Year of the Rabbit

Dear Lab School Families,

Last night we held the Lunar New Year celebration. It was an amazing event - put on by Lab MS and Lab HS parents' associations. Thank you to Cecilia Leong for all of her work in taking this event on! This was the first ever joint Lunar New Year banquet and it was so amazing to see our community gather. We filled the entire banquet hall at Grand Harmony. There were performances from middle and high school students, community members and a traditional Lion Dance. There was also lots and lots of food for all of us to share. I sincerely hope that we have started a tradition and we will be able to celebrate together for many years to come.

I just returned for Mr. Mosher's 7th grade visual arts class. With the new semester comes a new set of arts classes for our 6th and 7th grade students. 706 was working on identity collages. They were in the process of reconstructing their work based on a significant element depicted in the initial work. There was a nice workshop atmosphere in the classroom. Students were giving feedback to their peers - holding a place of expertise, just like their teacher.

Yesterday I went to 803's and 804's publishing party. Ms. Riina (art teacher) ans Ms. Woodbury (humanities) developed a interdisciplinary book-making project. The students based their personal books off of the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Each student did a series of their own emulations based on the book. The work was deeply personal and I was impressed.

Thank you to all of those who joined us this past weekend to help with admissions day. We had a record number of applicants come and test at our school. Our faculty has been busily grading the assessments all week. After this is finished we will review and rank all of our applications.

We will be mailing (via USPS) 2nd quarter report cards today. Today we will also be mailing home the Specialized High School letters (to 8th grade families). Please note, we will not be giving any SHS results over the phone - I do not even have that information. The envelopes come prepackaged and sealed. We simply put postage on them and put them in the mail. If you have not received a letter (and you DID take the SHS test) by Thursday, February 17th please let me know.

One additional reminder, Parent-Teacher conferences are next Wednesday and Thursday. Evening conferences are on Wednesday, February 16th 5:00-7:30 and afternoon conferences are Thursday, February 17th 12:00-2:30. I look forward to seeing everyone next week.

Warmest,
Meg