Mazel Tov!

Exciting news!  In this week's parasha Yitzchak takes Rivkah to be his wife and thanks to the creativity of our Early Childhood Morahs, all of our Early Childhood children were on hand to watch!  Not only were the chatan and kallah there with their families, but so was the band, the photographers, the bride's maids, the mesader kiddushin, and a whole host of well wishers.  The chuppah was followed by a scrumptious reception.  Special thank you to Morah Debbie for all her help in putting it together!

Fall Festival 2010

Our Third Annual Fall Festival was a smashing success.  Parents and children from across the community came together for a fun-filled morning of moonbounces, hayrides, story-telling, and much more.  Click on the slideshow below to see some of the Festival's most precious moments.




You can find all of these pictures and several more on our Fall Festival Picasa web album.  Enjoy!

Speakers Galore

We've had a steady stream of experts and activists in various fields present to our Middle School and High School students over the past few weeks.

On October 6th we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Rona Novick, whose groundbreaking bullying prevention program called BRAVE, we are piloting in our Middle School.  As part of the Azrieli Graduate School's Institute for University School Partnership, Dr. Novick visits our school several times over the course of the year to collect data regarding the implementation of her program as well as to lead related programs with our Middle School students.  A recognized expert in Child Psychology, Dr. Novick, also graciously offers to give a parenting workshop to our parent body each time she visits.  This time, her topic was "Trusting our Teens:  The Balance Between Adolescent Independence and Parental Supervision" and over fifty parents came out to participate in the evening workshop.

This past Tuesday, our Middle and High School Girls had the privilege of hearing from Ms. Rochelle Shoretz, founder of Sharsheret, an organization which supports Jewish women with breast cancer.  Ms. Shoretz, a Columbia trained attorney who clerked for the Supreme Court and is now battling a second round of cancer, shared her remarkable story with our students.  To get a sense for what they experienced, watch this incredible Fox News interview with Ms. Shoretz:

To cap things off, thanks to the Baron Hirsch Congregation, both our Boys High School and our Girls High School had the pleasure of hearing words of inspiration from Rav Ronen and Mrs. Pnina Neuwirth this past Friday.  The Neuwirths, who serves as Scholars In Residence at Baron Hirsch over the weekend, are heavily involved in the Tzohar Organization which is trying to bridge the secular and religious divide which currently tears at the heart of Israeli society. From Speakers

Technology and Hebrew Immersion

Our separate school-wide initiatives in Hebrew Immersion and in Technology came together today as our 3rd grade class took a new document camera for a test run.  The document camera functions much as an overhead projector did in the past, except that now one need copy or write onto transparencies in order to project something for the class to see.  In fact, with a document camera, one can project just about anything - from a textbook or student work to a piece of art or a biological specimen, and anything in between.  

The document camera, coupled with our new wireless slates and the SMART Notebook software with which every class has been outfitted, is particularly useful in our lower school classrooms where we have introduced the Tal Am Hebrew Immersion program.  As the Tal Am program produces all of its books and notebooks, many of which contain visual stimuli critical to teaching our children without having to translate into English, and as they are not yet available in digital form, the document camera allows the teacher to simply place the workbook under the camera, which projects an enlarged picture of it onto the whiteboard, and then the class can use the wireless slate to analyze the work and fill in the correct answers

Here's a quick video we took of our 3rd grade doing exactly that this morning:

  

As part of the Max Cooper Business and Technology Program we hope to purchase two document cameras.  If you're interested in sponsoring the purchase of additional units for additional classrooms please let our business office know.