| Upcoming Events
Sunday, April 6th
2 PM
Spring Fling!
Strand Theater
543 Columbia Road
Dorchester
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| Conservatory Lab
Grades 3 - 7
25 Arlington Street
Brighton, MA 02315
617.254.8904 Grades K1 - 2 320 Washington Street Brighton, MA 02315
617.208.6200
www.conservatorylab.org |
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| Family Notes
March 7, 2014
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Dear Families,
Sharing is the name of the game at our school. Not only is sharing a basic component of human interaction, it is responsible for strengthening social ties and ensuring a person's and an organization's well-being.
The knowledge and experience that we accumulate as a school is a most important asset. But simply having teachers who are intelligent and highly skilled does not make our school smart. Building our organizational intelligence relies on our ability to foster all our people's enthusiasm to share their knowledge. By embedding knowledge-sharing values into your culture, we create a team of faculty, students & parents that is interlocked together to achieve the goals of our school and eager to propel it to new levels of excellence.
We demonstrate this sharing on many levels every single week. Hourly in the classroom and rehearsal hall, daily as we move from class to class, seasonally as we give our school-wide orchestra performances for our families, friends and community and intermittently as we have visitors to our school or give presentations for more far-flung audiences at conferences.
We had a wonderful week this week opening wide our doors and sharing what we do at this school with over 25 visitors from different parts of the country. It is our mission to share what we are successful in discovering and developing with other educators, parents, policy makers, community and other leaders. It is also what our culture is, who we are.
Have a happy weekend!
Warmly,
Diana Lam
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Muestra Held at Upper School
Twenty two arts and community leaders from around the country spent yesterday diving into our unique and revolutionary approaches in education. Attendees were greeted by Head of School, Diana Lam and took part in an afternoon of exploration.
 First, three classroom teachers gave in-depth presentations, each into a different aspect of Expeditionary Learning. Becca Mason explained how she scaffolds the sophisticated content of her color theory curriculum to prepare students to become portrait experts and Jenna Gampel described how her students became experts in narrative non-fiction. Teacher Rachel Cates and Resident Artist Chris Schroeder described how the 4th grade study of the Great Migration became an art and music infused Expedition. Dr. John Hill, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction from the Elkhart, Indiana Community Schools noted "the Muestra experience helped us understand the infusion of music into the core curriculum. We had pictured the music and Expeditionary Learning as parallel tracks but now we see how they can be interwoven into a single track."
 At 3 o'clock, the event became an authentic El Sistema experience, with a riveting "Muestra" style performance. Guests were led on a tour of the upper school and treated to performances by students from every ensemble. First, the Abbado Orchestra including the Winds played Dragon Hunter. Next, the guests visited the Ives Wind Ensemble and then came back downstairs for more Wind and Brass performances. After these performances, time was set aside for a question and answer session and then our guests made their last stop to hear the Dudamel Orchestra play Lord of the Rings.
 Tessa Sutton, from the Roosevelt Elementary School in Elkhart was impressed with the evidence of "joyful learning that is also academically rigorous". We are proud of our students and teachers every day so it is wonderful to have an opportunity to let them shine for visitors who are committed to bringing high quality educational experiences to their schools.
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Parent Meetings
 Head of School Ms. Lam has scheduled the rest of the meetings with parents to be held in the next two weeks. All meetings will be held at 25 Arlington St. with the parents of students currently in:
- Grade 5, March 12, 8:15 a.m.
- Grades 6 and 7, March 12, 5 p.m.
- Grade 1, March 13, 8:15 a.m.
- Grade 2, March 17, 5 p.m.
- Kindergarten, March 18, 8:15 a.m.
- Grades 3 and 4, March 18, 5 p.m.
Note regarding transportation:
* There will be NO bus transportation for 7th and 8th graders. They will be given passes for public transportation
* 6th graders can also opt to receive a pass for public transportation.
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We are pleased to announce that Open Source Radio host Chris Lydon will be the Master of Ceremonies at this year's Spring Fling! on April 6th. Since visiting our school in the fall, Mr. Lydon has become one of our biggest fans and most articulate advocates. He is looking forward to introducing all our ensembles and helping us bring our beautiful music to the Strand.
Another of Mr. Lydon's responsibilities on that Sunday will be to help us honor founding Conservatory Lab Board of Trustees Chair, Kitty Pell. Mrs. Pell has been a leader of our board of trustees since before the school opened its doors in 1999 and her commitment to the school and its mission has been steadfast all these 15 years. We are looking forward to this opportunity to say "thank you" to Kitty for all she has done to help our school along the way.
Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased either online here and will be available at each building starting Wednesday, March 12. Each family is limited to 4 tickets until March 21st so we can ensure seats for everyone. After March 21st, more tickets will be available. Tickets will not be available at the door.
Bravo lines, a special shout out in the program for your musician, are $10 apiece and are due to Toni Jackson, tjackson@conservatorylab.org by March 14th.
Volunteers are a very important part of making this event a success. We need a large number of parents for everything from helping with student lunches before the concert and ushering. We need your help at the next planning meeting. Come see where you can lend a hand!
WHEN:
Saturday, March 8, at 2:00 p.m.
WHERE:
The KROC Center / Upstairs classroom
650 Dudley Street, Dorchester, MA
**Come see T-shirt designs for Spring Fling volunteers
**Get a sneak peek at the music program for the concert
**Help with volunteer recruitment
**Hear updates on classroom raffle baskets
**Meet other Conservatory Lab families
For more information, please contact Beth Greene, co-chair for the event at beth.greene@comcast.net.
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Double Bass Style Storytelling
Last Friday our K1 and K2 classes welcomed a special musical guest. Kirsten Lamb, a graduate student in double bass at New England Conservatory, took the young listeners on a musical storytelling adventure with original music set to a Native American folk tale about a tricky fox and a crow. Kirsten led the students through listening activities, songs, interactive musical games, and an introduction to American string folk instruments. The students loved singing the chorus and making the sounds Kirsten needed to tell her story right. They impressed her with their musical knowledge and got to learn some special "double bass" terms for plucking and bowing. We are grateful to the New England Conservatory and Tanya Maggi, their Director of Community Performances and Partnerships, for continuing to bring such interesting and talented musicians to work and play with our students.
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The lottery for admission was held today and, thanks to the organizational skills of Admissions Coordinator Osiel Gonzalez, many families have received the happy news that their child has been offered a seat at our school next year. Over 600 applications were submitted this year and each one was assigned a ticket with a number.
 Three volunteers came to help draw tickets as that task must be done by someone unaffiliated with the school. Local attorney Harry Silverman arrived at 8 AM and pulled all the K1 tickets one by one. Next year, 17 of our incoming preschoolers will be the younger siblings of currently enrolled students so we only were able to offer admission to 26 students out of the 220 who applied! Two local university students, Frederick Barnick from the Berklee School of Music and Deborah Tan from Boston College's School of Education, spent a number of hours with Mr. Gonzalez drawing the rest of the tickets to add to our waiting lists for each grade. As we will expand again next year, we have a number of seats to offer, especially in 2nd and 4th grade. All accepted students were notified by phone today and all those on the waiting list will receive notification by mail in about a month.
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