April 30th, 2009
A letter from Nick O’Han:
Learning through Service and Civic Engagement at Elisabeth Irwin
Community service has been at the heart of our mission and program since the High School was founded in 1941. Elisabeth Irwin wrote eloquently about educating the “whole child’ and that mission didn’t end with elementary school. Adolescents she believed, more than ever needed to learn through “vital contacts with the pulsing life of their own community. Education meant more than training the mind and High School, more than making entrance into the “best college” the be-all and end-all of the high school years. Not that our students, since EI’s first graduating class in 1945, haven’t been a accepted by the best colleges in America. No doubt one of the reasons they have has from the beginning been their ability to combine knowledge with the ability to express their ideas, and to put their values and knowledge to work making the community a more just and democratic place. This quality makes Little Red/Elisabeth Irwin graduates stand out in school and in life – and it always has.
For us today, as for Elisabeth Irwin’s faculty, the High School is where an academic program unique in New York City high schools is followed up with community service. As Irwin wrote, “close relation with immediate community through work with neighborhood agencies and exploration of life in the great city” was central to learning and citizenship education that was at the heart of it. She envisioned a school in which high school students would assume the role of junior citizens who spent much time in the community performing volunteer service and engaging in meaningful civic endeavor.That has never been truer around here. Today’s High School faculty constantly asks itself how we can give new life to the spirit of the school’ social and intellectual and pedagogical origins. Our core mission remains the same. Our current version of the mission statement says that, “our goal is to educate students to become independent thinkers and lifelong learners and to pursue academic excellence and individual achievement in a context of respect for others and service to the community.” But how do we make the ideal come alive for today’s students and tomorrow’s. That is our challenge. How we can offer students opportunities for community service experiences that are connected and coherent, reflective and sustainable, and ultimately transformative? How do we adapt programs to our student’s lives in a very different world than the one that greeted the first graduates in 1945?
One way, appropriate to today’s global community and new traditions of social entrepreneurship, is by expanding what we mean by “neighborhood agencies.” Certainly, it continues to mean neighborhoods in the City itself. Our High School students, spearheaded by “Student Action” have “adopted” Sara Roosevelt Park. Many weekends will find our students volunteering there. And almost every curricular area finds a real-world extension through this work: history, civics, social psychology, city planning, landscape design, biology and horticulture. They learn organizational skills, managerial, civic skills. One of the projects we have going is working with the Youth Action Group of the Citizens Committee for Children to create a Friends of the Sara Roosevelt Park among local residents and businesses that will contribute to the park’s upkeep. This involves initiative, diplomacy, letter writing and lobbying. It gives students the chance to feel competent and successful in real-world efforts they care about and, best of all, to give expression to their ideals in practical ways. It’s about establishing fellowship across class and ethnic lines, and about forming democratic communities with diverse populations. Our purpose here is not charity, it’s reciprocal, collaborative civic endeavor. Plus its fun! Fun to feel tired after a long day with your sleeves rolled up and so satisfying to see the results. Not only have we raised money, we’ve raised community awareness, solved problems and we’ve made the park look more beautiful every time we leave!
But our notion of neighborhood extends further than the lower East Side of Manhattan. In recent years it has extended to New Orleans, where we are currently working with two different student groups plus a film making/oral history project all three of which are devoted to rallying community members to develop pride in their neighborhoods and claim ownership of the process of recovering from the most devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina. And it extends even farther, though it’d just a click away on the computer. We continue to support the work of the Stephen Shames Foundation, which finances quality education in war-torn Uganda. This year we raised over $2,000.00 to support student tuition for war- and AIDS orphans and former child soldiers. These students have visited EI in the past, and next year we hope they will spend more time here. So far upwards of 70 graduates of the program have attended universities around the world as they reclaim their lives. Imagine what applying their skills, values and knowledge to this noble effort means to our students not to mention the people we are working with.
These are just a few of the ways High School students today continue to live the values of the school. The more things change, the more they remain true to timeless ideas. We still believe with Elisabeth Irwin that “life shouldn’t wait for school to end before beginning,” but that “school is life,” and that education is growth, which “comes by experiencing it.” Elisabeth Irwin High School is still a place where students “experiment with life‚” and gain a democratic education not by studying ideals in a textbook, but by living them.
Nicholas O’Han
Important Message
Dear LREI Families,
As you know, from time to time, members of our Village or New York City community with a visible public profile participate in the admissions process and, as the process moves towards its logical conclusion, join the LREI Community. For understandable reasons this can be exciting for all, parents, faculty and students alike. It is important, however, that we not do anything to alter the LREI experience for these families. Many well known parents have chosen our school because they feel at home here and often comment on how they appreciate being allowed to “just be parents.” It is important that this sense of LREI as a safe community, which begins during the admissions process, continues as these families begin to make a place for themselves in our school. I ask that you please remember that when these parents visit the school, when they participate in school activities or when they are, simply, here as moms and dads, that they are hoping to be treated in the same manner as you would treat any other member of the community.
Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
Phil
Special Announcements
- Congratulations Ruth!! She and John are proud parents of a beautiful baby boy, Penn Edward Jurgensen, born Sunday, April 26th at 10:16 AM, 9 lbs. 8oz.See pictures attached below.
Please send any messages for Ruth to the High School front desk, or via email to:
MDGottlieb@LREI.org
- Red is Green:
May will be our last recycling drive for the LREI school year. During the month of May we are teaming up with the Community Service Committee. We will be collecting and recycling travel size toiletries. These items will be donated to the Outreach Program at St. Francis Xavier Church on West 15th Street. We need the following UNUSED travel size toiletries: soaps, shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer, toothbrushes, toothpaste, shaving cream and razors. These items will be given out free primarily to homeless individuals who come to the church where they are offered food, clothing and toiletries.
- Radio Show, a message from Drama Director Meghan Farley Astrachan.
LREI HS students help kickoff opening festival for WNYC Radio’s (NPR) 93.9 FM and AM 820
The Greene Space: A New Theater of Sound at The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space-a new multipurpose, multiplatform street-level studio and performance venue located right next door to the High School on Charlton Street.
“The Fall of the City”, a 1937 CBS radio drama by Archibald MacLeish that starred Orson Welles and Burgess Meredith, is considered one of the most socially significant – and boldly experimental – works in the history of radio. WNYC will present this still highly relevant work by revisiting it in its original context and re-presenting it in a production for our time.
Both evenings, Sunday 5/3 and Monday, 5/4 will begin with a short audio documentary, narrated by Radio Lab host Jad Abumrad, recounting the original broadcast, featuring interviews with film director Peter Bogdanovich, film and television critic Leonard Maltin, and Oxford Book of American Poetry editor David Lehman. Archival audio of MacLeish discussing his work as “a play about the way people lose their freedom” and clips from the original production are included as well. Written and produced by Sarah Montague.
A new production of this powerful classic will follow. The cast includes Kevin Cristaldi as The Announcer, with Jonathan Hadary, Paul Hecht, Karen Kandel, Brian Lewis, Steven Rattazzi, James Rebhorn, Barbara Rosenblat, and Rocco Sisto. The Chorus features students from Elisabeth Irwin High School and the theatre program at Eugene Lang College: The New School for Liberal Arts, with WNYC staff members. Wendy and Lisa, the dynamic musical duo formerly of Prince and the Revolution, have composed an original soundscore. Play directed by Sarah Montague; chorus directed by Arthur Yorinks.
Info on website:
http://www.thegreenespace.org/thegreenespace/events/2009/may/03/fall-city/
http://www.thegreenespace.org/thegreenespace/events/2009/may/04/fall-city/
To participate or for more information contact Meghan Farley Astrachan: mastrachan@lrei.org
Click below for link to the flyer
Friends and family can buy tickets to the live performance at http://www.wnyc.org/splas.html
or listen in on May 4th from 7-8pm on 93.9 FM!
Please visit