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Ride against Racism with WHMS |
Who: WHMS staff, students, family, and community are encouraged to attend! Recruit your friends, neighbors, and extended family to participate!
What: A call to action against racism. This is a self-coordinated bike ride with no starting or finish line, chip-timing, or firm start and end times. Register to check-in at one of the three locations (Albany, Watervliet, or Bethlehem) or participate virtually! Registration ends on Friday, April 30. The registration fee is $40 plus a $3.32 sign-up fee for adults. Ages 18-21 is $20, age 13-17 is $10, and children 12 and under are free.
When: Saturday, May 1, 2021, from 10 am to 2 pm
Where: Along the Mohawk-Hudson Bike Trail
Why: RIDE AGAINST RACISM is a part of YWCA USA’s signature campaign STAND AGAINST RACISM, held at over 200 sites annually across the nation. While a bike ride alone cannot end racism, it CAN and WILL provide an opportunity for our community to come together in solidarity, move our bodies, enjoy springtime, and show our united support for making a difference in the Capital Region.
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The YWCA’s commitment to racial justice and civil rights runs deep. From their website, "We are committed to ensuring that everyone is afforded equal protection under the law, and our intersectional mission to eliminate racism and empower women demands that we show up to advocate against the oppression that many groups and individuals endure, including through recognizing the interconnected experiences of discrimination and disadvantage that women face from their overlapping identities. Too often, stereotypes, biases, and racial power dynamics are embedded in our laws and public policies that lead to criminalization and harming or death of people of color.
At YWCA, we demand a world of equity and human decency. We envision a world of opportunity. We commit ourselves to the work of racial justice. We will get up and continue to do the work until injustice is rooted out, until institutions are transformed, until the world sees women, girls, and people of color the way we do: Equal. Powerful. Unstoppable."
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WHMS is proud to announce that alumnus Rex Tien, Ph.D., has been elected to the Board of Trustees. Rex graduated from WHMS in 2000 and is the first alumnus to serve on the WHMS Board. Rex graduated from Shaker High School in 2006 as Valedictorian.
Rex is currently a Neural Engineering Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He has a doctoral degree in bioengineering and biomedical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in mechanical engineering.
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Rex Spoke at the 2017 WHMS Graduation, pictured above. Here is an excerpt of his speech:
I have come to deeply appreciate the lessons and knowledge instilled in me during my time at Montessori – lessons that you now hold within yourselves, in the very core of your being.
I speak not only of academic knowledge. It’s the life lessons, the ways of being that you learned implicitly from your outstanding teachers and by participating in the Montessori method, that will allow you to achieve greatness in everything you do.
Through planning your own daily activities, you learned to structure your time and pursue your interests. You learned not just how to find and follow your dreams, but how to achieve them.
As a member of the classroom community, you learned that life is a collaborative effort, that the strengths and insights of others can complement your own. This perspective will be invaluable as you find that your greatest successes are reached not through competition, but through teamwork.
Through your artistic, dramatic, and musical projects, you learned new ways of expressing yourself while broadening and gaining perspective on your life. I personally found a love of singing through the frequent concerts we put on at Montessori, and it is something that is a deep part of who I am to this day.
Singing has brought me immense joy, and incredible opportunities – I’ve sung all over Europe and on stages from Carnegie Hall to an NFL stadium, for people from President Barack Obama to Paul McCartney of The Beatles. It was at Montessori that the seeds of my passion were planted, and I am forever grateful that I was introduced to music in such an encouraging way at a young age.
If you have found an artistic or another type of passion here at Montessori, I urge you to nurture it and make it a permanent part of your life. Passionate personal expression will enrich your days with beauty, and might even open doors to wonderful new opportunities and experiences.
But perhaps the most important lesson is one that pervades the Montessori experience from the very start: the lesson that life is not a spectator sport; it is something you do. As you built the pink tower, arranged the times-table beads, traced the sandpaper letters, and later conducted your own scientific experiments, you learned that ideas and concepts are not just in your mind or in a book – they are real things in the world that you can touch, manipulate and change.
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As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Maria Montessori's birth this year, we also want to highlight our own Montessorians. Throughout the school year, we will highlight a WHMS teacher in each Messenger with five facts about them, totaling 150 facts throughout the year.
This week's facts are from Upper El teacher Patrick Cartwright.
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- I grew up in Montreal and Toronto, Canada. I was a “Landed Immigrant.” My first school was immersion French and I learned English after school and at home.
- The first live concert I attended was The Beach Boys at Maple Leaf Gardens. The last live concert I attended was Bad Bunny at the Webster Bank Arena in Connecticut.
- My hobbies include golf, sailing, skiing, and plumbing.
- My family does not own a gas car. Both our cars are powered by our solar panels. I have been interested in eradicating our world’s dependence on oil from the time I researched oil tanker spills, as an elementary student, in the 1970s.
- My wife, Kelli, and I have two children who have attended WHMS. Harper graduated in 2016 and Colin will graduate this June.
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Sandy's Lower El created Chinese Dragon puppets using paper folding techniques during their Makerspace. |
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Cindy's class dressed up for St. Patrick's Day. |
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Upper El has been working on square roots, integers, and the order of operations in math. |
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Lower El students enjoyed the last days of winter in March. |
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Lower El students created boards to showcase what they did during the past year's Pandemic. |
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Upper El students created time capsules about the Pandemic. After the students presented theirs, the Upper El teachers held a “Closing of the Time Capsule” ceremony to present their version of a time capsule, to be opened in 25 years by future WHMS Upper El teachers! |
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On St. Patrick's Day, the Toddler class celebrated by tasting Irish soda bread. Food tasting is an activity in the Toddler room that focuses on patience, grace, and courtesy while also introducing a food that may be new to the children.
All of the children sit in the circle, each is given some hand sanitizer and they sing their handwashing song. Then everyone counts to ten and a cloth is lifted off of the serving tray, revealing the food to be tasted. The children wait while the teacher offers each of them, one by one, a taste. They are encouraged to say "yes, please" or "no, thank you" when offered a taste.
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Michele and Kim's Upper El class learned all about hatching baby chickens. Kim taught them about the parts of an egg, how to distinguish between fertilized and unfertilized eggs, the stages of development of an embryo, and how to “candle” the eggs. Their class had seven Malaysian Serama chicken eggs (the world’s smallest chicken) in an incubator and enjoyed witnessing the spring chicks emerge from their shells.
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The students are determining if the egg is fertilized. |
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Students learned how to "candle" the eggs, the process of holding a light or candle near the egg to see the inner contents.
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WHMS eGala21: Sequins & Slippers is one for the record books! |
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The WHMS eGala21: Sequins & Slippers took place over Zoom on Saturday, March 20. The event was fantastic and raised over $47,000 for WHMS, including $25,000 in the Raise the Paddle for the Spider Net Pyramid Climber! More information about the climber will be included in the next Messenger.
If you missed it, you can view the recording above. The pre-show run for 20 minutes, with the eGala programming beginning at the 20-minute mark.
We thank all of our corporate sponsors; hosts Jenny Malatras, Heather Klusendorf, and Susan Thomas; our auctioneer Tom Stebbins, Honorary Committee members; guests; bidders; the gala committee; and online auction donors. It takes a village!
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Upcoming Events
Friday, April 2 - Sunday, April 11
Spring Break - No School
Wednesday, April 14
Diversity Committee meeting, 5 p.m.
Friday, April 30
Primary Pinning, 9:30 a.m.
Saturday, May 1
Ride Against Racism
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