IT'S A NEW DAY!!!

Dear Families:
I hope that you all have enjoyed your day off and are looking forward tomorrow to the inauguration of our 44th President of the United States. As I was getting my coffee this morning, I came across a group of young teenagers who - in honor of Martin Luther King Day - made January 19th a national day of community service. Their motto was that Martin Luther King Day was a day ON, not a day OFF! On this cold day they were collecting books and school supplies for students at P.S. 41, the Francis White School in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where half the school's students live below the poverty line. The idea came last month when the Obama campaign organization invited people to organize house meetings to discuss the kind of change people want to see in the next four years and how to make it happen. Each group was asked to mark MLK Day (January 19), the day before Inauguration Day, by taking some kind of service project in their community. This group decided to help this Brooklyn public school. They asked for pencils, crayons, glue, glue sticks, notebooks, reams of copy paper, writable CDs or DVDs, sports equipment, puzzles, inexpensive calculators, inexpensive plastic individual CD plays. I personally was very touched by this - especially knowing how lucky all of us are at PS 154. It touched me in such a way that I felt that I too had to do something to help our community - that if one person helps another person who then helps another person - we can make a difference. Giving of ourselves is very contagious. Therefore, I am going to use this experience to think very carefully - hopefully with some help from our parents - about what we can do in Class K207 - as a community - to help some of our unfortunate friends. I don't know what this could be right now but I would love to open up a dialogue with the children about how fortunate and blessed we are and how others are less fortunate than we are and what should we do to help this situation. As a parent, I know that it is never too early to start children thinking about what they could do to help their fellow man. Any ideas, would be appreciated. YES WE CAN!

I am also writing to let you know that I will not be in class tomorrow. I would love to say that I will be in Washington but that is not the case. I am attending another workshop at Columbia Teachers College for a course entitled - Prediction, Prior Knowledge, Study of Pattern Books. These workshops are extemely helpful for the teachers and we come away learning so much. We bring back to our school the knowledge of what we have learned during the day and then are able to have staff meetings to discuss the children in each class and what we can do as teachers to help support each and every child in our classes. It is always good to have other viewpoints. I will be back in school on Wednesday.

To give you a heads up, a few trips are planned:

* January 27th - Walking trip to the Firehouse in Windsor Terrace. (Weather permitting)
* March 3 - Paper Bag Players - Staten Island.
* February - Chinatown Walking Trip - Bus to Sunset Park Chinatown, walking trip through the neighborhood - Lunch at a Chinese restaurant for Chinese New Year (More on this later)

We have a new student in our class. Her name is JiJei Ju. She is adorable and will be a wonderful asset to our classroom community. The kids have made her feel very welcome when she arrived on Friday - which is a wonderful compliment to you as parents.

Thank you for all your support.
Fondly,
Ms. Graham