Welcome Weixia, Oliver, Caitlin, and Annie! Melanie, welcome back!!! What an impressive group of interns! Thoughtful, articulate, funny, and love Green Team already. Community School welcomes you to become part of our family. We will inundate you with an overflow of information about your life at Community School as an intern for the next two weeks. Your life will be very busy and full of joy!

Today Ben spoke about our guiding principles. Which guiding principle spoke to you the most? Why? Have you ever had an educational experience that was or wasn't an example of one of these principles? What do you remember about it? How did it affect you?

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, there was an elementary school named Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Oklahoma City. In a first grade classroom, a young towheaded Nancy sat in her reading circle. I remember sitting on a HARD chair and swinging my feet because they didn't touch the ground. I also remember my first grade teacher, Miss Hoefackett. She was a large woman with massive hands and feet. She had cat eye glasses that she wore on a chain around her neck. She was a no-nonsense, get-to-work child terrorizer, in my book. I know you won't believe it, but I loved to talk to my friends in class. Apparently, I loved to talk even in reading circles which, according to Miss Hoefackett was some kind of grievous sin. In the midst of my chatting (instead of reading or listening), I felt a stinging slap on my skinny, white calves from the large Hoefackett palm descending swiftly across the circle. Crushed and mortified, I hung my bright red face, tried to look at my book and act as if I were reading, and cried. That was one reason that I didn't like reading circles for a long, long time. That is also one reason why principle four sings to me.

Principle four of a Community School Education:

(4) We provide intimate learning environments, defined by small classes, informality, close faculty-student relationships, respect and compassion toward others, tolerance of difference, collaborative learning, and classroom participation. We aim to meet students where they are, intellectually and developmentally, and to nurture intellectual, emotional and moral development.