School Notebook: Lynbrook eye on heritage

A Lynbrook school is finding creative ways to help kids remember their heritage.

Waverly Park Elementary School is one of 20 schools nationwide selected to receive a Champion Creatively Alive Children 2012 Grant from Crayola and the National Association of Elementary School Principals based on a school proposal to infuse art into learning.

For winning, the school earned a $2,500 grant and $500 in Crayola products to create a series of books, for which each of its 205 students will contribute a page detailing a "personal artifact" from their family's history, school officials said. The books will be kept in the library for future pupils to connect with the school's past.

"We look like a homogeneous building, but if we have children dig into their family trees, we can teach them we are a nation of immigrants and all started in different places," principal Lucille McAssey said. "These albums will serve as ambassadors to future students."

The artifacts will include anything from old photographs to Christmas ornaments, McAssey said, and students will make their pages in the spring at a schoolwide Family Night. A total of five books, one for each grade level, will be created at least every five years.

A second phase of the project will consist of a mural painted by schoolchildren on a brick wall at the front of the school building, McAssey said.

"There's so much attention on tests and academics it feels like art almost gets lost," said music teacher Maddy Jabin, who applied for the grant with art teacher Carol Henderson.

Of the project's focus on heritage, she said: "A lot of kids describe themselves using broad [ethnicity] labels, and we want them to look deeper than that."

GLEN HEAD

iPads distributed

The North Shore School District has launched a program that has provided more than 600 iPads to all sixth-graders and 10-graders, as well as students in ninth-grade "Experience" classes and special-education classes at Glenwood Landing Elementary School.

The iPads will allow kids to use electronic textbooks, engage in videoconferences and email homework to teachers.

"This technology better prepares our students for the future, since it is being used more readily in higher education and the corporate world," Superintendent Edward Melnick said.

VALLEY STREAM

Open houses

The Valley Stream Central High School District's four schools held open houses last month that offered community members a tour of facilities and a chance to meet with students and educators. The event was held as part of the National Education Association's 90th Annual American Education Week.

Activities included a continental breakfast prepared by culinary arts students at Central High School and a slide show at South High School in which students used Smart Boards to present "best-of" clips of the student newscast.

Student artwork and science projects also were on display.

COUNTYWIDE (CE/SE)