Heard Around Campus A Newsletter for Families, Alumni and Friends January/February 2011

And the Winner Is…

Congratulations to Katherine Brokaw and Steve Russ! They are the lucky winners of a reserved spot in the TCS park-ing garage for conferences, meetings and special events. All families that made a gift to the Annual Giving Campaign before December 16 were entered into the drawing. The Children’s School’s community has been extremely active and generous with the Annual Giving Campaign and we’re grateful to everyone who has participated. Special thanks to our Annual Giving Campaign Chairs, Maria and Wayne Aaron, for all of their hard work with the campaign thus far. They, along with a number of dedicated volunteers have been instrumental in raising awareness for the Annual Giv-ing Campaign at The Children’s School. If you’d like to learn more about the campaign, visit the Participate pages of the TCS website or call Ashlie in the Development Office at 404-873-6985.

Fourth, fifth and sixth graders at The Children’s School par-ticipated in the President’s Challenge physical fitness test. The Challenge was created to help improve physical fit-ness and motivate people of all ages to get and stay in shape. With regular P.E. classes, and lots of time for outdoor activities, TCS students can once again boast great results. The Challenge tests students’ levels of physical fitness in five activities: curl-ups (crunches), shuttle-run, v-sit, one-mile run, pull-ups or push-ups. Below are the numbers of award winners for each grade. Presidential Award- students must achieve at least the 85th percentile in all 5 events. National Award- students must achieve at least the 50th percentile in all 5 events.

President’s Physical Fitness Challenge

Grade Participant’s Award

National Award

Presidential Award

Fourth 25 12 7Fifth 21 11 6Sixth 20 10 14

(Left) Marcia and Ashlie draw the winning name while the audience waits with bated breath; (Right) See those arms raised in victory? That’s Steve and Katherine’s son John. No more circling the campus in search of a parking spot!

Letter HomeDear Friends,

Patience. Do you remember learning it? I do – or at least I remember being told as a child to “be patient” and somewhere along the way I figured out that it had something to do with waiting. It seems, however, that patience is fast becoming a thing of the past. We’re used to having our emails and texts answered immediately. We don’t even have to wait on the newspaper to come to deliver our headlines. We simply log on to the Internet and there it is, updated instantaneously as events unfold. In a world where adults and children do not like to wait, patience is unpopular.

Many of us just experienced a great test of patience as our city shut down for a week due to snow and ice. Talk about a waiting game – waiting for streets to be cleaned; waiting to hear if school was going to be opened; waiting for the airport to resume flights - you know the drill. It was not a good week for those who are accustomed to getting answers immediately or those with the ability to think their way out of a problem. The only possible op-tion during our week of bad weather was to be patient.

So much of our world now revolves around instant gratification and the need to do things quickly. We are in an act and think fast mode. Being forced to be patient reminds us to give things time and to let go of the things we cannot control. What you’ll often find is that patience can make what you’re waiting for so much sweeter. Consider the teacher patiently coaxing sentences from her student as she carefully sounds out each word. When the sentence finally flows and she looks to him proudly, he sees that that triumph was well worth the wait.

As we remind our children and students to be patient let us re-member to model that virtue ourselves.

Warmly,

Marcia Prewitt Spiller

In this issue:

1 President’s Fitness Challenge Parking Spot Winner 3 The Role of the Board

4 40th Anniversary Updates • “40 for 40” Community Service

TCS Celebrates the Holidays 6 Fourth Grade Oral History Project

7 How Full Is Your Bucket?

8 Dates to Remember

Need to share news with TCS? Have a story idea?

Contact Rachel Martin, Director of Communications & Marketing at (404) 835-4606 or by email at

rachelm@thechildrensschool.com

The Children’s School345 Tenth Street, NE

Atlanta, GA 30309www.thechildrensschool.com

(T): 404-873-6985

Donna LewisChair, Board of Trustees

Marcia Prewitt SpillerHead of School

Rachel MartinDirector of Communications

& Marketing

In this issue:

1 President’s Fitness Challenge Parking Spot Winner 3 The Role of the Board

4 40th Anniversary Updates • “40 for 40” Community Service

TCS Celebrates the Holidays 6 Fourth Grade Oral History Project

7 How Full Is Your Bucket?

8 Dates to Remember

News from the Board of TrusteesThe Role of the Board

The Board of TrusteesCurrently, there are 20 Trustees of The Children’s School. Under the leadership of its chair, the board acts as one governing body. No one member, not even the board chair, has the authority to act or speak for the entire board unless she is authorized to do so. Each trustee is equally liable for every Board deci-sion, whether or not they are present when the decision was made.

Trustees are chosen through a nom-ination process that is guided by the specific needs of the board. For example, the board is always look-ing for qualified individuals with expertise in finance and investment. This has been especially true over the past years as the school’s endow-ment was initiated and has grown.

The board meets monthly through-out the school year, with a full-day retreat in the fall and a mini-retreat in January.

Who Are Our Trustees?Currently most of our Trustees are parents of current or former stu-dents. There is always room for qualified “friends of the school,” who can provide specific expertise and a different perspective than those who are so closely connected to the school.

As with our school community as a whole, the board values diver-sity. Therefore, the composition of trustees mirrors the diversity of our school community.

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Board of Trustees2010-2011

How to Provide Input into the BoardThe members and contact informa-tion for the Board of Trustees are listed in the school’s handbook and on the school’s website. Trustees are always available for input from par-ents or to answer questions about the school.

Above all, Trustees act as strong, in-formed advocates of The Children’s School. Their leadership helps guide and protect the future of the school and empowers the faculty and staff to advance its mission.

Like all independent schools, The Children’s School is governed by a Board of Trustees. This article will explain a little about our board, who our Trustees are, what the role of the board is, and how you can provide input to this entity.

What Does the Board Do?The Board’s most important jobs are the selection, support, and evaluation of the Head of School. Once in place, the Head of School is empowered to oversee all daily activities of the school, such as the hiring, promotion and compensation of the faculty, admission and discipline of students, and curricu-lum development. The board provides the Head an annual review and ensures that s/he is compensated appropriately in relation to the Head’s experience and performance in meeting annual goals.

Additionally, the Board of Trustees concerns itself with strategic planning for the future of the school. Some stra-tegic issues include planning for the continued excellence of our physical plant; drafting policy as it relates to recruiting, retaining and compensat-ing teachers and managing technol-ogy; and overseeing the finances of the school. The Board addresses these is-sues from a long-term perspective. For example, the board does not set teach-ers’ salaries – or even know how much individual teachers are paid. However, it does analyze teacher salaries against local and national benchmarks in order to assure that our excellent teaching staff is paid appropriately.

It is important to stress that the board does not get involved with day-to-day issues of the school, such as carpool, class placement, curriculum issues, or issues with teachers. Such concerns (or compliments!) will be referred to the Head of School.

Donna K. Lewis – ChairpersonAmy Stone – Vice-ChairpersonLisa Green-Clopton – SecretaryPatricia D. Friedman – Treasurer

David M. AtkinsonAnne E. Beidler

Daniel Berman, AIAKeisha Lance BottomsKristin Ramsey Clyde

Kathleen O. Currey, Esq., PartnerBernee Dunson, DDS

Robert D. Flanigan, Jr.John H. FlemingSheryl McCallaMichele Reiner

Grady Roberts IIIKate RuddonAdam L. Smith

Michelle Toma-Harrold, Ph.D.Drew Westen, Ph.D.

TCS Teachers’ Summer Adventures

40th Anniversary Updates

40th Anniversary Celebration GalaOctober 16, 2010

“40 for 40” Community ServiceNovember 13 & December 11

Top Left: Morgan, Rosie, Josh, Justin, Danielle, Anna, Jona and Emmett pose with Class of ‘96 alumnus Dylan Tunnell. Bottom Left: Rosie, Maya, Emma and Sana decorate mugs to give to local first repsonders. Top Right: Bella shows some of the ideas students had about how to be peaceful. Bottom Right: Kathy helps Reggie decorate a felt square for one of the peace quilts.

The TCS community has logged thousands of service hours through the “40 for 40” Com-munity Service Family Challenge. Each service event is tied in with that month’s BCC character traits. In November, The Chil-dren’s School welcomed alum-nus Dylan Tunnell to the “40 for 40” event to talk about his role as a community firefighter. No-vember was the month students learned and modeled gratitude, humility and appreciation. To show their gratitude to Dylan and other local first-responders, students decorated mugs and filled them with hot chocolate. The mugs were accompanied with handmade thank-you cards and were delivered to nearby police and fire stations. The De-cember service event centered on peace, harmony and forgive-ness. Families beaded peace bracelets and created quilt squares to complete two large message quilts to hang in two area children’s shelters.

December was a busy and exciting month at The Children’s School! Lessons on and celebra-tions of Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Las Posados and Christmas filled the weeks before school let out for winter break. Snacks, songs, projects and special visitors made the holidays at school extra special. The culmination of the break was the annual Holiday Sing. This year’s Holiday Sing was also a celebration of the retirement of Cliff Brown, a member of the TCS staff for more than 30 years.

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TCS Celebrates the Holidays

Top Left: Cliff poses with Clare, Kareem and Yaminah’s pre-primary class; Top Right: Anna takes a swing at the pinata in celebration of Las Posados; Bottom Left: Wilma, Paul, Kathy, Jeremy and Theresa get the songs started at the Holiday Sing; Bottom Right: Veronica Jones, Alena’s mom, visited MaryAnn and Alison’s first grade class to lead the students through some Kwanzaa activities including a game of Bingo.

Coming Soon... Summer Camp!

Summer will be here before you know it so the ECEP team is work-ing hard to create exciting programs for Camp Discovery 2011! Expect lots of innovative lessons, field trips, water play, art, sports and more. Registration opens on February 23. Stay tuned to Happenings or check out the ECEP pages of the website for more details as they become available.

Curriculum CornerFourth Graders’ Family Oral History Projects

By Patsy Ward

Students in Lynn and Joe’s fourth grade presented biographies of older family members. For this long-term project, students conducted and

recorded interviews, then wrote narrative biographies. Each project was accompanied by a visual aid. Some of the students created posters of pho-tographs of their relatives while others made videos, drawings and paint-ings. Some students cooked from family recipes handed down throughout the years and shared their creations with the class.

These projects are an example of the kind of multi-faceted learning chil-dren at TCS enjoy. Not only did they have to plan when and how to conduct the interviews, they then needed to craft their interviews into well-written typed biographies. The open-ended nature of the project allowed students to express themselves creatively. Students learned about their family members’ lives when they were children and how their family traditions have been shaped. The teachers provided the students with a list of questions but also encouraged students to ask their own questions or to use the answers as springboards into other stories. In creating the biogra-phies, students learned about national and world events of many years ago. As students seek to understand a state, a nation and a hemisphere that is largely outside their personal sphere of experience, oral history can make the unfamiliar seem less foreign and intimidating and make the experi-ences of people hundreds or even thousands of miles away seem more immediate and real.

Perhaps most importantly, the students created wonderful family stories they and their loved ones can treasure forever. The assignment the students received begins, “Each and every one of us is a part of a family. Not all our families look the same, but the people who make up each of our families are the most important people in our lives. Even without trying, we learn from our family members. We learn how to be part of a loving group, we learn how to work through problems and we learn about our family values.

Some of our family members who have the most to teach us are the older members of our family: grandparents, great aunts and great uncles, etc. Many times we get too busy with our own lives to slow down and listen to our elders and learn from them. This assignment will allow you to do just that.”

What a gift for the children to have had this experience with their relatives!

Quotes Heard Around Campus...

Seth gives his oral history presentation

Not only did the students have to present to their teachers and class-mates, but Patsy, Marcia and other special guests came by as well.

Jemma explains the photographs and map on her poster

Building Character & Community

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Through our Building Character and Community Program, Kathy uses the book How Full Is Your

Bucket? For Kids by Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer to illustrate the mutual benefit of being kind to oth-ers. Ask some TCS students about it and they’ll likely tell you that each one of us has an imaginary buck-et that stays with us. When you do something nice for someone, you simultaneously fill your bucket and the beneficiary’s bucket. When you say or do some-thing unkind, both buckets are depleted. Before you make a decision to act, always consider how your bucket is affected.

The lesson has made quite an impact on a number of TCS students. Katina Asbell, parent of first grader Claire Asbell, shared this story with Kathy:

How Full Is Your Bucket?

“Your bucket book made an impression on Claire…

We were at the Ponce Library and a home-less lady left to go outside. She stopped to gather her blankets she had piled neatly just outside the door. It was freezing outside and Claire asked if we could give her some money as we walked back to the car. I said “I have a better idea”. I had a box of jack-ets I was going to donate to the Women’s Shelter so Claire jumped in the back of the car and chose 2 jackets, one for the lady we had just seen and another man we spied near her.

We walked over with the jackets and hand-ed them out. Both folks were most appre-ciative. As we went back to the car Claire said “Mom, My bucket is about to spill over, how about yours?”

Parents who are interested in learning more about this philosophy are encouraged to check out How Full Is Your Bucket? By Tom Rath and Donald Clifton.

Rae-Marie Oladimeji (K) to Bruce Fort in the library; “Can I call you John?” Bruce: “You could but my name is Bruce.” Rae-Marie “I want to call you John.”

Lily Duran (K)- “I have a real horse, it’s imaginary.”

Quotes Heard Around Campus...

345 Tenth Street, NEAtlanta, Georgia 30309(T): 404-873-6985(F): 404-607-8565www.thechildrensschool.com

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Please visit www.thechildrensschool.com or www.facebook.com/thechildrensschool for details and

updates as they become available.

Dates to Remember

Return Service Requested

Tuesday, February 1:Book Club Meeting

Thursday, February 17-Friday, February 18:Parent/Teacher Conferences

Monday, February 21- Tuesday, February 22:Mid-winter Break

JANUARY/FEBRUARY

Tuesday, March 1:Financial Aid applications & Re-enrollment due

Saturday, March 5 &Sunday, March 6:TCS Players Performance

Thursday, March 10:Celebration of Hope

Thursday, March 24:Speaker Series Event

Saturday, March 26:TCS Auction

MARCH