This Week, from Dr. Cuthbert | February 6

Dear Parents,

When you read this on the weekend, I hope you are safe and busy musing about snow, shoveling snow, building snow forts, reading good books, and enjoying Mother Nature’s wonders.

As you may know, it’s planning and budgeting time for the next school year, and your LSRT members have been busy looking at several scenarios for our school budget.  We’re waiting for DCPS to let us know which positions we’ll have to include as part of their core staffing and, therefore, how much actual operating money we’ll have left after personnel costs.  When these are known, we’ll share the information with you.

In planning and thinking about the wonderful new Stoddert ES that we’ll have next year, we’re also beginning to discuss a theme for next year.  Below you’ll find a DRAFT of ideas that I presented to LSRT and our faculty to begin discussions. If you have ideas and thoughts, please let your LSRT representatives and/or me know so that all perceptions can be known.

I hope you have a safe and fun weekend.  Thanks to all of you who made the brick campaign kick-off SO much fun for the students.  Don’t forget to buy your brick(s)!

–Dr. Marjorie Cuthbert

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Stoddert ES Future Initiatives
DRAFT

Theme for a Stoddert Signature Initiative:

Stoddert Elementary School:
Making a World of Difference in the Global Environment

Rationale:

1.    Stoddert is a unique campus in the DCPS: We have a brand-new school with state-of-the-art energy systems – deep wells to tap geothermal energy.  We also have a spacious, green campus with many trees, and space for a large student-managed garden. These attributes offer a unique opportunity to feature science initiatives oriented around environmental and energy themes, which can be integrated into the reading and mathematics curricula.

2.    Stoddert ES is a truly international school. We have children from 26 different nations, speaking 24 different languages.  We also are fortunate to have several different embassies in the school zone, all of whom have children attending our school. We also have many children from our military families who have lived in many states and countries.  This situation offers us the opportunity to create an international perspective on our environmental and energy themes. Every country faces the challenges of how to provide for the energy needs of the future, and an increasingly expressed concern is that developing nations are using greater amounts of energy at a time when world supplies are becoming limited. Therefore, a critical part of the global economy in the future will be the interdependence of energy supplies and attempts to protect the environment. Social Studies themes and objectives could also be incorporated around these issues.

These two factors provide Stoddert ES with a unique opportunity to tailor a signature educational program around the theme of an international perspective on environmental and energy issues, with the campus offering students the chance for hands-on activities that complement the lessons they learn in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies classes. This initiative will provide students with opportunities to learn in a microcosm of a global setting, and help them realize, through contact with so many students from other countries, that they will grow up into a world where these issues must be approached in a cooperative, international manner.
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