Hello from the Director’s Office. Several items of note today. I encourage you to read them all.
1) Congratulations to the middle school students who participated in this past weekend’s middle school Model United Nations event. Upon arriving at the event our students were thrown into a variety of situations involving historical events, international intrigue and diplomatic wrangling. As the world was brought back from the brink of disaster due to the hard work of all of the students present, LREI’s team came home with three awards: Eighth grader Camilo won the “Best Delegate” award in his committee, seventh grader Celia won “Outstanding Delegate” in her committee, and seventh grader Wilder won an “Honorable Mention” in his committee.
2) Camilo was also one of two eighth graders whose haikus were selected as winners in the NY Times haiku contest, joining his classmate Zoe. You can read all of the winners’ verses here.
3) LREI’s high school students are once again participating in “Kids Walk for Kids with Cancer,” an event started by the sister of an LREI alum. Those who have participated in this event over the years have found the experience to be quite enriching and rewarding. You can register for the walk and/or support LREI’s high school walkers at http://www.active.com/donate/kidswalk2014/LREI
4) On a similarly serious note, to sign a petition started by schools on the Upper West Side in response to a number of traffic fatalities this year click here. The goal is to lower NYC’s speed limit. For anyone who crosses in any direction at Houston and Sixth, you know how dangerous NYC traffic can be. I urge you all to sign.
5) Finally, I hope you can find a few minutes to read “Hello, Stranger,” from this past Sunday’s NY Times. The authors, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton, discuss their research and the general conclusion that, “Casual social contact can lift our mood.” One of the things I like most about living in NYC are those chance encounters with strangers. The other morning on the train a man joined my conversation about baking with my kids (Brooklyn water makes all the difference), adding greatly to our discussion before he exited the D train, likely never to be seen by us again (although some “strangers” to reappear from time to time.) I have met young teachers eager to join the profession. My children have met other young people who have become good friends. I have found on some trips out of NY, especially to suburban areas, that people can be suspicious of my openness to casual interactions. I once pushed a young girl on a swing when she slowed down and her mom had walked away for a moment. Her mom’s reaction had me was sure that I was going to be arrested. In this community, the norm was different. Clearly, we have to develop, and help our children to develop, the ability to suss out whether strangers are safe to interact with. Not easy, but a gift to those NY kids who master this skill. We certainly discuss the pros and cons of living in such close quarters as part of life skills courses in school. We also encourage students to see others as resources and to learn to interact with those they encounter politely and openly. These interactions are the most basic of progressive experiences.
The article also mentions a project by photographer Richard Renaldi, called “Touching Strangers” in which strangers are posed to seem as if they were intimates. See our own middle school math teacher Margaret Andrews’s photo in this series here.