Have you ever wondered what ‘project-based learning’ means at LILA? Well, just a few days ago the 11^th grade IB group participated in a mock TREATY OF VERSAILLES CONFERENCE as part of their WWI segment to give students an insight into the difficulties of "negotiating peace."  Three panels of students each represented a country with their own agenda during this negotiating process:  Britain, France, and the United States.  The invited audience watched as each country fought to get as much out of the treaty as possible through fierce negotiating and debating in an attempt to satisfy their agendas under the guise of "establishing international harmony" as is reflected in those tumultuous years at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. As you will see in the accompanying pictures, our LILA delegates dressed to impress as they negotiated peace.

LILA is big on continuing education.  One local resource that we participate in as a school are the evenings for educators that LA's wonderful museums offer.  LACMA holds 4 evenings a year and we send teachers each time.  The first of the series this season was the Olmec art workshop to which we sent 4th and 5th grade teachers from all campuses.  I decided to join the group last week and had the great pleasure to find one of our LILA parents running one of the hands-on activity workshops.  Marianne Sadowski, a Los Feliz parent and art educator, patiently worked with us as we learned to make stamps incorporating elements of Olmec art.  We were like kids in a candy store getting to play and learn.  Marianne kindly documented the evening for us thus making our experience "blog-worthy."

One of the intrinsic shortcomings of educational systems is that we want to have students write but then do not give them an audience to do so. In education, writing is traditionally a dialogue between teacher and student. The problem with this model is that as valuable as teacher feedback is, it seems to be too restrictive and not grasp the pleasure of what sharing a written composition can represent.

From this observation and in line with our projet d’école to make language more than a classroom experience, teachers have created the “writing to share” project which opens student creations to all members of the LILA community.

The idea is pretty simple… have students of all elementary grade levels create and write and then share their creations with the community. So, basically once a month a display case will be placed outside each campus at pick-up time and will be filled with the latest student compositions… parents, teachers and students can reach in and grab a piece of work – any piece and read and enjoy.

The project was inaugurated in West Valley a couple weeks ago and I had the pleasure of filming the kids and parents as they discovered the display case filled with treasures. Pedagogical Director, Julie Higounet created a 2 ½ minute video to show teachers of other campuses how the program was received, and which I have dutifully stolen to share with parents. 

The program will run school-wide… Los Feliz will have its first display case put out June 1st and Orange is scheduled for Thursday, June 3rd.

Partant du constat qu’écrire pour les élèves se limite malheureusement à n’être lu que par l’enseignant de la classe ou au mieux écouté par le reste de la classe, les enseignants ont décidé de bâtir le projet « Ecrire pour donner à lire ».

L’idée est simple, ne plus se limiter à consigner les travaux d’écrits dans les cahiers ou ils seront oubliés … mais les partager avec le reste de la communauté éducative, parents, élèves, enseignants administration...

En effet une fois par mois le porte écrits sera présent à l’entrée de chaque campus afin que chacun puisse y lire les travaux de tous.