End of June Update

Well, here we are at the end of June, another hot and humid month down in New Orleans. Our school is still on break but will re-open in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I have been re-assigned to our Literacy*AmeriCorps main office and Sr. Lory is attending the national conference with the Congregation of St. Jopseph nuns.
During this breaktime, you might see our photos on our blog begin to look a bit differently from before. This is because I finally figured out how to use, somewhat, Photoshop and am trying to crop and edit some photos. Hopefully, they will look better. I will also attempt later on to add some Antarctica updates and some of the great photos which our school's pen pals at the USAP have sent us. All these things take time, of course. So, please stay tuned... Adrian

Break Time

SVDP--ALC will be on a break for a while. But while we are on break, I will still be updating the blog on our current events and other interesting things of note for SVDP--ALC. So, stay tuned...
Adrian

Map of Antarctica

Here is the National Geographic map of Antarctica which started our students' interest in the frozen continent. We used it as a part of our map reading/geography class. The other photo is of my desk area where we display the Antarctica map on the wall and have our Antarctica Bullentin Board. I change the photos on the board whenever we get new images emailed to us from our pen pals in the United States Antarctica Program (USAP) at the South Pole Station -- Amundsen Scott Base. Our students get to see all the Antarctica photos sent to us in this way, and visitors to our school are amazed at the great photos from the South Pole Station. I took a photo of our bulletin board with the USAP photos on it and emailed it back to the South Pole. One of our friends there thought it was cool.

--- Adrian

The news of the day is that Doretha Williams, to the left of Sr. Lory in the photo, has returned to class after an absence of several weeks. She is feeling better and ready to learn more and continue reading the works of one of her favorite authors, Dale Carnegie.

Joining Doretha and Sr. Lory in the photo is Jennie Gorden who had a short article of her own published this May in "AmeriWord," the newsletter for Literacy*AmeriCorps New Orleans. Her topic was from current events class concerning the earthquake in China and the cyclone in Myanmar (Burma).

House-Keeping Note, Postings

Just as a point of information, all posts to this blog are made by the Blog Manager, Adrian McGrath, unless otherwise stated in the posted text. Thank you.

Antarctica Bulletin Board

Although the photo is a bit fuzzy, this is our Antarctica Bulletin Board at our school. It is a part of our Pen Pal Program with the United States Antarctica Program (USAP) wherein our students and teachers communicate with Americans living and working in Antarctica at the South Pole Station -- Amundsen-Scott Base. I helped organize this project a few months ago, and it has been a great source of learning for our students for many literacy skills from science to geography to writing skills. Our students communicate with our friends in the USAP via email. We hope to have much more information about this exciting program later.

By Adrian McGrath

Bayou St. John near SVDP-ALC

This is a photo of Bayou St. John near SVDP-ALC school; it is about a half of a mile away to the west. This is an old waterway which runs from Lake Ponchartrain to MidCity. In years past it was a waterway for commerce coming to the city which could not navigate going up the Mississippi River easily. Nowadays, it is blocked off from the lake near Robert E. Lee Blvd. near the lake and mainly serves as a popular attraction in the New Orleans neighborhoods called Gentilly and MidCity. Some people use small boats on the bayou, have picnics on the shore, or view the ducks, geese, and an occasional pelican nearby. SVDP-ALC is a part of Gentilly.

(Posted by Adrian McGrath)