letter+from+Mary+Beth+MacLeay

Hello from Sable Elementary School in Aurora, Colorado. We are school of about 450 students that are from Kindergarten (age 5) through fifth grade (ages 10 or 11). This is a public school so there is no cost to attend except for some supplies like pencils, erasers, crayons, or glue. Many families qualify to receive a free breakfast and lunch which is served in our cafeteria. Our students are from all over the world. Many children are from families that came from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras. There are many African students here who have come from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Congo. The other larger groups of students are from Nepal, Burma, Thailand or Cambodia. All of our classes are taught in English, but we also practice in special English Language Development classes. On the playground you can hear many languages! We start school at 7:45 when all students go to their classroom. During a typical day students will attend a half day with one teacher who does math and science and then the other half day with another teacher who will do reading, writing, and social studies (history, government and geography). Each grade will go once a week to art, music, physical education and library/technology. Each grade will eat lunch together in the cafeteria and then have some time for free play on the playground (recess). School is over at 2:15, but about half of the school stays for another two hours of reading and special classes like dance, karate, painting, or computer activities. Students can walk to school if they live less than a mile away, or a school bus will pick them up and take them home. Aurora is a city of 300,000 which means most students live pretty close to their school. I hope this gives you an idea of what we are like.