GreenMount School Newsletter 11.26.07

Greetings GreenMount Community,

I’d like to begin today by expressing my deepest thanks to the grandparents and special friends who attended our event on Wednesday. It was great fun and I know the children were all excited to share their learning with so many people who are special in their lives. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking to many of our distinguished guests who came from as far away as The United Kingdom to be with us. I also had a great time quizzing one grandparent on the order of her 20! Grandchildren. She did very well. We would also like to express our thanks for the contributions and pledges to our Annual Fund. The Grandparents and special friends have set the standard and given our campaign a wonderful beginning. We ended our visit with a beautiful performance from our chorus led by Ms. Laurie with exceptional accompaniment by Ms. Janet. Al in all, it was a great beginning to what we hope was a relaxing and fulfilling Thanksgiving holiday.
There are just a couple of announcements to make this week:

I will be conducting CTBS make-up tests for 8th grade students on Saturday. Those students involved know their testing times and whether they will be tested in math, reading or both.
There will be no weekly report this week because of the short week last week.

I would like to recommend a book for parents to read. It’s actually a report and something to which I have referred in the past. The title is Tough Choices or Tough Times and it is the report of The New Commission On The Skills Of The American Workforce. It comes from the National Center On Education And The Economy in Washington, D.C. I think it would be important for some parents to read this report to stimulate a discussion on how our school is or isn’t meeting the challenges put forth in its pages. I believe that GMS is at the forefront of producing students who can meet the challenges in the world economy that are described in the publication, but it would be productive to have some of you read this so that we could have a discussion – a book club-type discussion. Let me know if you are interested. I think the exchange of ideas may help us finalize the vision we should have for The GreenMount School.

We are now blogging! Please check out The Greenmount School blog by clicking on the icon on our home page. I’ll be posting the weekly messages as well as other facts about GMS that the world might be interested in understanding. We have a school that is a model for the way schools should be. It is our hope that we will hear from people around the world who discover our site and communicate with us to find out how parents and teachers create the kind of quality individuals who exit our doors. More later.

John F. Kennedy said, “There is an old saying that the course of civilization is a race between catastrophe and education. In a democracy such as ours, we must make sure that education wins the race.” People need to visit The GreenMount School to see how we are winning.

Cheers,

Steve