November Newsletter

Huge shout out to our P5 and Movers families who hosted last month's Happy Hour for the guides! Athena City Limits was such a fun time for everyone and we truly appreciate it from the bottom of our hearts! We want to express our gratitude in advance to our P4 families who will be providing a Staff Appreciation Lunch later this month. We are looking forward to it!

Join us for an afternoon of food and fun as we come together for a community potluck!
Families are encouraged to bring a dish that represents your family’s heritage or culture to share with the Athena community.

We look forward to celebrating with you on campus on November 8th!
Rain Date: November 15th

“I’ve been considering the phrase ‘all my relations’ for some time now. It’s hugely important. It’s our saving grace in the end. It points to the truth that we are related, we are all connected, we all belong to each other. The most important word is all. Not just those who look like me, sing like me, dance like me, speak like me, pray like me or behave like me. ALL my relations. It means every person just as it means every blade of grass, rock, mineral and creature. We live because everything else does. If we were to collectively choose to live that teaching, the energy of that change of consciousness would heal all of us – and heal the planet. We do it one person, one heart at a time…we are connected, we are the answer.” –Richard Wagamese, Ojibwe author

It’s November, and that means the start of the holiday season. At Athena Montessori, we look forward to celebrating our bounty with family and friends. We host our annual Cultural Fest, a community potluck where we are all welcome and encouraged to bring a dish that speaks to our roots, our heritage, our culture. Later in the month we take a week off to welcome loved ones into our homes, or to travel. We gather to break bread, to raise a toast, to make memories, to share hugs and laughter. We give thanks. Thursday, November 27, is set aside as Thanksgiving Day. For a community practicing antiracism and striving to be grounded in justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, the history of Thanksgiving is problematic. For many people native to this land, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning. For many people whose forebears came to this land from Europe, “The First Thanksgiving” is a lie we were trained to believe as children. But what do we do with the truth now that we know it? Do we eschew the holiday altogether? Do we celebrate and gather, but teach the children of today nothing about the history of the holiday, just gloss over it because we are deeply uncomfortable?

We would like to share with you all, our community, one Indigenous perspective from Sean Sherman, known as “the Sioux Chef,” who is probably the most high-profile advocate for Native foodways in the United States. His Minneapolis restaurant, Owamni, which showcases modern Indigenous foods, won a 2022 James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant. More recently, he made Time magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People and was named the 2023 recipient of the prestigious Julia Child Award. In Summer of 2023, he launched the Indigenous Food Lab, a “professional Indigenous kitchen and training center” with an ambitious goal — establishing a new Indigenous food system that supports tribally operated kitchens across North America. Chef Sean wrote the following article for TIME magazine, and it was originally published on November 19, 2018.

Please click to read the article below.

This year’s fundraising initiative focuses on continuing our relationship with Watchmen Protective Services. In case you missed it, click below to read the letter from our Founder, Lisl Friday, detailing our fundraising efforts and their impact.

Thank you for your ongoing support and for being a part of our Athena family!

This past month in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, classrooms participated in celebrating and discussing the Indigenous community in various ways. Our Primary 4 classroom introduced a Tribal Nations puzzle and discussed what it means to be an Indigenous or Native person in our world. In one of our Tots classrooms they read "Fry Bread" and listened to music by Indigenous Artists.

This year, our Athena community came together to create a beautiful ofrenda—an altar that honors and remembers loved ones who have passed. Traditionally, an ofrenda is decorated with photos, candles, flowers, favorite foods or drinks, and personal mementos of those being remembered.

In sharing this tradition, we focused on the idea that Día de los Muertos is a time to celebrate life and say “thank you” and “I love you” to those we hold dear. Classrooms contributed by making paper candles, decorating sugar skulls, and crafting colorful marigolds and papel picado to adorn our display.

A heartfelt thank you to the Ayala-Cerrete family and the Tots 3 classroom for sharing their family traditions helping us create a space for reflection, love, and celebration! And to Ms.Janey for helping collect items and care for the ofrenda.

For Small Hands carries a wide variety of items for children, all child-sized, fun and developmentally-appropriate! Use our code below, and Athena will get a percentage of the sale to apply towards materials for school. We will be passing out For Small Hands catalogs next week for details.

CODE 165595

Athena has been partnering with each of our extracurricular programs for a number of years, and we love being able to offer them to your children. Throughout the fall session, the children have been able to express themselves by showing interests in activities outside of the classroom. They are also building social skills while interacting with other students in our community. Spring is just around the corner and enrolled families will be receiving a registration link email soon with more information on how to enroll in the next session. You can also visit the extracurriculars program page of our website if you're curious to see what extracurricular programs we currently offer.

Current Families
If you have a child you're hoping to enroll mid-year or for the 2026-27 school year (that isn't already enrolled at Athena), please submit an application for them, if you haven't already.

Waiting Pool Families

2025-26 School Year: We are fully enrolled. Should a spot become available for your child mid-year, our Admissions Director will be in touch with you directly.

2026-27 School Year: Admissions will begin January 2026.

Our continued goal in the admissions process is to be as transparent as possible, and we strive to give you the most accurate information we can during each step of the deliberate process of enrollment. We respect that decisions related to your child's education are important and timely ones, and we will continue to send you general enrollment updates via this monthly newsletter. Thank you for your continued interest, and we encourage you to reach out with specific questions related to your child's enrollment at any time.

Please direct admissions & enrollment questions to our Admissions Director, Joy Jacobson. You can email her directly at Admissions@AthenaMontessoriAcademy.com.