October 20, 2013

Greetings:

And welcome to our second edition of Focus on the World, a special issue of our weekly Swain Stories e-newsletter. In it we'll bring you news of our global studies initiatives - enjoy!

Please join us in welcoming Monee Mazariegos to our Swain community.  Monee (pronounced "moe-NAY") is a 14-year-old student from Guatemala who represents the Faces & Our Cultures program. 

Monee arrived on campus this past

Monee with her new third grade friends

Tuesday and will be with us until Friday, December 13.  Her hosts are  Amy Kerr '14 and her family, and she will shadow Amy throughout the day here at Swain, attending all of her classes and activities. 

In the coming weeks, Monee will make presentations at town meetings and will also make the rounds to visit lower school classrooms to share her experiences and culture with our students. 

We are excited to have Monee with us at Swain.  Please be sure to extend a warm welcome to her when you see her on campus.  

For generations, kids have toted UNICEF's

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collection boxes from door to door on Halloween.  Through this experience, they discover their own power to make the world a better place for children everywhere. 

This year, in an effort to raise awareness and help our students become "Global Citizens," Swain will be taking part in this program.  Collection boxes will be set out in each classroom and advisory, and students are encouraged to bring in their loose change.  These donations allow UNICEF to support children around the world with programs in health care, clean water, nutrition and education. 

Collection boxes will also be available for families to take home, if they wish.  Look for more information to follow in the week ahead.

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For the month of September,
Mrs. Akers' and Mrs. Johnson's Prekindergarten class paired our Virtue of the Month, Goodness, with a country, Colombia.

The parents of one of their students, Carlos Jaramillo and Claudia Defrancisco, are from Colombia, so they came to Swain to share their culture and country with the PK students and their fourth grade buddies. They told how a famous singer from Colombia, Shakira, has spread goodness through Colombia and other parts of the world by building schools for needy children.

They talked with the students about the geography, products, climate, cities and jungles, and the foods of Colombia. READ MORE and see many photos from this very interesting presentation!

We love to hear presentations about far-away places! If you have traveled to an area or would like to share about your heritage or culture, please contact us at info@swain.org.

Fifth grade teacher Erica Coverley

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shared her students' experience learning how to use chop sticks - a lesson provided by our Mandarin teacher, Bei Wang.

The students have been learning conversational Mandarin Chinese with
Mrs. Wang. She taught students the vocabulary for table utensils, how to order certain foods, and how to properly use chop sticks.  Students enjoyed eating shrimp noodles with their new talent They  can't wait for November 8 so they can speak in Chinese to the store owners and waiters in NYC on their trip to Chinatown!

1100 South 24th Street    Allentown, PA 18103
610-433-4542

1100 South 24th Street

Allentown, Pennsylvania 18103