Overscheduled?

I was talking to a mother about JAWC the other day. “The public magnate school offers electives.” she said. Ok, so we don’t have electives, but every day in addition to general studies the children study modern Hebrew and Judaics. The children at JAWC do not need to enroll in religious or Hebrew school through their synagogues until they are in middle school, so they have much more time after school and on weekends to register in whatever extra-curricular activities they and their parents choose. R. is on a competitive swim team that practices twice a week and has weekend meets once a month, sometimes both days of the weekend. She doesn’t have religious school on Sunday morning to interfere with swim meets. She is also a girl scout and takes piano lessons. With all of these activities, R. still has two completely free afternoons each week. Unless there is a swim meet, every Saturday and every other Sunday are also completely free. Synagogue religious schools have a very important role in the community, but enrolling a child in a Jewish day school, like JAWC, can help keep the child from becoming overscheduled, providing them the time to pursue their interests.

Discussing Size

I often find myself in conversations with parents about how great JAWC has been for my kid. Generally the other parent tells me why they didn’t send their child to JAWC. Often that reason is size related, but usually the fellow parent never looked at the school or talked to Rabbi Aaron about it.

Many parents say “The school is to small" based on conversations they have had with other families who have not sent their children to JAWC. Instead, if the same parents would actually take a good look at what the school has to offer, they may discover something promising. If they then talk about it with fellow parents, a portion of them will also look and some will enroll their kids. The school would no longer be considered “too small”.

The second size related reason is “Socially, my child needs more kids in a class.” I have an extremely social child. Socially, she is perfectly happy in her small class (10 children, k-2). She is friends with every girl in the class. (Boys are almost a different species from the six year old girl’s perspective.) I know that any of those girls can come to my home after school and play quite happily with my daughter, and I’m happy to send her to any of her classmate’s homes. Besides her classmates, she has also maintained friendships from preschool and developed new friendships through extracurricular activities. She has plenty of friends. In a class of 25 kids, how many children is one child really friends with?

I’m not criticizing people for choosing to send their children to other schools after looking at all their options, and some parents do exhaustive research. I am frustrated by the tendancy that some parents have to exclude JAWC from that research because of its size. The small size is not a problem for the children, and if more parents enroll their children each year, it will grow.

She is learning something!

Sometimes while watching R. (6 yrs old) at, for instance, a childrens service at synagogue, I wonder, is she really internalizing all of this information about Judaism that is taught at school? She's not the kid who raises her hand to answer the questions that Rabbi Solomon or Amy Ripps ask during those services. I think she knows the answers and has something to say, but are they at the tip of her tongue?

Finally I saw a sign. R. reported that at practice for a sport she participates in, the coach commented that she didn't see her on Monday. "We have A LOT of holidays." R. said. The coached asked "Rosh Hashana?" Yes, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and then next week we have Sukkot." The coach had never heard of Sukkot, so R. explained. "When the Israelites were in the desert, they didn't have houses or restaurants or grocery stores. They had to build sukkahs." "What's a sukkah?" R. answered "A hut. So we build a hut in our yard for Sukkot, like the Israelites had in the dessert." And then she said "Mommy, she didn't know what a sukkah was, so I had to use the word "hut".

A simple answer. It was right at the tip of her tongue, she felt comfortable answering the question, and was confident in her answer.