Welcome Back!
Happy New Year! I hope you and yours enjoyed the Winter Break. It was a pleasure to welcome your children back to school earlier this week. It did not take long for the hallways and classrooms in all three divisions to regain their busy hum.
The faculty spent a full and enriching day on Monday, our second professional development day devoted to looking at issues of socio-economic class, involved in a series of divisional and interdivisional conversations. High School history teacher Nick O’Han and Chap, Director of Diversity and Community, organized the day’s events, inviting two speakers from the Citizens’ Committee for Children (www.cccnewyork.org) to help us look at socio-economic class through lenses wide enough to focus on all of the children in New York City and finely focused enough to look at how issues of class emerge in classrooms in each of our three divisions. It was a truly fascinating and challenging day. Conversations and exercises such as the ones we participated in on Monday will continue throughout the rest of the school year. In the fall, Chap facilitated a well-attended discussion focused on how parents experience socio-economic class encounters with peers and with their children. We invite you to attend Bring the Conversation Home, Part 2 during which Dr. Patricia Romney, President and Founder of Romney Associates, will return to LREI to facilitate a second parent diversity discussion addressing issues of class. The focus of Dr. Romney’s work is change. Using her finely honed assessment skills as a starting point for change efforts, she has assisted organizations in the areas of diversity, community building, and leadership development. Join us for one or both of the following events:
Wednesday, January 28, 6:30 PM– 8:00 PM in the Sixth Avenue Auditorium (Please RSVP to the receptionist if you will need childcare for this event.)
Thursday, January 29, 8:45AM-10:30 AM in the Sixth Avenue Cafeteria
On a different note, as we have for the past few years, early next week I will send to all LREI families a list of volunteer opportunities available during the long Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend. The Parents’ Association Community Service Committee is hard at work identifying service opportunities to add to this list. If you know of ways in which LREI families can perform community service during the coming three-day weekend, please email them to me (pkassen@lrei.org) and I will add them to the list we will distribute early next week. Thank you in advance.
Best,
Phil