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February 15, 2008
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Art for Kids Sake 2-15-2008
Art for Kid’s Sake Auction
Artrageous 1920’s
Calling all bootleggers, moonshiners, & wine afficionados !
We’re taking you back to 1920’s-
Prohibiton has just been declared!
We need your help to stock up on our Artrageous 1920’s Prohibition Wine Cellar!
We are requesting each family to donate a bottle of their favorite wine (with a minimum value of $25.00 dollars and up!).
We’ll stock pile the best wine cellar in town and on Auction night, you get a chance to buy a ticket to win the whole kit and kaboodle! Winner takes all!
So if you’ve got a special favorite wine to share or just need to make room in your own wine cellar.
Please donate to our Artrageous 1920’s Prohibition Wine Cellar!
Please drop off your wine donations on Wed/Thurs/Friday March 12th, 13th and 14th.
Hurry before they call in the paddy wagon!
Upcoming Events 2-15-2008
ALL SCHOOL EVENTS:
• February 18–Presidents' Day, School Closed (no childcare)
• February 19–22–February Break, No Classes, (childcare by reservation)
• February 29–PHS "Snow Day" Celebration
• March 6–7–No LS Classes, LS Parent/Teacher Conferences
Click here for a downloadable calendar of events for February 2008
Click here for a downloadable calendar of events for March 2008
Click here for a downloadable 2007-2008 School Year Calendar
Please click below for a copy of the DRAFT 2008-2009 School Year Calendar. Please note, the later start date is due to construction on the second floor (installing new flooring) which predicates a three-day later start to the school year.
Click here for a downloadable DRAFT 2008-2009 School Year Calendar
Student Allergies
Dear PHS Community:
Last fall, I asked an ad hoc committee made up of some members of the school’s safety committee as well as Board members, other staff, and parents with a particular expertise (medical, legal, etc.) to look at the school’s current allergy and asthma policy that we now have in place.
The objective of this work is to make sure that we are doing all that we can do to keep all of our student’s safe and to look at best practices in the field, specifically as it relates to food and pet allergies as well as asthma prevention. Eventually, the committee will make a recommendation to me about next steps. Whatever those recommendations or next steps are, we will do our best to keep the entire community’s needs in mind, particularly if their recommendations means a fundamental change in the policy. We see next year as a transition and planning year in regards to the allergy and asthma policy with new methods overlapping with the policy that we currently have. Therefore, a new or updated policy will not take place until the 2009 – 2010 school year to give current members of the school community time to adjust or to consider other educational options.
Enclosed with this letter is the request from the committee to gather feedback from the larger community with regards to their work. (The letter is also available in its entirety after the "Continue Reading" link.)
If you have any questions or comments on the process of a general nature, please feel to contact one of the ad hoc committee members listed in the attached letter.
Download the Allergy Letter from the Committee (readable online after the link)
Download the draft guidelines
Sincerely,
Brian Thomas,
Director
To the PHS Community,
We are writing to inform the PHS community that a working committee has been formed in order to review and advise on a comprehensive allergy and asthma protocol for the school. We have brought various backgrounds to the table and have begun the process of reviewing the pertinent medical, social, legal, and educational data.
The current PHS policies on allergies (food and pets) and asthma prevention and management were created based on the perceived needs and concerns at the time. Now that we have had some time and have researched best practices with regards to children with allergies in schools, we would like to revisit our policies. In order to have a comprehensive and safe policy we are reviewing a number of national protocols including "School Guidelines for Managing Students with Food Allergies" published by the National School Board Assoc., the Food Allergy Network, the National Associations of Elementary and Secondary School principals and the National Association of School Nurses. A large number of schools have adapted this document for their use, and we will be looking to see how it would work at PHS.
As always we will attempt to be inclusive and respectful of the varied ideas and experiences of the PHS community. Our overreaching goal is to establish a consistent, effective, safe, and medically sound protocol for children with allergies and asthma. As with other PHS endeavors we hope to offer a plan that is a result of open inquiry and careful consideration.
We ask for your help in providing relevant information to the working group. Based on a studied evaluation we are hoping to recommend a comprehensive protocol that fosters the students’ active and responsible participation in their world. We are confident that, as other schools have adopted safe policies, PHS can also work with students, parents, and physicians to minimize risks and provide a safe educational environment for all students.
We are posting information in the lobby for those who are interested in seeing the articles we have used, as well as some forms we are considering.
Thank you.
Adra Valentine
Asthma/Allergy Policy Committee Chair
Lisa Jeli
Ralph Lane
Howard Rosenfeld
Please send any comments by March 15th to adra_valentine@presidiohill.org
Announcements 2-15-2008
Hiring Update from Brian Thomas
"Please join me in welcoming Amy Wares Edelson to Presidio Hill School, replacing Janna Sobel who will be going on leave as the Performance Teacher for the next two months. In addition to her extensive experience in working with ages 5 – 14 at St. Martin de Porres School, the Convent of the Sacred Heart Schools, and the New Conservatory Theater here in San Francisco, Amy has also worked as a kindergarten teacher in the East Bay and a second grade teacher in Los Angeles. Amy is thrilled beyond belief to be working at Presidio Hill School. Amy has her bachelor’s degree in theater from Northwestern University and is a credentialed teacher in multiple subjects in elementary education."
Follies DVDs are here!
"The Secret of Sparkly Shine" is now available on DVD!
Much thanks to David Donnefield and crew, who shot and edited the video.
Each DVD is $9. You can pick up your Follies 2007 DVD from Martin at the front desk. (There are plenty to go around).
In case you did not get a copy of the 2006 Follies show (Follywood), we also have some available for $6.
PHS Snow Day 2-15-2008
Snow Day 2008
Friday, February 29th
Dear PHS Families,
PHS will be celebrating our traditional leap year Snow Day (San Francisco style), February 29 from 1:35-2:50. No, your child will not be staying home that day. Instead, we will provide poetry, science, literature, and cross grade community building activities centered on the theme of snow & winter.
We would like your help with this fun and educational day. Here are some things you can do to help:
1. Send your child in “snow” outerwear and layers. (sweaters, gloves, goggles, snowsuit, hats, boots, or whatever you have that would be fun) Please label everything.
2. We will be creating a snow globe museum in the library. Please send in any Snow Globes that you might have at home in to your child’s classroom starting Monday, February 25. Label them on the bottom with your name and “touch or no touch”. You can download the directions for making your own snow globes by clicking here.
3. Volunteer to help the parent association support our day.
Thank you,
Patty
From the Director 2-15-2008
REVISIT: Discovering PHS’s Past
It’s been quite a week for the school. In fact, the notion of February being the shortest month makes me laugh out loud, a kind of great belly laugh because it only means that we get to cram more “stuff” into a limited amount of time.
Yet, this week was quite auspicious for me, and perhaps one of the best times I have spent at the school to date. I was honored to be in the company of three of Flora Arnstein’s grandchildren, Margaret, Becky, and Eric Jenkins. (Flora Arnstein was one the founders of our school along with her sister-in-law, Helen Salz.) Both Becky and Eric went to Presidio Hill School (or Presidio Open Air School, as it was known in the beginning). Presidio Open Air School was originally founded with Becky and Eric’s mothers, Edith and Ethel, plus their cousins and an assortment of other local children in mind. The school soon grew to educate many, many more children in the progressive ideals of the times.
The four of us, along with Carolyn Wilson Koerschen, a researcher and a true lover of historic progressive schools, met this past Monday (February 11, 2008) to talk about, Flora Arnstein.
Although she did not have many stories of her grandmother to tell, Margaret had what I imagined was the same kind of quiet and stately intensity that Flora Arnstein must have had. In fact there was something in her demeanor and confident certainty that I imagined was the reason that her grandmother lived to be 104-years old and accomplished the things that she did without the usual fanfare reserved for famous founders. Margaret is artistic director of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, another San Francisco institution. Becky, on the other hand, was the passionate firebrand daughter and former union organizer. I understand that she was also quite an actress, too. Eric told many stories of his family. His stories are so important and one of a kind. I actually first saw Eric in a video on YouTube, not knowing who he was, while searching for information about Mrs. Arnstein and Mrs. Salz.
Here is a home movie from 1935 (Note: Eric is the baby in the home movie. More information about what’s going on in this movie can be found at the end of my letter):
As I listened to the stories that Eric and Becky regaled us with, I thought about this one-of-a-kind 8mm home movie, which gives us a small, immeasurable sense of who this family was.
From the video one feels that the family is a gregarious bunch who loved being together at these sorts of gatherings. Indeed, the Arnsteins and Jenkinses were known for their salons where people came to visit, play music, and enjoy each other’s company. Flora Arnstein, or Auntie Forgie (“FOR–gee” – she thought Flora sounded too stiff, matronly, and formal), taught at the school for nearly thirty years after it was founded and later renamed it Presidio Hill School, around 1938.
Before he began recounting this amazing piece of oral history, Eric put a picture of his Gabby (“GOB-bee”, which is what the grandchildren called their grandmother), on my file cabinet, as if she were presiding over the conversation. The picture of Mrs. Arnstein was probably taken at some point in her late 80s or early 90s (she lived to be 104).
We heard about Auntie Forgie’s dedication to teaching, particularly creative writing and poetry, even though she never received formal training. Like most women at that time in San Francisco, she was a mother and homemaker until she and her sister-in-law came up with the idea of starting the school for their children and a few others. Marion Turner, the second director at Presidio Open Air School, convinced Mrs. Arnstein that she was a teacher and had a gift to share with the students at the school. She did, and we are grateful for what she is still teaching us today.
While at 3839 Washington Street, Mrs. Arnstein was friends and acquaintances with other notable people who were either from or traveled through San Francisco at the time, including Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, Paul Robeson, Anna Freud, and Ansel Adams, to name a few. She even went to see Maria Montessori when she came to the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915.
According to the Jenkins’s family, the school came out of a particular point of view that truly was a-political. As I listened to them tell stories about their family, I was struck by how their German-Jewish secularism attracted a great many types of families both Jewish and non-Jewish to the school, even in the early days. Mrs. Arnstein herself was not a religious person, but she did have a deep abiding faith in humanistic ideals, especially in the arts and later in psychoanalysis. In her later life after she left the school, Mrs. Arnstein worked for Erik Erikson, another luminary in the psychoanalytic movement, as a typist and was herself the subject of a deep psychoanalytic study.
Indeed, what was obvious during our nearly two hours together is that Presidio Hill School/Presidio Open Air School, deserves a special place in San Francisco History and in the history of education in the United States. Quietly and under the radar, the school has survived, through two World Wars, a catastrophic flu pandemic (of 1918), worldwide depression, the Holocaust, 16 Presidents of the United States, the Civil Right’s Movement, space travel, the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK, the Cold War, and the rise of a strong GLBT movement among other things. Now we at PHS have found renewal in connecting back to our historic roots.
What is clear, as you see more of the school’s history, is that we are poised to celebrate an incredible 90-year-old legacy as a school. My hope is that we find a time to reflect on all that we have been given, all that we must give, and all that we must keep in order to go into the next 90 years with the same sense of life-long learning and fierce urgency as Auntie Forgie. I know that her descendants, Margy, Becky, and Eric Jenkins, will be cheering us on to remember our purpose, to do better always, and do more with all that we have.
Namasté,
Brian Thomas, Director
I want to give special thanks to Carolyn Wilson Koerschen, who connected the school back to the Arnstein and Salz family, giving us a glimpse into our most precious history.
16MM film digitized by Alan Denmark, March 2006
Characters identified by Edith [Nickelsburg] Parker, November 2006
Uploaded by Jonathan Parker, January 2007
In order of appearance:
Flora "Forgie" [Jacobi] Arnstein, 1885-1990
Leonard "Lennie" Jacobi, 1890-1968
Edith Arnstein, 1913-2005
Edith Nickelsburg, b.1924
Melvil Nickelsburg, 1885-1943
Janet [Jacobi] Nickelsburg, 1893-1983
Stephen "Steve" Nickelsburg, 1918-1971
Ruth "Rutie" Nickelsburg, 1920-1998
Ethel [Arnstein] Voorsanger, 1911-1969
Jacob "Jack" Voorsanger, 1909-1972
Eric Voorsanger, b.1934
"Yaya" Foster (possibly)
Scene 1: The Nickelsburg home, #1 21st Ave., San Francisco
Scene 2: Arrival of Forgie Arnstein, Lennie Jacobi, and Edith Arnstein, greeted by Edith, Janet, Rutie, Steve, and Melvil Nickelsburg
Scene 3: Arrival of Eric, Ethel, and Jack Voorsanger
Scene 4: Eric and Ethel
Scene 5: The Nickelsburg Family; Rutie, Melvil, Edith, Janet, and Steve
Scene 6: Melvil, Janet, Edith, Rutie, and Steve on the balcony overlooking the Presidio
Scene 7: Melvil and Steve
Scene 8: Melvil
Scene 9: Steve
Scene 10: Edith N. with the San Francisco Chronicle
Scene 11: Steve and Rutie dancing
Scene 12: Forgie, Lennie, and Janet (sisters and brother)
Scene 13: Ethel
Scene 14: Edith A.
Scene 15: Edith A., Forgie, and Ethel (sisters and their mother)
Scene 16: Jack and Ethel
Scene 17: Rutie and Edith N.
Scene 18: Eric and Jack The "Wedding":
Scene 19: Steve (the "groom"), Edith N.
Scene 20: Edith N. (the "ringbearer"), Edith A. and Ethel ("attendants"), Janet, Rutie (the "bride"), Lennie, Jack, and Steve
Scene 21: Rutie, Steve, Lennie, Jack, Edith N. (In the background: Janet, [possibly] Yaya Foster, and Forgie
Curriculum Spotlight: 7th Grade Humanities 2-15-2008
A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination. –Nelson Mandela
Seventh graders have made tremendous progress in humanities this semester and should be proud of their accomplishments. Some major themes of study have carried over from last semester, themes about coming of age, overcoming adversity, and the importance of friendship, and some new themes have emerged, themes about activism, empowerment, and consciousness.
Into Africa
As with Latin America, we’ve begun our study of Africa by looking at colonialism and its repercussions. We’ve discussed the expansion of European empires fueled by myriad goals: exploratory, economic, and religious. We’ve examined the effects of colonialism on countries like Rwanda, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. Through literature and film, we’ve conducted an in-depth study of apartheid and its legacy. We’ve also begun looking at the current state of affairs in Africa and major issues confronting the continent today, including poverty, civil unrest, disease, the economy, and education.
We’ve viewed some amazing films, including excerpts from PBS Frontline documentary Ghosts of Rwanda, Mandela, an award-winning documentary about the life and times of the great civil rights leader, and Cry Freedom, Richard Attenborough’s stunning epic chronicling the life and times of activist Steven Biko. We’ve listened to music that chronicles and comments upon major issues in contemporary African history by artists from Ladysmith Black Mambazo to Peter Gabriel, Sweet Honey in the Rock to A Tribe Called Quest, which has led to student-created songs, raps and poems about key figures and events.
We’ve connected literature to major themes and content, beginning with The Other Side of Truth, a novel about Nigerian refugees and their struggle to let the truth about their cruel government be known. We’ve just begun a collection of short stories called Somehow Tenderness Survives, which features views of apartheid from South Africans of different races, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds.
Students continued to grow cognitively and creativity through their writing. They’ve crafted persuasive essays on topics of their choosing, developed their own versions of classic tales for our Retold Stories project, and are currently sharpening their investigative skills developing news stories for the PHS community. Look for this year’s issue of the seventh grade newspaper (this year’s title TBD) on newsstands in early March.
We’ll wrap up this unit with a field trip on March 7 to the Museum of the African Diaspora to see the exhibit AFRICA.Dot.COM: From Drums to Digital. Read more about this exciting exhibit at http://www.moadsf.org/exhibits/index.html?mode=current
I continue to be impressed by the conviction and compassion displayed by the seventh grade class as we tackle these complex issues.
Amandla!
Jennifer Franklin
High School Placement 2-15-2008
Ann Meissner Jennifer Franklin (Seventh Grade Humanities Teacher)
Thinking ahead, we want to let you know that both of us will be available to talk to students and families as acceptance letters begin to arrive to help in the process of choosing a final school. Acceptance letters will be arriving in mid-March and families will have about a week to make a final decision. We will be meeting with students when we return from the February break to talk about how to manage this next phase.