Great Endings Come From Good Beginnings

(Left and Center) Volunteers prepare the LCS campus for the school year ahead.  (Right) Sunny-Dae Larson makes calls from the Providence Operations Office.

We are back at it.  The Volunteers are in place and Louverture Cleary School is well positioned for the school year ahead. This year we have eight Volunteers from six different colleges.

Returning for a second year, Amanda Gaal will fill the role of Lead Volunteer and continue her work with the Biology program and the Garden Club.  Emily Marquet, another second-year Volunteer will continue to enrich theater opportunities at LCS and help to establish stronger roots in this program.   Also with us this year are Katie Guzik and Tara Kingsley—both graduates of Providence College, Meghan Gregus and Jessica Teater from University of Dayton, and Edward Drislane from Notre Dame University.   Taking the role of our first US-based Volunteer, Sunny-Dae Larson from Salve Regina University took a leap and accepted the opportunity to work in our Providence Office to work with our operations and community development staff.  Providing an invaluable resource by saying “yes” to the call, we are excited about the new doors our Volunteers will open this year.

New to the LCS curriculum this year will be Economics 101, which will replace Philo (Senior) English Classes.  Edward Drislane will be the first to teach this class and will use Gregory Mankiw's book—probably the most widely used Introduction to Economics book in the US. We acquired the text directly from Professor Mankiw. I contacted him last year when a group of Harvard students walked out of his class as part of the Occupy movement. I asked him, "If they left behind their text books, could we have them?"  From what I understand all the protesters came back to class—probably just in time to prepare for the final exam. So, Professor Mankiw asked the publisher to provide us with 60 new texts of our own. 

In continued appreciation for the fine arts we will be adding ballet to our extra-curricular activities.   Volunteer Jessica Teater, a long-time ballerina, will be teaching this beautiful form of dance.   I’m sure she will be teaming up with the theater folks to make the already stellar performances at LCS even more spectacular.

In all, the year is off to a great start.   We are looking forward to sharing more as the year ahead unfolds.