“I don’t understand what in the world the teachers want me to buy!”  “I can’t imagine why my child’s supplies seem to disappear ‘overnight’ from the backpack!” “I’m tired of last minute requests for material during the school year!” “You need it when?!?” “I don’t want to face those frustrating back-to-school check-out lines again!” “You need another glue stick!?!” “I went to 3 stores to find everything on the list and then the teacher added one more item!” “I don’t have time to go to the store tonight!” “Do you know how much I’ve already spent at Staples this month?!?”

Sound familiar? These quotes pretty much sum up the parents’ sentiments voiced over the years, and it’s not just at back-to-school time.  As fellow parents, we know the frustration continues month after month, from September to June, so we have a solution beginning with the 2010-11 school term.

A year ago we tried to address the Elementary French ‘cahier’ problem by charging a grade-specific “Cahier fee” at enrollment time which allowed us to supply elementary students with the mandatory notebooks and novels before school started and to replenish them throughout the school year as needed without parents having to worry about it all as they had in previous years.  Selling cahiers is definitely not our business – it is just a way to ensure that teachers and students have what they need in a timely manner to provide and benefit from LILA’s curriculum. The point is that the students and teachers do not suffer ‘down-time’ because of a lack of notebooks or appropriate novels at the same time. Teachers are happy and although the vast majority of parents appreciated the re-timing of the cahier expense and thought it was a wonderful solution, they also felt we hadn’t gone far enough to alleviate the whole process.

So, for 2010-11 we will finish the job and tackle the supplies debacle in a similar fashion.

The Materials Fee introduced to Elementary parents last year will be increased so LILA can cover the majority of supplies that your child will need year-long. This should not represent an additional expense for parents – we are just taking the ongoing headache away. The Materials Fee will be automatically added to enrollment agreements and can be paid with tuition through the SMART plan.  Beginning with the 2010-11 school year, elementary teachers will not ask parents to buy classroom supplies related to the everyday curriculum before or during the school year…ever; instead they will ask the campus administration for all material. The types of supplies covered by this fee are those that will be used in the classroom, and include: cahiers, novels, binders, glue sticks, sheet protectors, dry erase boards and erasers, pocket folders, markers, colored pencils, paints and brushes, dividers, index cards, rulers, dictionaries, cooking supplies and ingredients, glitter, and notebook paper.

Of course we do not want to completely remove each child’s individual personality from the process. Parents will still provide the standard pencil case (trusse) with such personal items as pencils, pens, erasers, and scissors. Books, novels, binders and cahiers may go home, but classroom supplies will not. It goes without saying, but students should already have their own basic supplies at home to do homework year after year.  A well-stocked homework center would include: markers, colored pencils, sharpener, ruler, compass and other math tools, dictionary, etc.

The Materials Fee will not cover items unrelated to the everyday curriculum. Examples of items not included are: field trips, testing, special events or costumes (i.e., Halloween, graduation, parties, Winterfest, Francophonie, etc.), yearbook, school pictures, lunch, uniforms, USB keys, transportation, etc.

The Materials Fee applies to all Preschool to 5^th grade students. If you have specific questions about what is covered by the $150 Materials Fee, please do not hesitate to ask your campus director.

‘No Exit’, ‘The Chairs’, to each his own hell…perhaps the ultimate torture is the one that repeats itself eternally, no matter the language or the season.

‘Huis Clos’, ‘Les Chaises’, à chacun son enfer…le supplice ultime n’est-il pas celui qui se répéte éternellement, quelque soit la langue ou la saison?

LILA students and teachers awarded a standing ovation to eight performers who took them on a 90-minute examination of the meaning of Hell.  The students were attending the January 25th performance of adaptations in French and English of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos/No Exit and Eugène Ionesco’s Les Chaises/The Chairs presented by Les Illustres Comédiens of the Cours de Jeu Théâtral and their director, Jackie Planeix, at Silverlake’s Lyric Hyperion Theater.

The field trip was the culmination of an arts integration project that some of the secondary teachers had worked on directly with Ms Planeix. Teachers participating in the project were Mmes. Marissa Harris, Isabelle Lesouple, Sylviane Rebaud, and Laurence Leroy. Subsequently, the 9^th grade students attended the show as an introduction to their theater unit in French class, while the 12^th grade IB class was able to utilize the performance as a companion piece to their IB literature course. The 11^th graders (FB and IB) benefited from the theme of ‘Text/Representation - Adaptation/Translation’. 

Les Illustres Comédiens is made up of eight current and past LILA students: Anika Dorschner, Turner Edwards, Maeva Elchibegian, Chloé Grison, Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, Simone Sasse, Hayley Voland, and Camille Werzowa.  Most of them have been studying French Theatre with Ms. Planeix since elementary school, working their way up through classic works of French comedy and tragedy as well as original works co-created by them under their leader’s direction. After an all-French performance of the Sartre and Ionesco works in 2009, the troupe worked on translating and adapting the pieces into English. Their most recent performances in January (a public performance took place on January 23^rd) featured their self-translated scenes in English and then in French.

The audience was transfixed as three young actors skillfully took them through an existentialist exercise of emotional torture that unearths the absurdity leading to Sartre’s famous line, “Hell…is other people.” Under Ms Planeix’s astute staging, spatial movement to music seamlessly wove one story into the next as the five other actors continued the theme of comic absurdity, offering up Ionesco’s complex and sometimes nonsensical text with ease. The English language performance was followed immediately by a fluid transition into the French version, ending with a closing interpretive dance by the entire troupe.

A post-performance question and answer session clearly demonstrated that the students in the audience had firmly grasped the meaning of the performance. Ms Planeix’s expressed wish for “young people throughout the world to be familiar with the work of these two great French playwrights” had most certainly been granted in that theater that day.   As soon as footage is available, I will try to work up a quick video that will be posted in the popular videos section to give parents a front row view of this magnificent project!

For more information about the work, contact Jackie Planeix  bluepalm@prodigy.net

Press Contact:  Ai-Lin Grison     grison.ailin@gmail.com    323-336-0894