Friday Letter - October 26, 2012

A few weeks ago I wrote about the relief that many were feeling with the return to routine and five day school weeks that arrived with the end of the fall hagim. This transition has also arrived as we hit the more intensive period of the trimester for the middle school students and the quarter for the high school students. This intensive period comes about as courses have reached a point where teachers are ready to begin assessing student learning. Naturally, this means that more tests and quizzes are beginning to appear on students’ plates as well as the introduction of long-term projects here and there.

Every student prepares for tests differently. Some need a quiet environment while others can study in environments with more noise or even music playing in the background. The key to successful studying is having a strategy for approaching the material.

The other critical strategy is time management. For our 9th graders, our Peer Connectors recently presented on just this topic to help our freshmen juggle the demands of a dual curriculum, extra-curricular activities, and other obligations. In the middle school, we have begun a Study Skills course in the 6th grade which will include test taking skills and time management as part of the topics covered.

For those students who might need a quick crash course in time management, we encourage them to stop by Senora Cahn’s office or to stick their heads in the Resource Room for some quick advice and guidance.

Shabbat Shalom!

When Good Isn't Enough

Good is a lousy answer. I don't mean to say that I am a perpetually dissatisfied person. There are times and places where good is a reasonable answer. We want things to be good. We want to feel satisfied and content. Thinking back to my visit with the Amish last week, a sense of contentment is a driving force of their lifestyle choices.

However, thinking back to my days as a school psychologist, I simply was not willing to accept good as an answer from the students that I worked with. It simply did not tell me enough.

When I approach a student to ask how things are, good tells me absolutely nothing. It's the answer that you give when you just don't want to bother going into details. But, as a school psychologist and now as an administrator, I don't ask that question lightly. I want to know more than just this blase', surface level response that we often get from students.

Expecting more than a one word answer, however, has the potential to open a Pandora's box. Are you ready for a more detailed answer and how are you going to respond? If you hear things that you didn't want to hear or didn't expect to hear, will your response be to jump down the student's throat or sit back and listen to what they have to say?

One of the hardest lessons that I learned when I was training in counseling was to be silent and just listen. Staying non-reactive is hard, but if good isn't enough for you, it is the only path that you can take that will keep your students, or your children, letting you know what lies beyond the good.

Getting out of Silos

I saw a lot of silos last week. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was on a 6th grade trip through Pennsylvania Dutch Country, but I wasn't just noticing the silos on the outside of our bus.

We have plenty of silos inside of our schools, too. In a departmentalized middle school and high school, we think about each subject in isolation, starting from the entry point in 6th or 9th grade until graduation. It is as if each subject area is moving in its own parallel universe without any knowledge of the existence of the other. Locked inside the silo, we have no way of knowing how we can connect with the other subject areas.

How then do we break down these barriers? There are, of course, natural partners, e.g. science and math or social studies and English, but are those the only partnerships? Particularly in a Jewish day school, could we conceive of a project that combined an area of Jewish studies with art and English? Or a project that blended learning in Hebrew, science, and art?

Last year, while serving as head of middle school at the Krieger Schechter Day School in Baltimore, we conceived of one such project. Through an exploration of the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the faculty connected Rabbinics, language arts, and science as students explored the moral implications of the book, as well as the underlying science that made the creation of the HeLa cells possible.

This is just one example. Where has your school broken down barriers between subjects?

Friday Letter - Oct. 19, 2012

I’ve just returned from three days touring Philadelphia and Lancaster County with the 6th grade. When I checked in with the chaperon's from each trip, I heard three things. The first was, of course, that the faculty staffing the trips was a little tired. Spending three full days touring and supervising an entire grade is an exhausting experience and I am grateful to the following teachers for giving up time with their families to provide our students with such an incredible educational experience:

Mrs. Motroni
Coach Kurz
Mr. Schlank
Mrs. Pitschi
Mrs. Gadon
Ms. Dubow
Mr. Hirsch
Mrs. Polen

The second was that the students were having an incredible time in Washington and Boston and I saw the same thing in Philadelphia. The third is something that we saw evidence of throughout the trip. Our teachers regularly heard from our hosts and other tourists that our students were so respectful and well-behaved. At each stop on the three trips, students asked questions that were an outgrowth of their curiosity and desire to understand the world around them.

It is these last two items that make these middle school field trips, as well as our other experiential learning programs, like our Shabbatonim, Israel trip, and our Tzibur club programming, so powerful. I watched something similar occur on Monday in the high school when students experienced the Four Faces of Israel. With each persona that Helen took on, our students responded with respect and well-thought out questions, even if they did not agree with what they were hearing.

We have a rich curriculum taught by skilled teachers, but these opportunities to deepen our learning and understanding enrich us, whether it is a workshop from American Jewish World Service or next week’s programming with Beit Tshuvah.  Learning outside of the classroom helps facilitate pulling a grade together and making the connections between students stronger. These experiences create opportunities to put the tools for derekh eretz into practice. Finally, they create lasting memories among our students that they will recall and treasure for years to come.

I know I will.

Shabbat Shalom!

Friday Letter - Oct. 12, 2012

As a Jewish educator, I have a love/hate relationship with the chagim. There is something special about the opportunities that the fall chagim offer us: to reflect on who we are through the High Holidays and then immerse ourselves in the sheer joy of Sukkot and, in particular, of Simchat Torah. Yet, at the same time, I crave the regularity of my routines.

With the end of the chagim, we are all settling into our routines. Classes are well underway and students and teachers are busy with teaching and learning. Each week in the Friday Letter, in addition to highlighting special programs, I will be shining the spotlight on various areas of our curriculum (this week art in the middle school and science in the high school). I look forward to sharing these moments with you throughout the school year.

As we began the chagim, we said shechiyanu, thanking God for bringing us to this moment. As we end the chagim, we also say shechiyanu, thanking God for the opportunity to settle into our routines.

Friday Letter - 10/5/2012

Sukkot is a holiday about thanksgiving. The American Thanksgiving is even modeled on it. From a historical perspective, the harvest is in and we are excited (hopefully) that the land has provided for us with sustenance for another season. We recite in the Amidah each day of the holiday that Sukkot is z’man simchateinu (our time of rejoicing).

Not everyone, however, has enough to eat and views the end of the growing season as a time of rejoicing. The fragility of our sukkot as we sit outside for our meals reminds us of this. Today, on our inaugural Hesed Day in the Upper School, we explored the role of hunger in the world with the help of American Jewish World Service. High School students further delved into the topic in small breakout groups while Middle School students explored a gallery of images of a typical meal in different parts of the world.

At its core, the message that students heard today that was that Ani V’atah N’shaneh Et Ha’Olam. Listen as a group of Schechter students brings this message to life through song. For more on the progra, please check out this post from Paw Print Now.

As I wandered through the halls during hol ha-moed Sukkot, these were the sounds of Schechter.

Shabbat Shalom V’Chag Same’ach!