April 28, 2022
Dear LREI Families,
First of all, before anything else, I want to express my gratitude to all of the members of the committee who put in huge numbers of hours creating this evening’s Centennial Shindig. We are thankful for your work on behalf of LREI. I look forward to seeing all of you at this evening’s event. What? You didn’t buy tickets and now you want to attend? No problem. Here is a link – choose a ticket level and we will see you at 6:30 p.m. We really do want everyone to attend and to take advantage of our “Pay What You Can” pricing. Have a ticket and want to check out the items you can bid on? Click here. I am so excited!
You know what else I am excited about? It has been so great to see the classes moving out into the world in the last few weeks and to look forward to more of the same between now and June 15. The better weather and the culmination of so much of this year’s work mean that there have been some truly transformative expeditions. Let me share a few examples.
Earlier this week the 4s/K traveled all of the way to Little Red Square with art teacher Carin to sketch the beautiful flowers. Not far, but a perfect way to think about the changing seasons, growth, and getting older.
Closer to home, the third grade spent part of yesterday at the Greenpoint Public Library at the first ever Lenape curated exhibition. Check it out.
The middle school is preparing for their overnight trips in a few weeks. Fifth and sixth graders will head to an environmental education center upstate. Seventh graders are headed to Philadelphia to continue their studies of early American history and the eighth graders are headed to our nation’s capital. These trips, usually taken in the fall, promise to be real highlights for our middle schoolers.
Eighth graders have been engaging with the world through their social justice project work for the past few months. This ongoing project came to fruition on Tuesday in our annual Social Justice Teach-In. What a pleasure it was to welcome parents of eighth graders into the building to join the fifth – seventh graders in the workshops that the oldest middle schools had created. Engaging with a variety of topics from immigration and global warming to homelessness and the gender pay gap in sports, it was a day of learning and thinking for all. These students have been meeting with experts in a variety of fields in-person and virtually for months. We are so proud of their engagement and passion and the skills and deeply critical thinking they brought to these projects. You can listen to the podcasts that each group created here.
Moving to the high school, “Welcome back Juniors!” Our eleventh graders spent last week, in small groups, investigating a topic of their choosing in one of six locales. For example, one group traveled to Charleston, SC to study climate change in a coastal community, while a group of classmates was in Albuquerque, NM studying indigenous rights and environmental justice. These groups, and four others, have been working on these projects since the first day of school and we were so excited to see them go out into the field after a pandemic imposed hiatus.
Finally, the seniors. Seniors spend the majority of the third trimester involved in independent projects related to an area of interest, often involving internships and/or deep research and experience. I asked senior project coordinator Karyn Silverman for a few examples.
- One student is exploring film, specifically direct cinema. For her subject, she’s focusing on two classmates who are writing and recording an album of original music. Intriguingly, her “essential question” has changed quite a bit since starting the project. Her original EQ was: “Is direct cinema still valuable in an age of constant and easily accessible methods of documentation?” In her most recent blog post, she amended that question to: “Do the inherent intrusive and voyeuristic tendencies of direct cinema call for the remodeling or deprecation of such genre?” Time well spent.
- One senior wrote in her most recent blog post, “Ever since I took Daniel Li’s Neuroscience class, I’ve been fascinated by the field. There was a specific quote that stuck out to me: ‘Everything Psychological is Simultaneously Biological.’ Essentially everything going on in our minds is the product of the communication between neurons, some biological mechanism.” She found an internship in a neuroscience lab at HESS Medical Center at Mount Sinai.
- We have a large group of “sewists” this year. The goal for two of these students is to create sustainable clothing through a combination of upcycling/visible mending and through designing and stitching clothing from scratch, using sustainable materials. They are participating in a sewing seminar taught by our costume designer, Grace Jeon.
- Another student is creating a “finding aid” for the LREI archives, with support from Yukie Ohta, LREI’s archivist (eighth grade mom and trustee.) This student has cataloged everything thus far and is working on rearranging them into usable categories. She’s also working on an archives policy for LREI. This project grew out of a junior/senior history class focused on LREI’s Centennial.
- We have a number of students who are involved in arts focused projects. These include students who are spending the majority of their days creating a body of work – painting, drawing, sculpture, and a student who is interning with Adam Hyndman. This student wrote, “For the academic bucket, I will be engaging with texts and other pieces of media that will teach me more about the history of theater, the history of racism in theater (minstrelsy), the representation of people of color in media, and anti-racism.”
- A student who interned with Representative Jamie Raskin wrote, “From picking up hundreds of constituent calls, to attending committee hearings, to giving tours of the U.S Capitol to witnesses, I’ve never felt more unsure of what I was doing in my entire life. This is my first experience truly feeling like the dumbest person in the room, blindly walking along the mysterious trail of American politics. Yet each day I’ve worked here I’ve felt more and more sure of what I was doing. In that regard, I’ve already accomplished more than I could’ve imagined.”
And there are 55 or so more – teachers, cooks, travelers, interns, researchers, and on and on. When they return to campus in two weeks the seniors will prepare to present their work to their parents, teachers, and honored guests and will complete writing and reading assignments, and will participate in a number of workshops created to prepare them for their transition to college and university life. We are so proud of the Class of ‘22 for all they are doing this trimester to think deeply about their place in the world and how they can bring all of the skills and abilities that they have developed to bear on the expanding world they inhabit.
A final note about going out into the world. Our seniors are in the process of making their final choices about college. You can hear from a panel of seniors and Director of College Guidance Carey Socol about college choices and LREI’s college process on Friday, May 20, at 8:45 a.m. in the Sixth Avenue cafeteria.
As I write this I know that by the time you read it some other group of students and their intrepid teachers will be heading out into the world to see what they can see, to see what they can learn, and to leave their mark. As Elisabeth Irwin wrote, in my current favorite E.I. quote, “Above all things, the progressive schools believe that childhood is a part of life and not just a preface to something more important, and that at every age children should have a chance to respond to the romance and adventure of the world around them.”
Be well,
