News & Weekly Letters

Yesterday’s Field Day is the perfect cue for a letter about sport–a subject I don’t usually discuss with you. It might not be very obvious, but I am passionate about sports. Even though I still run regularly (despite an uncooperative knee), I must admit that my glory days are behind me. I am more of an armchair athlete nowadays (as Andria can testify–if it’s a sport and it is televised, I will watch it). My sporting “career” was punctuated by very few victories and a wide range of sprains and fractures of all sorts–I was a puny kid, ill-equipped for physical prowess on the icy, windy sports fields of the Ardèche.

Earlier this week, Sara Weintraub and I had the pleasure of traveling to Denver to participate in a conference at the International School there. We met our counterparts from all over North America with whom we worked on possible future professional development courses for our staff, among many other things. The conference took place at the ISD, and we had the opportunity to visit the campus. I am always curious to see what the classrooms, wall displays, and (even brief) interactions with teachers and students tell us about a school.

I’ve been meaning to write this letter to you for a while now, but as you know, time flies, and I have so many things to tell you that it almost slipped my mind to share our MAP Growth winter results with you. I had a lot of positive feedback on my first message about the fall results, and I am delighted to be able to share the latest results with you today.

Philippe, who officially joined our team this week, would like to offer a course in financial literacy to our middle schoolers next year. I researched the suggested content for similar courses in France and found that the recommendation is for students to learn to read bank statements using Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” as a reference (a short story all our 8th graders know well, thanks to Mr. LeMartelot).

Cast your minds back to a time when we were still called EINY. Some of you may already know this, but the previous occupant of the Elementary & Middle School Building was the Elite Model Agency. Even though it’s been 15 years since we took over the space, notepads with the Elite logo on them still linger in our cabinets, and we still receive mail addressed to Elite’s models and agents. So you can imagine, during the first few months after EINY moved in, the number of beautiful young things who called at 111 E 22nd Street, dressed to the nines and cool as cucumbers, trying to land contracts as top models.