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Due to Monday’s snow day and cancellation of both Winter Workshops and Winter Sports we will have school on Monday, March 3. I hope this is enough notice to help you with planning. All of our Winter Workshop artists are able to come and we will hold our final Showcase that evening at 6:30. In the afternoon skiers and boarders will go to Mt. Snow and, as the ice rink will have closed for the season, the skaters will participate in an alternate activity which will be determined prior to the Winter Vacation. Tuesday, March 4th is Town Meeting and, as scheduled, there will not be any school. The addition of March 3rd as a school day will allow us to get in all the workshops and sports days and avoid an additional school day later in June.

The Action Plan Committee met for the first time and began work on a survey to get feedback from you on how we’re doing. A community survey was completed five years ago and there are many changes since then. We’ll include items on student learning and curriculum, home-school communication, parent conferences, report cards, and student assessment. Please let me know of any areas you’d like to see explored. The survey will be ready in time for Town Meeting.

Speaking of communication – I always learn a lot when I read the newsletters sent home by teachers in the early grades. I hope you do, too! This week Judy included a description of math games that families can play to help kids learn addition and subtraction facts. Jodi included a request for parents to work with kids to make a list of land forms affected by water. Ellen wrote about using our Lost and Found as a sorting and categorizing activity. At Sing they will report their findings and, along with a Junior High fashion show of lost and found items, we hope to reunite gloves, hats, etc., with their owners.

David’s class has been studying Greek myths and presented their final projects on Thursday. These were advertisements which use the attributes of a Greek god/goddess to sell the product or service. Some examples include the promotion and sale of Pandora’s boxes by Luci, Boreas’ Fans by Ethan, Hermes’ Athlete’s Foot Cream by Max, Hephaestus’ Blowtorch Pen by Marcus, and Hera’s Detective Agency by Shawna. What creative and fun ways to illustrate the quirks of the Greek gods and to demonstrate all the kids had learned.

On Monday there will be no school as we celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday as a holiday. Today at Sing, Ellen and Tim shared parts of African Sanctus, the piece being presented this weekend by the Brattleboro Community Chorus. Ellen told us the story of how the piece was created and how it includes original sound tracks gathered in Africa. We were reminded that it is this sort of cultural exchange and cross cultural sharing that leads to the understanding and tolerance for which Martin Luther King worked so hard.

Other ways in which students are learning about Dr. King include the Junior High viewing a video about the 1963 Children’s March in Birmingham and, in David’s class, watching a video about and then discussing the Civil Rights Movement with a focus on the build-up to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.