January 29th, 2012 §
Dear parents and students thank you for the warm wishes and gifts for the holidays!!!
Happy New Year to all of you. I hope you and your children were able to enjoy some fun and fine literature, were
able to attend joyful activities and had a well deserved rest.
Winter is upon us, with the exception of some unusual warm days recently. I hope you are reading Treasures
daily with your children and answering Critical Thinking together in their homework journal. The Word Book
and word lists are to be studied and learned daily. Remember the homework that is passed , such as the math
on Mondays, are to be returned the following Monday.
Mr. Carrillo and I are organizing the Talent Show for the end of Februaryand I hope many of my students will
participate. Please , if your child has any special talents such as playing an instrument, singing, dancing, etc.
please get them ready for our Hollywood Extravaganza !!!
Since the days are getting warmer and our garden is flourishing beautifully, during science, we are beginning to
observe the new flowers, herbs, fruits and vegetables. For science, we are currently comparing different types
of seeds (rye, oats, alfalfa wheat) and we are growing them and shall be comparing them. Also we will do some
experiments where we will limit sunlight, water and so forth as well as have some controls to compare.The class
will record the data, make some predictions and plot growth.
Mr. Wurmfeld is excited to work with us in the coming months in regards to the cycle of life and our garden.
Please visit the garden on weekends and partake of it beauty and bounty. It’s your garden too!!!
Happy Planting!!!
Christine Peres Pena First Grade Room 18
January 21st, 2012 §
The District will be offering our campus to be shared with the Citizens of the World Charter School for the 2012-13 school year due to our having classrooms on campus that are not currently in use. We have plans for this space, specifically starting a Dual Language program for 2012 – 2013; sharing the campus with another school will prevent us from starting this program. Principal Furfari, Micheltorena teachers, the Micheltorena PTA and Friends of Micheltorena oppose Citizens of the World Charter sharing our campus. Please help us stop this proposal by contacting District officials and tell them “I oppose a charter sharing the Micheltorena campus!” Here is how you can help:
Call or write the Charter School Office and let them know you are opposed to having a Charter come to our school. Please contact Jose Cole Gutierrez directly at (213) 241-2487 or email him at jose.cole-gutierrez@lausd.net.
Request to see the list of signatures of parents from our community that was submitted by the Citizens of the World Charter.
Contact our School Board Member Bennett Kayser and let him know you are opposed to having a Charter come to our school. You may call him at (213) 241-5555 or email him at BoardDistrict5@lausd.net
Many parents, Micheltorena alumni, and Silver Lake community members have written passionate replies to this situation. Please see below to read some of the letters that have been written; more will be posted soon. Please also see the article in the Eastsider for further discussion.
From Principal Furfari:
Dear Micheltorena Parents and Community Members,
I am sending you this email because I am very concerned about the future of our school. I have been informed that the District will be offering eight classrooms on our campus to the Citizens of the World Charter School for the 2012-13 school year. This will have serious implications for our school and our students. I am asking that you help me in reaching out to District officials to stop this process from moving forward (see above). I believe that if we can get enough parents involved, we can stop this process. Thank you for supporting our school. If you should have any questions or require additional information, please do not hesitate to call me at (323) 661-2125.
Sincerely,
Susanna C. Furfari
Principal
From PTA President Rebecca Crane:
Dear Mr. Kayser and Mr. Gutierrez,
I writing to express my opposition to the idea of Micheltorena Street Elementary sharing its campus with Citizens of the World charter school. I am a physician, a Silver Lake resident and PTA president at Micheltorena. I have been a proud Micheltorena parent since 2008, and currently have both of my children at the school.
Our principal, teachers, Micheltorena PTA and Friends of Micheltorena oppose the Citizens of the World charter sharing our a campus for many reasons. A crucial reason is that sharing our campus would inhibit further growth and betterment activities on the campus; in particular, sharing our campus would take away extra classrooms and would prevent us from increasing enrollment and expanding to form a bilingual program school for the year 2012 – 2013, which we are preparing for at the present time.
Micheltorena Elementary is a campus that is the center of a community, comprised of parents, Micheltorena alumni, and Silver Lake residents, that embrace the school and are actively working to elevate the school’s status. Instead of turning our backs and throwing up our hands, driving our cars out of the neighborhood to outside schools, we are pulling up our sleeves and getting to work. With the direction of Principal Furfari, we have installed a new library, built a school and community garden, and partnered with the Silver Lake Conservatory of Music to augment our existing music program. Local arts organization Bluepalm is currently working at our school to install a sustainable, school-wide, sequential, standards-based art program that will serve as a pilot to other LAUSD schools. We have received a grant from the Kaiser Permanente Community Benefits program to support after-school cooking and garden classes that teach healthy eating habits and encourage outdoor physical activity. Some express concern over the school’s API score. However, our lower API average reflects testing of a student population that is comprised of a higher percentage of Special Needs students than a typical elementary school, and we value this group as adding to the richness and diversity of our campus. When recalibrated, our API of 844 demonstrates the talents of our outstanding teachers and the strong academics at Micheltorena.
Our work at the school has improved the community at large. Murals have been painted, as part of campus beautification efforts, along the campus perimeter and sidewalk of Sunset Boulevard for all to enjoy. Silver Lake Neighborhood Council members serve on the Friends of Micheltorena board, and talk frequently with Principal Furfari to discuss ways of involving the campus with the surrounding community, including plans to make the school a site where the community can gather in the event of an emergency or disaster. We have plans to partner with Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic physicians to provide health education at the school, as well as better coordinate medical services for our families without health insurance. We offer ESL classes on our campus, and host free-of-charge gardening and sustainable-practices workshops at our garden for the school community and general public. We are the recipients of a 2011 California Safe Routes to School grant which will redesign the crosswalk at Micheltorena and Sunset to be safer for pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as provide funds for other sidewalk beautification efforts and planting of trees along Sunset Boulevard.
Our parents are committed, hard-working and involved in the Micheltorena PTA, Friends of Micheltorena and in the classrooms. Our campus is open and friendly, with teachers and children from many different backgrounds, who are glad to study and play together. Our families enjoy sharing our school and community, and we feel privileged to be able to walk our children to school!
The Micheltorena community is committed to the campus and to Silver Lake, and we will keep working to build our dreams at the school. Sharing our campus with a charter school would only inhibit further improvements and growth. Please help us continue our good work, and direct Citizens of the World charter school elsewhere.
Yours Sincerely,
Rebecca Crane, MD, MPH
President, Micheltorena PTA
January 15th, 2012 §
We’re off to a great start at the school with lots of exciting plans and activities for the New Year. See our calendar at www.micheltorena.org/calendar or click on “Calendar” at left.
Friends of Micheltorena Meeting, Tuesday, January 17, 4pm, Room 5 The bi-monthly FOM meeting will discuss plans for our upcoming school beautification day, garden activities and fundraising. Everyone is welcome to attend!
Bilingual Program Parent Meeting, Wednesday, January 18, 8:15a and 5pm, Room 7. For the 2012 – 2013 school year, Micheltorena is considering adding a dual-language program, with the goal of achieving biliteracy in English and Spanish for participating students. These informational meetings are for current and prospective parents. A flyer for the meeting is attached, please print and / or forward, and invite anyone who may be interested!
McDonald’s Fundraiser for Micheltorena PTA, Friday, January 20, 3:30p – 5:30p, McDonald’s Restaurant, 4348 Sunset Blvd (corner of Sunset and Fountain) McDonald’s will host a fundraiser for our PTA; 20% of proceeds from food bought during these two hours will go to the Micheltorena PTA to support field trips for the school year. Micheltorena teachers and parents will be staffing the counters! Please stop by, and spread the word! A flyer for this event is attached to this email. Please note this is a change from the original planned date of January 27.
After-school cooking classes with Megan Birdsill, Tuesdays, January 24 – March 13. Cooking classes that teach nutrition, basic cooking concepts and appreciation of fresh and in-season fruits and vegetables continue, sponsored by Friends of Micheltorena with funding provided by a grant from Kaiser Permanente Community Benefits Program. Classes will be for all grades; sign-ups to start soon.
Parent Dance Class, Micheltorena Arts Plan, Friday, January 27, 10AM, Room 7. In the Micheltorena Parent Dance class parents are, increasingly, taking the lead and creating their own moves! Encouraged by Bluepalm instructors Sara Pfeifle and Tom Crocker, parents now invent more and more of the steps for their peers. The goal is parent ownership of their own healthy, exciting movement class. Quality, clarity, and leadership are discussed as important learning tools for parents… and their children.
Campus Beautification Day, Saturday, 11am – 4pm, January 28. Come help paint, garden, and clean-up at our campus beautification day! Show up in your work clothes and bring gloves, sunblock and a bottle of water. Snacks will be provided, and everyone is welcome to come help out.
Children’s Stories in the Garden, every second Saturday of the month, 12pm, in the Micheltorena School and Community Garden, hosted by Larchmont Charter School fourth grade teacher Megan Howe! Megan will read a story and provide activities based on the story. Everyone is welcome and these events are free. Stop by on your way back from the farmer’s market! Next event will be on February 11.
Molly in the garden with friend
January 15th, 2012 §
In the Micheltorena Parent Dance class parents are, increasingly, taking the lead and creating their own moves! Encouraged by Bluepalm instructors Sara Pfeifle and Tom Crocker, parents now invent more and more of the steps for their peers. The goal is parent ownership of their own healthy, exciting movement class. Quality, clarity, and leadership are discussed as important learning tools for parents… and their children.
Next class:
Friday Jan. 27 at 10 A.M.
Micheltorena Parent Dance class makes connections between learning and the body to build understanding about the benefits of arts-based learning. The class is a part of the Micheltorena Arts Plan (MAP) which receives funding from the Friends of Micheltorena, California Arts Council, The Thelma Pearl Howard Foundation, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
January 9th, 2012 §
Thanks to our Micheltorena Arts Project (MAP), on December 15 all Kindergarten students attended a matinee performance of the traditional holiday ballet ‘Nutcracker’ at the fabulous San Gabriel Mission Playhouse Theater. For most students, it was their very first Nutcracker! A number of Kinder parents, as well as participants from our Micheltorena Parent Dance Class, also attended.
Dancing Nutcracker Parents
Visions of sugar plums followed students back to the classroom where they reviewed the story, danced the different roles, and shared impressions from the experience. For weeks in advance, the classrooms of Ms. Schreiber, Markarian, and Griffiths had worked with Bluepalm artist Sara Pfeifle to establish links between dance, learning, and the Nutcracker.
Careful preparation and follow-up ensure that the field trip was not only fun but also well-grounded in relevant classroom themes.
Fun with the Russian Dance interpretation!
The Nutcracker outing was part of the MAP Field Trip Plan which will ensure that during their Micheltorena journey, every student has the opportunity to attend a live theater and dance performance, musical concert, and the landmark Los Angeles museums.
The Nutcracker field trip was made possible with support from Friends of Micheltorena, the Thelma Pearl Howard Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
NOTE: The next Micheltorena Parent Dance Class is this coming Friday Jan. 13 at 10 A.M.
December 12th, 2011 §
For this last week before the holiday break, we would like to bring your attention to a number of goings on:
Tuesday, December 13 at 4:30pm in Room 7: Gifted and Talented (GATE) Program Informational Meeting
Tuesday, December 13 at 5:30pm in School Library: Family Reading Night
Wednesday, December 14 at 1pm in Auditorium: Winter Program
Friday, December 16, 8:15am in Room 7: ELAC meeting
Friday, December 16, 11am – 12pm in Room 7: Parent Volunteer Holiday Potluck
Saturday, December 17, 12pm, School Garden: Children’s Stories in the Garden, hosted by Larchmont Charter School teacher Megan Howe! Everyone is welcome and the event is free.
November 13th, 2011 §
Thank you to everyone who came out for Micheltorena PTA’s First Annual Great Pumpkin Festival on October 29! We had a great time on the lower play-yard, with a bake sale, delicious food, a raffle, games, amazing music and performances, a scary haunted house, balloon animals, a kiddie train ride, and a visit by two magnificent fire trucks. Parents and teachers both came out to help make the day a great success, and helped the PTA raise just over $2000, all of which will go towards funding buses for school field trips throughout the year. We are already looking forward to next year’s festival! Scroll down to the end of this post to see pictures of the festival.
The Friends of Micheltorena will be having its bi-monthly meeting on Tuesday, November 15 at 5pm (changed from 4pm!) at the school. The Friends of Micheltorena is a non-profit group whose activities include stewardship of the school and community garden, the banner program, school beautification, community outreach, as well as grant-writing and fundraising for school projects and activities. All are welcome to attend.
Micheltorena’s Family Math Night is happening on Tuesday, November 22 at 5pm. Bring the whole family for math games and fun, hosted by our teachers!
We have a new library aide for our Wonder of Reading library! His name is Mr. Hunter and he comes to us after serving the Los Feliz Elementary library for six years. Don’t forget to sign your child’s waiver so he/she can check books out of the library!
The PTA is happy to announce that Mr. Carillo’s second grade class was awarded a Subway sandwich party for achieving the highest percentage of PTA memberships for a class during our PTA membership drive. Congratulations! However, it’s not too late to become a member of the PTA. Membership is open to EVERYONE! To join, fill out a membership envelope and drop it in the PTA box in the school box. Membership is $7 per person for the year, with fees going to support PTA activities at the Micheltorena, city, state and national level.
The Micheltorena Arts Plan is in full swing, with after-school classes in art and design, held in the garden, as well as dance and fitness, that began on November 4. Classes are taught jointly by Micheltorena teachers and Blue Palm artists! Parents don’t need to feel left out of the fun; there is even a movement and kinesthetics class for parents to be held on Friday November 18 at 10am. Field trips have also started as well, notably with visits by the 4th graders to the Gene Autry museum in October, and upcoming visits by the second graders to the Getty Villa and a Nutcracker ballet trip for the kindergarteners coming up in December!
The Silver Lake Conservatory of music has also settled in on campus and now shares our auditorium for it’s chorus and ensemble classes. Students are also enjoying new classes and music instruction during the school day provided by Conservatory teachers. We are so happy they are with us, and look forward to a long and happy partnership with the Conservatory!
Our Harvest of the Month program at Micheltorena has also begun and is a big success. The program, led by teacher Geralyn Buschelman, consists of a monthly program where teachers are provided with lessons for the students on a fruit or vegetable that is in season. Donated produce is also delivered to the classrooms for children to try (rumor has it that Ms. Buschelman got ALL of her preschoolers to try TURNIPS!!) Our community representative, Peter Valverde, has been hosting tastings in the parent center for parents, who have been able to take home samples of fresh produce. The program also includes lessons on “rethinking your drink…choose water to drink!” as well as funding to support chefs in the classroom and in-class yoga instruction. Lastly, the program provides newsletters with recipes and nutrition facts on in-season produce for children to take home to their families. You can read more about this amazing program at www.harvestofthemonth.com.
The school and community garden is flourishing with flowers, herbs and winter greens. The garden is open to everyone, every Saturday from 10am to 2pm, for gardening, relaxing and eating. Come by and cut some fresh herbs or harvest some greens for your Saturday dinner!
KISS kids at the face painting table
Flamenco dance by our own Ms. Vargas and daughter
Chocolate mustaches from the bake sale table
Bake sale hosts Jenny and Tootie from Reform School
Fire truck from Echo Park fire station
Moms helping out at the food tent
Solar workshop in the garden
A mask from the craft table
Spooky cake pops at the bake sale table
Kid Dracula and Moms
Kid Wolfman
Principal Furfari enjoying the day!
October 16th, 2011 §
The Micheltorena PTA cordially invites all families, from the neighborhood and beyond, to join us at our first annual Great Pumpkin Festival, to be held on Saturday, October 29, from 11am to 5pm. The festival will be held on the front play-yard, and will feature food, games, crafts, garden workshops, raffle prizes, live music, and a haunted house! A fire truck will also be visiting the festival at 1:30p!
Admission is $1 and includes one raffle ticket. Kids under 2 years of age are free. All proceeds will go towards funding school field trips and after-school classes. To see the lineup of music acts and garden workshops scheduled for the day, visit www.micheltorena.org/festival. Please come to the parent volunteer meeting on Tuesday, October 18, at 8:15am and also at 5:00pm to find out how you can help make the festival a success.
Parent conferences start this week and run from Monday October 17 to Friday, October 21. During this time we will also be having out Annual Book Fair and Sale in the new library. Wednesday October 19 through Friday October 21 will be minimum days, with school dismissal at 12:19pm.
August 12th, 2011 §
Time to polish those shoes, dust off your pencil boxes and get ready for back-to-school! School this year starts on Wednesday, September 7. Click on the link to left to view upcoming events in our school calendar; you can also view the LAUSD 2011-2012 calendar by clicking here. Need some advice on getting Junior psyched for school? The National PTA has a nice article about it here.
Notable events for the first month of school include the PTA Social, on Tuesday, September 13, at 4:30 pm, and Back to School night, starting at 5:00 on Tuesday, September 27 . Come enjoy some refreshments, hob nob with other Micheltorena parents, and sign up to volunteer for a few hours in service of the school. We have a lot of great projects and events planned, and we hope you will join us to help Micheltorena have another outstanding year this year!
Just in time for school! Parent Jordan Crane working on the front entrance.
Of note, if you have a child entering the 7th – 12th grades this coming September, a new state law mandates proof that he/she has recently had a whooping cough (also known as pertussis) booster shot. The vaccine is called Tdap, and it also contains the vaccine for tetanus (the disease you can get when you step on a rusty nail). In response to this new law, LAUSD nurses are staffing health clinics around Los Angeles throughout the month of August. For times and locations, click here. You can read more about the new law here, or for information in spanish, click here.
June 4th, 2011 §
June is roaring in like a lion! We’ve got a wild ride ahead of us before we head off to summer break. Events include for this month include the Spelling Bee, the Summer Extravaganza choral performances, Kinder and 6th Grade Culminations, the Wonder of Reading Library Dedication Night, and the school’s first ever Micheltorena’s Got Talent Show! Please refer to the school’s online calendar at www.micheltorena.org/calendar for details on all upcoming events.
Micheltorena would like to extend a hearty <thank you> to Ben and Jerry’s and Flavorpill for sponsoring a super fun volunteer day for us on May 28. School and community volunteers hauled dirt from the garden, picked up trash from the perimeter, and started painting a beautiful mural in the kindergarten yard.
Vice Principal Ms. Hamanaka and son enjoy some ice cream and sunshine.
Lucy, Zeus and Ronnie help out with the mural.
