Dear Encinal Families,

Welcome back and Happy New Year! Over the next few weeks, Encinal School is preparing to study the Lake Victoria region of East Africa in eager anticipation of Cultural Arts Day on Monday, January 30. This event is co-sponsored by our PTO and a Jeannie Ritchie grant from the MPAEF. With this support, several groups and guests from the region are coming to Encinal to enhance a full day of enriching educational activities for our students.

Consider sharing this experience with your child and our community by volunteering to help on Cultural Arts Day. We still need many volunteers and we depend on community members to keep this exciting tradition going. To learn about volunteering, please click here and sign up by Monday, January 16.

As your child learns about this region and the dancers from impoverished families who will perform (click here for info), you may want discuss possible lessons from the experience, such as:

• The tremendous capability in all people for resilience and resourcefulness
• The strength people derive from culture and community to overcome adversity
• The wondrous diversity of the world
• How different our culture must appear to them
• What is really necessary for happiness

We hope each child sees that while our East African guests may marvel at our country's relative wealth and our citizens' rights, there is much we can learn from them, especially as we engage in lessons about January's life-skill of perseverance.

You may want to see if your children have any questions about the causes of poverty in this part of the world such as war, disease, and corruption. This is a deeper layer that we will not be discussing during Cultural Arts Day, but it may be a good discussion to have at home. If you are interested in learning about Africa with your child, consider visiting this website for some kid friendly lessons: click here. 

Each year during Cultural Arts Day, our campus comes alive with wonder and excitement as our students celebrate the cultures of the world. Please consider joining us as a volunteer on January 30!