to 8:00pm. ADMISSION IS FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC . Last year, the auction raised almost $110,000 for LREI’s Tuition Remission Program. Help make the 2005 Art Auction the most successful yet!

4) Our first middle school dance of the year is scheduled for tomorrow, Friday, February 4th at 7PM in the Charlton Street PAC. The permission form for the dance can be accessed through the link at the top of the page. We must have a completed permission form in order for your child(ren) to attend. To support the school’s on-going tsunami relief efforts, students are invited to make a donation, seek sponsors for the dance, make things for the bake sale, or purchase something from the bake sale.

5) Next Monday evening, February 7th 2005, LREI is hosting a benefit concert to aid survivors of the Asian Tsunami. Produced by High School students Alison Wiggins and Javier Picayo, the evening will feature well-known Broadway performers with all proceeds going to UNICEF. The show starts at 6:30 PM in the PAC. Tickets will be sold each morning this week in the lobbies of both buildings. Please see the attached flyer for additional information. I look forward to seeing you at what promises to be an extraordinary evening of fabulous entertainment in support of a very worthy cause.

6) 6) For the past few months a hearty band of middle school students have been preparing for the Lego League Robotics Competition. The competition will take place this Sunday, February 6, from 8:00am to 4:00pm at Riverbank State Park (Riverside Drive and West 145th St.) As team facilitator Sherezada Acosta writes, “We are getting closer to the date and we can feel the tension and excitement in the air! This week we made some great progress with the robots. Among our successes were three types of arms, which the group perfected: a complex robot arm that can drop balls into a basket, deliver food to some toy pets, and open a small Lego gate, another capable of picking/pushing a CD and moving glasses from the table, and one final arm that puts a tray of food into a small Lego table. Although there are still many programming and construction details we have to work through to make them work consistently and effectively, we are excited about the recent progress. At the moment, two of the biggest obstacles the students are currently working on is making all these arms easily interchangeable and getting the robot to move in a straight path (since the robot has a tendency of moving in a inconsistent curved path). We are working on a new base with treads that might be capable of solving the problem… we hope!” You can visit the following link to get more information about the competition and the challenges on which the team members have been working: http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=13420

7) Reminder: We are now in the process of organizing this year’s Middle School Literary Festival, which is scheduled for Wednesday, February 16th. This annual event, which is a celebration of the writing and reading that goes on in our community everyday, is an excellent opportunity for parental involvement. Please read the attached letter from Middle School Dean of Students Noni Polhill for more information.



Looking Ahead . . .

On the LREI web site additional information about upcoming events can be found at http://www.lrei.org/caleven/index.html (the middle school events page can be found at http://www.lrei.org/midschool/Events.html)

  • Friday, February 4th, 11AM – 5th Grade to Brooklyn Museum
  • Friday, February 4th, 7:00PM — MS Dance
  • Thursday, February 10th, 8:45AM — PA Exec. Bd. Mtg., 6th Ave. caf.
  • Friday, February 11th — HS Arts Festival
  • Monday, February 14th, 9:00AM — Comm.Serv.Mtg.
  • Tuesday, February 15th, 8:15AM — MS Parent Rep Mtg.
  • Tuesday, February 15th – Thursday, February 17th — ERBs
  • Wednesday, February 16th — Literary Festival
  • Friday, February 18th, 8:30AM — Lit.Comm.Mtg.
  • Monday, February 21st — Presidents’ Weekend – school closed
  • Tuesday, February 22nd — Presidents’ Weekend – school closed
  • Thursday, February 24th, 8:45AM — PA Exec. Bd. Mtg. w/Phil, 6th Ave.caf
  • Thursday, February 24th — LS Art Show
  • Friday, February 25th — LS Art Show
  • Friday, February 25th – 6th Grade to the Met (arms and armor exhibit)

Don’t forget to check the LREI website for updates and interesting information – http://www.lrei.org.

Be well,

Mark

To view the attached .pdf files, please download Adobe Reader, if you do not already have it. Click on the following link or paste it into your browser: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

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