This year the Lower School Spanish program has been significantly enriched by the visit of a young woman from Africa. Her visit, and her affiliation with the Heifer Project, helped bring a more personal dimension to LREI’s already dynamic curriculum.

After a visit by Beatrice Birra to LREI last spring, Nick O’Han, Director of Education and Julie Sterling, LS Spanish teacher, talked about ways in which LREI could become meaningfully involved in the Heifer Project. The logical connection was also a very personal one for Julie, and brought her back to her own experiences living and studying in the Andes of Peru.

As a student, Julie majored in Spanish at Middlebury College. In order to graduate as a language major, Julie was required to live and study in a country where Spanish was the native language. While most of her classmates chose Spain for their studies, Julie was more interested in learning about a new culture and in experiencing a significantly different way of life. She researched a program that was sponsored by the University of Indiana and found herself in Peru. Once there, Julie fell in love with the culture. She particularly loved the history and the way in which ancient life was so visibly a part of the present. She loved the food, the pace of life, the country itself. Rather than return after a year, Julie stayed on for three years, traveling in the Andes, avoiding tourist attractions, and experiencing Peruvian life.

While this experience was a significant influence for Julie, and though she used the language skills that she developed while living in Peru, up until now she had not used her Peruvian cultural experiences directly in her teaching. Her wonderfully dynamic program that uses art, music, stories, food and games, began to develop when Julie taught bi-lingual education in the Public School system. There, she felt that her students had few connections to her South American experiences and she worked instead to make connections that felt more related to their own experiences. Once at LREI, Julie became aware that her experiences in the Andes were not unfamiliar to all of her students. Parents and caregivers began to bring her bits and pieces of Peruvian culture--songs, poems, stories. Her collection of Latin American artifacts began to build. Then Nick approached her with an idea.

By drawing more directly on her own experiences, Julie has begun to make the second, third and fourth grade students aware of a culture that is very different from their own. Rather than focusing primarily on stories and folktales, Julie has begun to share her knowledge and love of the Andean people. In order to do this, she has prepared non-fiction materials about the natural environment, the built environment, the animals and the people. She has found that because her students are already so aware of other cultures and the importance of learning about people who are different from themselves, that this transition has been relatively smooth. On the other hand, she has also found that because the cultures are so very different, it is a challenge to make them truly understand what life is like for children in a small Peruvian village.

To this end, Julie discovered that her student’s experiences on LREI farm trips have helped them better understand the roles of both animals and work in the lives of Andean children. Children are important in the family structure and Julie finds herself addressing such important topics in Spanish, with her students. This challenges her to use the Spanish language in a very different way then she did when her focus was primarily on folktales and songs.

Through Nick, Julie has connected with a regional director from The Heifer project. Wendy Peskin traveled to Peru this year, and with her she carried letters and books from LREI children. These gifts were carried way into the remote countryside of Peru and were given to children who know very little about lives here in New York. Julie worked with LREI children to illustrate books that would help Peruvian children know more about us and our way of life. First graders drew pictures and labeled them, Fourth graders wrote full paragraphs in Spanish about themselves, and Second and Third graders worked on projects that fell somewhere in between, working with both pictures and descriptive sentences. Soon, Wendy will visit LREI and will have news to share with the students of the connection that has been forged between the two cultures.

This has been a challenging year for Julie, who has worked hard to put together a thorough and meaningful experience for LREI students. She feels that it has provided her with an opportunity to grow professionally and has also allowed her to share a very meaningful piece of her own personal experience. LREI is fortunate to have Julie as such a wonderful and caring educator for its students, who are celebrating in Julie’s new initiatives within the LS foreign language program.

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This year has certainly been a banner year in terms of fodder for political involvement! In the fall, the MS students took the “Mock Election” seriously, choosing to miss part of their lunch or recess in order to make their vote count. With a turnout rate of 89.8% of the 91.3% registered middle school voters, the students demonstrated their desire to be counted and have their voices heard. As could be expected considering the political climate in NYC, Kerry led the pack with 81.3% of the total vote, certainly a strong echo of the election results for the state.

As an outreach initiate of the student council, the Mock Election was run entirely by the MS student representatives, guided by Middle School Principal Mark Silberberg and Dean of Students Noni Polhill. At their weekly student council meetings, the student representatives proposed that it would be especially interesting to have the voting process be voluntary and also require the students to register in advance. This would require students to make an active choice to vote rather than having the core teachers lead the classes to the polls. The suggestion to include exit polls also emerged from the meeting discussion. Although the council students questioned the reliability of the exit polls’ results due to privacy concerns, a close correlation between the actual vote and the exit poll data indicate LREI students’ confidence in expressing their views. The highest-ranking issues raised through the exit polls were Iraq, abortion and gay marriages, followed by the economy, jobs, education and the environment. The student representatives did an outstanding job of reporting their findings at the MS meeting following the election, using spreadsheets and graphs to represent their findings.

In order to find out more about the student government, Jessica Wilson and Vio Picayo agreed to meet with me to share their extensive experience, having been elected student representatives for three and four years respectively. Knowing that the students are elected based on an anonymous essay that is read to their classmates, I asked the girls what they felt went into a successful platform. Jessica explained that her running mates often made exorbitant promises that were not realistic, while she promised simply to be open and approachable and stated that she would not be intimidated to express her opinions or speak up in front of large groups of people. Vio wrote that she would represent her classes’ opinion over her own and that she was not afraid to approach the administration to present the groups’ views. It’s no surprise that they have been so successful—clearly LREI students are not to be duped by empty promises!

The student council meets once weekly with Mark Silberberg, focusing generally on one issue or proposal. It is a formal opportunity for cross grade issues to be discussed. The issues and proposals are often generated and formulated outside of the meetings, from conversations in the halls, or emerging during homeroom and Adolescent Issues discussions. A further responsibility of the student representatives is to share the outcome of the weekly meetings with their classes, make announcements during homerooms, and for the eldest reps to lead the weekly MS meeting. The MS student government is clearly a forum that empowers the members elected to exert leadership roles in the broader community.

Jessica and Vio spoke about being role models for the Fifth grade student representatives, but mentioned that the younger students were also big contributors to the meetings. Since the youngest representatives are new and enthusiastic, the girls explained, they often offer a fresh perspective and propose wild ideas that lead to good discussions and initiatives. They acknowledged that sometimes the seasoned reps become more tempered in their views. Through their involvement over the past few years, Jessica and Vio have been part of the institution of Pajama Day, talent shows, and Friday Activity Periods, as well as being responsible for selecting dance themes and organizing the related features. Additionally, they also play a big role in community service projects, such as serving jointly on the current Tsunami Relief Committee with the High School.

New on the horizon: the Middle School has recently begun a Model Congress Program that is open to highly committed Fifth-Eighth grade students. The Model Congress will enable students to learn about the United States Congress by inviting them to research and write a legislative bill during the year and to debate it with many other NYC students at a “Congress” held at Packer Collegiate in April. Students will write bills based on their own opinions of what should be changed or implemented in our society and debate their bills in various committees, trying to successfully take their own legislation through the entire process. Although this new program is just getting off the ground, interesting proposals for bills have begun to emerge, under the guidance of the program leader, Sharyn Hahn. These include Jonathan Lak’s proposal to change the voting age, and Harry D’Agostino and Nick Shatan’s proposal that would offer immigrants a means to speed up their green card applications in exchange for two years of military service.

The Middle School’s involvement in the Mock Election, the Student Government, and the Model Congress has clearly fostered the students’ awareness and commitment to political issues. When current MS students are formally of voting age, I believe this informed generation will not only turn out for the vote in impressive numbers, but will be informed on the issues!

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The High School Science Department has introduced a new program for students in the Ninth and Tenth grades. The science faculty believes that this program will give students a solid grounding in all three major areas of study. All students will now take a trimester each of biology, chemistry and physics in both grades; previously physics was not included in the ninth and tenth grade curriculum. This new course of study will help students mature in all three areas. In addition, students’ perspective of science will broaden, resulting in a deeper understanding of the nature of scientific thought. The science faculty is working on developing cross-disciplinary projects in both grades for the end of the year which will take advantage of the students’ collective knowledge base. By exposing students to a wider range of scientific phenomena early on in their high school careers, this new course of study should help with the Science Department’s mission of creating life-long science learners. Students continue with Advanced Biology and Chemistry (both of which lead up to the SAT II exams) in the eleventh grade and Physics and Environmental Science in the twelfth grade. In addition, the Science Department is looking to add additional eleventh and twelfth grade electives as the High School continues to grow.

The Mathematics Department, which has long employed a variety of technologies from the TI-83 Plus calculators to Microsoft Excel to Geometer’s Sketchpad, is now also employing Smart Board technology to aid learning in a variety of ways. A Smart Board looks like a white board except that it is in fact a large, interactive computer screen. The teacher can make use of a keyboard or write/draw on the surface directly. All notes and diagrams can be saved on the server, sent to a web site, burned onto CD’s or printed out. Math teachers can use the Internet or computer applications (such as Geometer’s Sketchpad) that are already an established part of the curriculum. A Smart Board enables a teacher or student to display or demonstrate a concept or process as if he or she is on his or her own individual computer except that the entire room can view this experience and add their own questions or commentary. For students there are many benefits. The large screen is a boon for visual learners and for those who have trouble taking notes. Students who are absent can catch up with their classes via the Internet and past classes can be easily reviewed. The Smart Board is also a powerful tool for any class that does investigative research using the Internet or computer programs. High School Principal Tony Fisher notes, “The Smart Board can really transform an ordinary classroom. They are especially effective in helping to improve student presentations, which are a real staple of our program.”

In addition to the Smart Board, the Charlton Street building is going “wireless.” Teachers, students and visitors will be able to access the Internet and all LREI network resources from properly equipped computers, including all of the computers on the recently acquired laptop cart, without “plugging in.” This enables students to work on individual, small group or whole class projects using a computer virtually anywhere in the building.

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