Thanks MI Schools Foundation
March 23, 2010 · 1:01 PM
The third-grade teachers and students at Island Park Elementary want to extend an enormous and sincere “thank-you” to the Mercer Island Schools Foundation and their supporters. For the past several years, the MISF has approved our grant requests to bring in artist-in-residence Roger Fernandes, a Pacific Northwest Native American storyteller and artist. Their enormous generosity has allowed us to bring Native American culture and history into the classroom through song, dance, story and visual art. Third-graders learn Native American legends from the Northwest coast, create traditional cedar plank paintings, learn tribal dances and songs, and participate in a potlatch that serves as a culminating project for our NW Coast Native American social studies unit. This funding has allowed us to take our teaching into another dimension — one in which students experience firsthand the culture about which they are learning. Hands-on, real-world experiences appeal to a diversity of learning styles and help us, as teachers, create the kind of relevant and meaningful learning that makes a lasting impact on this new generation of young minds.
Thank you, MISF, for bringing the wide world to our students!
Third Grade Team, Island Park Elementary: Kere Loughlin, Tiffany Nelson, Cheryl Sandstrom and Sharon Stypulkoski
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