Greetings, GreenMount Community,
Wow!
What a morning we had here today!
Picture this: Your children up
and dancing, hootin’ and hollerin’ with Polynesian dancers from Samoa and
Hawaii. And I do mean hollerin’! Through the Haloti Ngata Family Foundation
and the amazing efforts of Jill Goodman and her husband, Miles, we were able to
have about 20 Polynesian dancers perform for us accompanied by their music
played through our new state-of-the-art sound system.
The men and
women of the dance troupe performed traditional cultural movements in their
dance including a rather impressive war dance performed by the men. They beat on their chests and loudly
proclaimed their ferocity to the amazement of the students. The women presented traditional dances similar
to the ones you may visualize Hawaiian dancers performing. The students also were invited to participate,
and our guests were very complimentary of the way our students participated and
kept up with the professional dancers in front of them. These young dancers were especially nice to
our students, even sitting down with some of them at lunch after the
performance. I think our kids learned a
lot about this culture and how generous some folks are with their time and
talent. In addition to coming to our
school to educate and entertain us, the Foundation presented the school with a
generous check to further our cultural learning. Wow!
In
today’s bulletin you will see an application for The Johns Hopkins Center for
Talented Youth (CTY). Participation in
CTY can be through a summer program or online as well as other opportunities
for talented students to grow their educational experience even further beyond
what they have at GreenMount (I know it’s hard to imagine). My biggest concern for this program is that
they will not have enough staffing to accommodate the number of GreenMount
students that could potentially be part of it.
They did say “talented.” If you
need further information, please see me for a brochure or simply contact
Hopkins at the number or web site provided.
Finally,
a complaint (not from me). Last week,
some neighbors came to the school to complain about our parents parking on
Miles Avenue. They were adamant that we
should respect their parking spaces and park elsewhere. Of course, Miles Avenue is a public street,
and parking there is the right of anyone. However, our most verbal and most
artistically adorned (neighbor?) noted that he has friends who own tow trucks
and he would not hesitate to have them come and remove cars. Naturally, this would be a serious violation
and would certainly be interpreted as “Grand Theft Auto”. Much to my surprise, our neighbors did not
accept that reasoning and reiterated their threat. I made the suggestion that they file with the
city to get permit parking signs and I promised to address the issue with our
parents.
So, yes you have
every right to park on Miles Avenue.
However, if you wish to avoid a possible verbal conflict with the good
folks there (just a few), consider parking on the grass when conditions allow. Thank you.
Cheers,
Steve
