This season we are excited to welcome longtime Abintra community member Emi Canahuati as a regular Positive Discipline Workshop facilitator! Emi will lead our Winter/Spring 2018 workshops.  To learn more about our Positive Discipline offerings and register for a workshop, click here .  Emi Canahuati is an award-winning certified sexuality educator and a certified Positive Discipline educator. She is the founder of Talk and Thrive Education, LLC in which she facilitates workshops on Positive Discipline and parent-child communication around sexuality. She has a Masters Degree in Counseling and has been an educator for over 18 years. She lives in Nashville with her 10-year-old daughter and her husband Pete, and cannot make anything pinterest worthy. Emi has been an Abintra parent since 2011.

Happy 2018! The transition back has been beautiful, even with the snow days. The children are coming to school with smiling faces, eager to see their friends. The familiar routine has brought peace and a renewed desire to work.  The oldest students have been choosing big works in math, including group addition, multiplication, and working with teen numbers.  Other students have been choosing language works, such as soft vowel word building, listening for the beginning sound in a word, and listening for all the sounds in a word.  Some of the youngest friends have been working with water, which are challenging, multi-step lessons.  There are times during the day when every student is hard at work, and we can step back and watch these hungry minds satisfy their needs. We look forward to what this next semester has in store. Amber Rasmusen Early Childhood Support Guide

It feels so good to finally have a full week of school! Our spirits have been lifted by the warmer weather and abundant sunshine.  We have received some good feedback about the new format of the progress reports. We learned a lot in the process, and will make improvements for the next reporting period. We welcome additional feedback to make our next progress reports the best they can be! A committee of students wrote about our off-campus excursion this week. Here is their report: This Tuesday and Wednesday, our UE class went to TPAC (Tennessee Performing Arts Center) to see the show  Kaytek the Wizard . The show was done by puppeteers with their puppets. Everyone had a different point of view. Here are some of them: Roxy: “I liked the music.” Maddie: “I loved when Kaytek and Sofia meet each other and become friends.” Hazel: “The puppets were fun and beautiful.” Josephine: “My favorite part was when Kaytek tried to make the evil wizards die, but then Sofia calle

It takes a village to develop confident, self-motivated learners who creatively meet the challenges of life. I had a moment that made me reflect on this in a deeper sense as I heard that our nation is facing a teacher shortage; the school system is "functioning" without the proper amount of educators per classroom. This report motivated me to reach out and ask those involved in our community how they felt about this statement. I had great conversations with staff, guides, and parents. What I realized is that this is not just about pay - although it is an important factor in retention - but the sustainability of an educator is about much more. As part of our board I am committed to supporting our guides, but as a mother I believe it is as important. To recognize the work, to contribute and support their mission is key to keeping this community full with passionate and mindful people guiding our children to their potential.

We are back into the swing of things, refreshed from winter break, and happy to return to our routines!  Last week we began our ArtSmart lessons with TPAC teaching artist Neil Spencer to prepare for their performance of  Kaytek the Wizard .  The play is based on the 1933 children’s novel by Polish author, physician, and child pedagogue Janusz Korczak.  From the TPAC website, “Art Smart  is a teaching philosophy that values deep engagement with works of art for the broadened perspective and meaningful connections they can inspire.”  Students will have two lessons with the teaching artist, and we will finish reading the book before we attend the performance on Jan 23 and 24.  News Channel 5 will film our group at the TPAC performance. When we know when the story will be broadcast, we’ll pass that information along! Christy has resumed theater games during afternoon work cycles in order to prepare for our upcoming Shakespeare performance,  Much Ado About Nothin