Lunchtime Visit

I had to take R. to a appointment mid-day today, and when I dropped her back off, I got such a nice warm fuzzy feeling. When we arrived the other kids were in another room eating lunch, so only the general studies teacher, Erin, and May Berman, a retired teacher and volunteer, were in the classroom. R. had eaten her lunch in the car so she decided to stay in the classroom with May and Erin and work on her journal, the daily writing they do every day. She happily went to gather her journal box and brought it to the table, together with the Starbucks hot cocoa we picked up on the way in. She seemed perfectly content, sitting at her desk, writing, and drinking her hot cocoa, getting lots of attention from Erin and May. Then I dropped in on the rest of the class. They were sitting around a big table in the synagogue's kiddush room, eating and giggling with Jodi Gore. Why were they all giggling? They were doing Mad Libs with Jodi while eating lunch!

Hands-On Mitzvah Projects

This fall JAWC students undertook two Mitzvah projects. The first project was a canned food drive for Jewish Family Services. First they each brought in non-perishable food from home. They counted the classroom tzedakah and took a portion of the money to Kroger, where they each chose two additional non-perishable items. Taking the children to Kroger on Thanksgiving week to buy food for families that need some help is becoming a tradition at JAWC, as this is the second year they have done this. Shopping for basic items to give to people in need reinforces to the children that they have much to be thankful for, and that something as basic food is not to be taken for granted. The kids love doing the self check-out. In the end three boxes of food were given to Jewish Family Services.

For the second Mitzvah project, right before winter break, the students packed and shipped boxes filled with hygiene products, snacks, and candy to deployed servicemen. Their teacher, Erin Scoggins, has a brother serving in Afghanistan who advised her on the items the soldiers need. Some of the students gave names and addresses of people in the military that they know. Our next door neighbor is a Chaplain in Iraq so a package was sent to him. S. and her family had spent Shabbat with a Rabbi and his family at Camp Legune so she felt connected to this mitzvah project, having spent a weekend with military families and soldiers on a base. In addition to needed items, each box contained a class photo, with all of the children dressed in red, white and blue, in front of the American and Israeli flags. Some of the children wrote notes to the soldiers. Even though the packages will arrive well after the holidays, as the holidays were fresh on the kid’s minds, I did see “Happy Hanukkah, I love you” written on one card and heard some discussion between the kids on whether or not it makes sense to write “Merry Christmas” on another. Eleven boxes were sent.

JAWC Hosts Jewish Children’s Book Author Dina Rosenfeld

This is the full version of the article I'm writing for the Raleigh/Cary Jewish Federation's paper. The paper's version will be much shorter.

It was a cold and snowy day, the first day of winter vacation, yet the Jewish Academy of Wake County was warm and full of happy children. Dina Rosenfeld, author of many Jewish Children’s books, was sitting in a little green chair, teaching an enwrapped audience of twenty children and many adults how to write a children’s book.
She used as an example her book “Peanut Butter and Jelly for Shabbos”. It started on a sheet of yellow lined paper that is covered with sentences and paragraphs all written in different directions, generated through brainstorming. One sentence was circled, the idea behind “Peanut Butter and Jelly for Shabbos.” She then showed the editing process, where the story is refined from a handwritten pages with many corrections to a typed pages with corrections to a finished story that is then put into an envelope and sent to the illustrator. Rosenfeld says “In a picture book, if you talk about something you have to show it.” She showed the illustrator’s process from pencil drawings to full color images and the changes they made along the way to clarify the message of the illustrations. She showed the finished book in its hard cardboard binding.
Next she showed two books in their original form that she had illustrated herself, and how professional illustrators and book designers had continued her work. In one example, the illustrator did something completely different than what she had originally drawn. She said that it’s interesting how two people can interpret a story in two completely different ways. She then showed an original layout of a book where she had created collages of colored paper for the illustrations. In that example the illustrator had used her illustrations as the inspiration for his paintings.
Mrs. Rosenfeld also held up the book “A Kind Hearted Rivka”, translated into many languages, and read the title in all of the different languages. She showed them the same book in Braille, and explained how the Jewish Heritage for the Blind prints books in Braille so that blind adults can read stories to the children in their lives.
The final message of the story “Peanut Butter for Shabbos” is “You’ll only succeed if you’re willing to try.” The children at JAWC had made their own books during the last few weeks, each one fully illustrated with a cover and a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The childen were very proud to share their books with Dina Rosenfeld who said “Everyone can be an artist and make up stories.”

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.

First Day of School

School started today. Drop-off was a little crowded with all of the parents hanging out while their kids got settled, but there were smiles all around. Everyone was happy to say hello and shmooze a bit after the long summer break, but we couldn't hang out and turn the classroom into a coffee klatch. Morah (teacher) Erin had worksheets ready on the returning students' desks, so that they could jump right back into study. There were new kindergarteners who needed to be shown the ropes. We grown-ups had to get on with our days.

I didn't give school one moment's thought all day. I knew she was in good hands and was probably having a great day. When we went to pick her up she ran out smiling and gave us big hugs. I saw other kids doing the same thing. One K student told his Mom excitedly about a story the Morah Leah had read during Judaics about Bagels. They had read Bagels from Benny by Aubrey Davis. We had recieved this book from the PJ Library program and it's a really good one. One of R's favorites.

R. said when she got home that 1st grade is really different than kindergarten. There is much less playing and no rest period. She was a little annoyed that the new kindergarteners don't have to suffer through rest time like her class did but I'm guessing she'll get over that. It sounded like R. really enjoyed having the new kindergarteners in the mix. I asked if the 1st graders included them during free time and she promised me that they had.

I asked R what she did today that she liked. She said the best part of the day was making three different kinds of playdough, and she described to me the different recipes. When I got home, Morah Erin completed the playdough story with her email reporting on the first day. They made three very different types of playdough for their first science lab, which are being stored till tomorrow when the kids will compare and contrast.

Morah Erin's email also had photos of the kids involved in some of their first day activities. It was nice that she made sure that every kid in the class was in at least one of the photos.