Phil Kassen, guest blogger, here. A quick word of “Thanks” to all of our students for their hard work and dedication and for being involved and active members of their classrooms. Within the last three weeks we have experienced the outstanding high school musical and a series of one-act plays written by juniors and seniors—among them a musical depiction of the seven deadly sins. High schoolers also spent a day learning about American foreign policy and the war in Iraq. For more information on Global War on Terror Day—a series of student created and taught seminars on the current world situation—see Ruth Jurgensen’s high school blog from last week. Fifth and sixth graders presented major social studies projects this week. Working with the art, music and drama teachers, sixth graders presented their annual Medieval Pageant featuring folk tales from Europe, Asia and Africa. Fifth graders turned their classrooms into an Egyptian tomb. Visitors were treated to a variety of artifacts including beautiful artwork, life size sarcophagi and a variety of Egyptian relics. In the Lower School, we all enjoyed and learned from the annual Art Show, which included work from all lower school students; the first grades’ bookstore, bakery and penguin study; the third graders’ presentation on the Native Americans of the northern woodlands and publishing parties in various classrooms. The stands were filled with cheering fans at the Thompson Street Athletic Center last Friday as the faculty lost a close game to the middle and high school basketball teams in our annual Spirit Game. Finally, today we have three groups leaving on foreign adventures—a group of high school students are off to visit a school in Munich with which we have an exchange relationship and the eighth graders are off to Costa Rica or Paris, depending on whether they study Spanish or French. A well deserved rest approaches. All that separates us from Spring Break is the Founder’s Day Assembly with its traditional re-enactment of the founding of the school and annual ice cream celebration.

One comment about next week. This year the annual Kick Butts Day is on Wednesday, March 28th. Sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids (www.tobaccofreekids.org), Kick Butts Day is a day of learning and activism focused on ending the use of tobacco and tobacco products by children and teens. A few facts from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids web site:

• Each day, about 4,000 kids try their first cigarette; and each day another 1,000 other kids under 18 years of age become new regular, daily smokers. That’s 416,000 new underage daily smokers each year.
• The addiction rate for smoking is higher than the addiction rates for marijuana, alcohol, or cocaine; and symptoms of serious nicotine addiction often occur only weeks or even just days after youth "experimentation" with smoking first begins.
• 90 percent of all adult smokers begin while in their teens, or earlier, and nearly two-thirds become regular, daily smokers before they reach the age of 19.
• Roughly one-third of all youth smokers will eventually die prematurely from smoking-caused disease.

As a school community, one of the most important things we can do to promote our children’s health is to emphatically state that it is unacceptable for our students, of any age, to smoke. No exceptions. We will look for every opportunity to reinforce the message that smoking is neither cool nor glamorous and that the expectation of the adults in their lives is that your children will never smoke. We will also spend considerable time discussing the manipulative messages used by tobacco companies in their advertising campaigns.

I encourage all families to spend time discussing the dangers of tobacco use and to take every opportunity presented by advertising, movies and TV to discuss the often misleading messages about smoking presented by the media.

Interested in additional resources about kids and smoking?

http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/body/smoking/
http://www.scenesmoking.org/
http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/positive/talk/smoking.html

Thank you for your attention to this important matter. Please don’t hesitate to email or call if you would like to discuss it further. Have a great spring break. See you on April 9th!!

Phil

This Week's Attachments:

Diane and Lisa's Early Kindergarten

Kindergarten Screening Letter

Kelly and Ayanna's Third Grade

Chap and Meredith's Third Grade

Kelly and Ayanna's Social Studies

Chap and Meredith's Social Studies

Third Grade Internet Use

March 15th Parent Rep Meeting Notes

Spanish Resource List

This Week's Announcements:

Early Dismissal:
A reminder that school will be closing at noon tomorrow (11:45 for Early Childhood) and there will be no Afterschool.

Lost and Found:
Tomorrow is the last day to browse Lost & Found. All remaining unclaimed items will be donated to God's Love.

Upcoming Parent Events:
Facebook, AIM, Club Penguin, BitTorents, YouTube, and countless other old, new and emerging web technologies are used by our children everyday. What do you know about them? How safe are they for your kids? Are there ways to make my child/tween/teen's computer environment safer and more productive? What can I do as a parent? What can the school do? The answers to these and other questions in a frank discussion on kids and technology moderated by the LREI tech coordinators. We will visit some sites, explore options that will make you child's cyber-environment safer and give you an overview of what we teach at LREI about internet safety. Additional resources will be given out for parents on paper and on www.lrei.org.
Two sessions:
Session One for parents of 7th - 12th graders on April 17th at 6:30 in the Sixth Avenue auditorium
Session Two for parents of 3rd - 6th graders on April 18th at 6:30 in the Sixth Avenue auditorium.

High School Preview Night:
Thinking Ahead? Join us for the High School Preview Night on Tuesday, April 10th at 6:30pm in the Charlton Street Performing Arts Center (PAC). This is a wonderful opportunity for Middle School and Lower School parents to learn more about the High School from parents, students and recent alumni. We hope to see you there! RSVP to the Admissions Office at ext. 305.

In the Upcoming Weeks...

3/23- Founder's Day, Noon Dismissal (11:45 for Early Childhood)

4/9- School resumes after Spring Break

4/10- High School Preview Night

4/18- Third Grade Assembly, 8:45AM

4/18- Internet Safety Discussion, 6:30PM. Bleeker Street Auditorium

4/20- School Closed for Parent Teacher Conferences

4/25- First Grade Assembly, 8:45AM

4/27- Noon dismissal for Parent Teacher Conferences, no Afterschool