DEAR Day 2009

On Friday, the Berkeley Public Education Foundation hosted the annual Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) Day celebration at every school in the district. Coinciding with Dr. Seuss's birthday, this year's celebration was fabulous: nineteen readers from the community came to Emerson to share their favorite books with students. These readers had a particular challenge because we chose to celebrate DEAR Day in our Emerson Families this year: so our visitors had to find a book that would be just as exciting for a fifth grader as a kindergartener! They were all wildly successful, as you can see from the photographs below.



Our readers included Berkeley City Councilmember Gordon Wozniak; Glenda Rubin and Devin Woolridge from Community Relations at U.C. Berkeley; Emily Davidow, Emerson parent and supervisor of the Berkeley LEARNS after-school program; BPEF Board Member Carol Olson; Terri Waller, former Emerson parent and spokeswoman for Assemblywoman Loni Hancock; several members of U.C. Berkeley's Kappa Kappa Gamma; and some of our Emerson extended families: Ms. Perenon's sisters, Ms. Gray's dad, and Ms. Parisi's fiance. Plus our own Mr. Lou and Ms. LaKisha from the Mentor program starred again this year, reading hilarious stories that kept their listeners engrossed.

Many thanks to BPEF for this marvelous event and their ongoing support. We're already looking forward to next year!

Extraordinary Women's Museum

This week, in honor of International Women's Day, the Emerson Library is hosting our Emerson Extraordinary Women's Museum. Fifty students contributed posters and exhibits about women that they consider extraordinary, from their grandmothers to Bessie Coleman. During their library time this week, each class has the opportunity to appreciate the exhibits.

We hope you'll have time to drop by as well! The museum will be up in the library all week, open to families from before school until Kids' World closes at 6:00. But in case you can't make it, or if you want to relive the museum at home, check out the slideshow below. Congratulations to all students for their great work!

Feel free to leave impressions (and compliments) in the comments!