Several months ago, I received a letter from Michelle Obama to the active alumni of the University of Chicago Lab School — the most wonderful school in the country hands-down and the place where the Obama children and I were so fortunate to get our educations.  It is truly a special place that was so intregral in my own success in my life that followed.  The school is so "ahead of the fold" and so innovative in teaching techniques that it had to have been a gut-wrenching thing to pull the children out.

  But I thought you all might like to share the letter Michelle has written to us:

As our family begins the journey from Chicago to Washington D.C., I am humbled to join Barack in serving our country and thankful for the many friends who have supported us along the way.  We are especially thankful for the tremendous support we have received from the Chicago Laboratory Schools’ community, a community we have considered to be a home for our daughters, Malia and Sasha.

For the past seven-and-a-half years, The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools have been the center of our family’s daily life.  Barack and I have watched first Malia and then Sasha enter into the rhythms of Lab life:  lobby sings, Halloween parades, and playing Bozo buckets at the Rites of May.  And while our daughters still recount these fun times, Barack and I apapreciate most Lab’s day-in, day-out, student-centered approach to thinking, questioning, and learning.  Like all Lab parents, we believe whole-heartedly that such an education is the best preparation for whatever our children’s future may bring.

As our family approaches our next big step, Barack and I are grateful to have the chance to thank all the teachers, adminnistrators, and friends who have supported Sasha and Malia during their years at Lab and especially during the presidential campaign.   We also are grateful to the many members of the Lab School community who have joined us in this journey.  We learned firsthand that Lab graduates live John Dewey’s founding values: self-determination, learning by doing, and educating young people to be participants in a democratic society.

Malia and Sasha are lucky to have benefited from an education based on such essential values.  As a member of the Laboratory Schools Board, I have been encouraged by Lab’s commitment to sustaining and enhancing a diverse community of students.  That commitment is a key objective of the Lab campaign which will be publicly launched in 2009.  Although Barack and I will not be able to attend the celebration in April, we are pleased to be able to contribute to it.

Michelle Obama