Family Conference Day is tomorrow, Nov. 14!
Dear Families,
Tomorrow, we hold annual family conferences. Advisors and families meet to discuss the first part of the year, to discuss work habits, organizational skills, academic successes and challenges, extracurricular pursuits and to, hopefully, set goals. I encourage you to use part of your meeting time to set goals for the remainder of the year. This year, we have scheduled another conference day, April 17, 2009, all day. This conference day in the spring is a perfect opportunity to check in regarding goals set in the winter and to have final discussions on class choice for 2009-2010 and the community service requirement.
Speaking of community service, this week, eleventh and twelfth grade students in Ileana’s Fierce and Fabulous: Feminist Women Writers, Artists, and Activists were encouraged by Emma Reinhardt, the executive director of HERVoices based in Boston. Their mission is to facilitate cross cultural knowledge, openness, empathy and understanding by empowering and amplifying the voices of underrepresented women and girls. They collect personal testimonies from women and girls to develop participatory, multimedia presentations which are shared with diverse audiences. Emma shared stories from Kenya, in particular women peacekeepers in Wajir, with the class, who were moved by the presentation. From them, action will come.
Please remember, December 8th is a free day for students to participate in community service opportunities. There are no classes that day (the Monday after exams) and students do not have to report to school, unless the service opportunity requires it. Certainly, some in-school opportunities will be available here for in-school community service hours. Additional outside opportunities will be posted underneath the community service calendar located in the lobby. The outside opportunities will not be for everyone; please have a conversation with your child about what opportunity he or she would like to participate in that day. This is a terrific website to find volunteer opportunities around the city.
Finally, this Saturday students can volunteer with members of our community service roundtable at Sara D. Roosevelt Park. If interested, please meet at school at 9 AM sharp or at the park at 9:30 AM. Students should come dressed warmly and for outdoor work.
Have a wonderful conference day and a wonderful weekend,
Ruth
Updates and Announcements:
LREI School Night at the Apple Store
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
6:30 PM
12th Grade Arts Showcase
Come celebrate Senior Arts including Music, Film, Photography and Theatre
School Night at the Apple Store is designed to give students the opportunity to celebrate the works they have created using Apple technology. The store becomes a theater for students and teachers to showcase these projects for family, friends and teachers.
Apple Store Soho
second floor screening room
103 Prince Street, NYC
- The school’s calendar can be accessed by clicking here.
- Click here to view the 2008-2009 LREI Calendar.
- For general LREI Athletics news go to this link . This page will provide general announcements, game summaries, league standings and game recaps.
Attached is the first LREI fall newsletter for the year. In our ongoing drive to be more sustainable we are distributing it exclusively by email. Phil welcomes your feedback as we move forward with this and other green initiatives. For additional news highlights, please visit http://www.lrei.org/news/.
1. A message from Phil Kassen, Director-While I am always happy to have people drop in to see me, I am not always in my office. I will be available for drop in conversations, in the Sixth Avenue cafeteria, from 8:45AM-9:30AM on November 21st, December 5th, December 12th and December 17th.
2. From the LREI Family Handbook
Vacations: We remind families to only take vacations during LREI breaks and that your
child’s time away from school does not begin before the school break does or end
afterwards. Teachers use each scheduled day to support their classroom program goals
and the School’s mission. Students who miss days adjacent to breaks, or who take
vacations outside of our break times, miss work and can disrupt planned activities. This
affects the learning of the absent students and her/his classmates. In addition, divisional
or all-school assemblies often precede our longer vacations. These gatherings are
essential for creating the sort of community that drew you to LREI. Students sing, listen
to speakers, applaud their schoolmates, meet students in other divisions and generally
strengthen community ties.
We will not honor families’ requests to receive work their children will miss due to family
vacation plans. Families that are presented with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to make
an extended visit to another city, country, etc. should speak to their child’s principal.
In general, we are focused on making sure that we are using each moment of each
school day as effectively as possible. Part of being able to do this is to have each
student in school each of these days. Thank you for your support of these efforts.
3. Red is Green Committee:
This week The Red is Green Committee launched LREI’s monthly recycling drive. Each month you will have an opportunity to recycle items that are not easily recycled at home. November’s recycling drive is dedicated
to plastic bags, which currently cannot be recycled with regular plastics.You can find a box for collecting these bags by the reception desk at the Sixth Avenue campus as well as in the Charlton Street building. Our first day we collected over
150 bags! The monthly recycling drive is a fun and easy way for our kids to get involved in taking better care of our planet so please keep an eye out for the monthly drive in the lobby. Next month’s recycling drive will be
old sneakers!