Dear LREI Community,
Hello! I hope your family’s return from Spring Break was easy and that the return of winter cold has not been too challenging. I, for one, am eager for the promise of spring.
Yesterday you received an invitation to join our 100th anniversary celebration by attending the upcoming Centennial Shindig!! What’s a shindig? A shindig is a party like no other. We will join together, generations of LREI parents, friends of the school, current and former employees, and alumni to have a huge bash of a birthday party! A large group of LREI parents are hard at work planning this event and assure me that it will be impossible not to have a great time. So, what are you waiting for?
When: Thursday, April 28, 2022, 6:30p.m. – 10:30 p.m.
Where: Edison Ballroom, 240 West 47th Street
What: The Centennial Shindig, a fun, casual, community celebration that also raises
essential funds for LREI’s robust financial aid program.
The event will include a silent auction, raffles, fund-a-cause, cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, music,
dancing, photo booth, and more!
Questions? Check out our FAQ or email us at shindig@lrei.org.
THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS EVENT. CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE.
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What exactly will we be celebrating at the Shindig? I am glad you asked and I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately. Clearly, we are celebrating the school’s big day. 100 years! The school was founded just after the First World War and the last pandemic and survived and, ultimately, thrived through good times and bad. And here we are, the beneficiaries of the rigorous attention to the tenets of progressive education, a truly deep understanding of the opportunities presented by the children’s development, a program that is academically and intellectually challenging in real and authentic ways, and a commitment to the humanity of all people.
I thought about these goals, really the mission of the school, as I watched the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. There was so much going on there – her truly impressive accomplishments, civics, race and racism, politics, issues of criminal justice reform, immigration policy, gender, and on and on. To be able to have understood and contextualize the questions and answers you needed a fairly good understanding of data, the law, the criminal justice system, or have the ability to find the answers, to ask good questions, and to seek out assistance. This is a clear example of how our progressive program connects content and academic skills to the issues of the day and, with age-appropriate opportunities, allows students to make connections to the wider world. Actually, we don’t allow for this, we require it.
As I watched and listened to the hearings, I so wished that school was in session. I so value being with our students during moments like that one. They are passionate and opinionated, they ask excellent questions, and they love to make connections to what they have studied in school. The questions of gender identity, the percentages of times that Judge Jackson had given which type of sentence, discussions of identity in schools and elsewhere, and deep dive into the political and cultural landscape we find ourselves in all would have been fertile ground for classroom conversation. I hope that these conversations do happen between now and the day when Judge Jackson becomes Justice Jackson, which will be a very important day indeed.
I also thought about what our students would miss in these conversations, how we need to bolster their LREI experiences to truly understand the issues, the questions and the answers. I think that for this reason, and for many others, LREI, like many schools, needs to spend more time helping students learn to digest the massive amount of data that comes our way. There is the ever-present question of understanding the “other” side. From my POV (and I admit to having some biases here), there is a question when examining the hearings as to whether the challenges lobbed at Judge Jackson were legitimate differences of opinion and belief or if they were designed to score political points regardless of belief. That would be a terrific conversation to have with the students.
Back to my original question – what will we be celebrating at the Shindig? We will celebrate being back together, as a community, in person, for the first time in a long time. And, we will be celebrating the 100th birthday of the school and we are celebrating all of the change the school’s progressive program has brought to the world of education and all of the change that has been brought to the world due to the fact that our “Students graduate from our diverse community as active participants in our democratic society, with the creativity, integrity and courage to bring meaningful change to the world.”
See you on April 28.
P.S. I will be in touch over the weekend regarding mask wearing next week. We are waiting to receive the results of Friday’s PCR testing before we make a final decision.
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Visibility: Portraits of Love
After a hiatus of a few years, we will once again be hosting Visibility – Portraits of Love – Photo Exhibit. Organized by the Parents Association’s GSA, you are invited to contribute photographs to this important and longstanding LREI tradition. The description from the GSA is below. They are hoping to receive submissions by April 4.
Submission Guidelines
What your portrait should include:
A photo of yourself or you/ your family/ with someone in your life who identifies as LGBTQ+
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A title, in bold and centered, identifying the people in the photo. Font: New Times Roman font size: 20
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A couple of lines describing how the people in your photo are important to you. Font: New Times Roman font size: 16
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Please ask permission; Not everyone is comfortable and out publicly, and this exhibition will be on display at Charlton Street and 6th Avenue.
Size: letter (8.5” x 11”)
Orientation: portrait
Margins: 1” minimum on all sides
How to submit
Send as an email attachment in as a Google Doc, Word Doc or pdf file to lreivisibility2022@gmail.com
Naming your file: your first name your last name.doc or .docx or .pdf
ex, philkassen.pdf
More than one portrait? Please add the number in the file name: philkassen1.pdf, philkassen2.pdf, etc.
Portraits are due no later than Monday, April 4th.
However, we appreciate receiving portraits as soon as possible.
Portraits will be exhibited at both the Sixth Avenue and Charlton Street buildings from May 2- 13, 2022.