CYHSB Steak Dinner

The high school boys put on another remarkable show last week, with their annual Steak Dinner.  A fundraiser for their activities budget, the Steak Dinner is a four-course sit-down meal (steak, of course) for three hundred people, replete with entertainment, a dvar Torah, and a tribute video, all of which - from grilling the steaks to choosing the nominee and from playing the music to washing the pots - is done by our high school students.  Certainly, Rabbi Gersten, our Mashgiach Ruchani, plays no small part in getting them organized and ready to roll.  As he pointed out at this year's event, the Steak Dinner is a wonderful example of 21st century learning in the sense that it requires significant collaborative efforts, it offers opportunities for creativity and differentiation, and it requires our students to solve real world problems in a high pressure, performance based, framework.  There is no doubt that in addition to the memories they accumulate from the Steak Dinner each year, the skills our students acquire in the process will also last them a lifetime.

Congratulations to Dr. Whitney Kennon for being the recipient of the boys' tribute this year!

Here are some of the sites and sounds for your enjoyment:

A Photo Story from our Four Year-Olds

 This is now the second year that our Early Childhood teachers have been using Photo Story in their classrooms.  This simple slide show software is a powerful way of honing the descriptive and articulation skills of our youngest children while introducing them to technology as a means of communication.  As you can see from this example by the four-year olds in our PreK-4, it's also a great way of bringing the stories of our Judaic Studies curriculum to life.  

Great job, Morah Raananah and Morah Debbie! 

High School Open House

Though it was a few weeks ago, I wanted to share with you the Prezi which we put together for our high school open house.  During the event itself, the Prezi was shown in a darkened room and following each of the videos, a spotlight turned to one of our high school students, perched upon a platform in the corners of the room, who spoke for a few moments about the topic represented in the video.

Enjoy!

High School Open House 2011 on Prezi

A Month In Review

It's been almost a month since I last blogged and there is so much to catch up on I don't even know where to start.  Our students have been busier than ever and hardly a day has gone by without an exciting program or an inspiring moment, in at least one of our divisions.  Here a few of the highlights:

Last month we were visited by a representative from the Dixon Art Museum, who read The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins by Barbara Kelly and then led our students in an exercise to try and mimic the Victorian artist's style. Shortly thereafter, our 6th grade launched its incredibly exciting ePals program. Harnessing the internet and the power of webcams, our students are having meaningful conversations and getting invaluable cross-cultural exposure with students in Italy, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Uganda. It isn't every day that our middle class Jewish children in Memphis, Tennessee get to interact with gifted AIDS orphans in a small village in Africa.

For Thanksgiving our students all learned the lessons of gratitude and appreciation by reaching out to the less fortunate. From the elementary students who put together toiletry bags for the homeless to the high school girls who delivered them while giving up their own vacation time to volunteer at downtown shelter, there was a spirit of community outreach and social action throughout the school.

Our Middle School got into the giving spirit as well.  Keeping with what has become a wonderful tradition, our Middle School boys "took on" the students of the Shrine School in a "fierce" game of basketball.  For half of the game our students saw a game they knew well from a completely different perspective: seated in a wheelchair.  With students of all ages cheering them on, the Shrine students had the time of their lives notching another "victory" in their illustrious school record.

Reaching beyond the walls of our school and seeing the perspectives of others also played a significant role in the other classes this past month.  Both of our high schools visited the Memphis Public Library to see the Choosing to Participate exhibit created by Facing History and Ourselves.  Facing History, which has one of their national offices here in Memphis, is an organization dedicated to teaching students about the harms of racism, antisemitism, and prejudice around the world.  Several of our teachers have attended their training seminars and we have been most fortunate to benefit from their outstanding materials and programs.

 Our fourth grade also expanded its educational reach with a markedly 21st century twist.  As a new wrinkle in their traditional state fair program, the 4th grade set out to collect postcards from all 50 states.  In spreading the word, it was suggested that this may presented an opportune time to teach the 4th graders about the positive and educational power of social media.  I was invited to the classroom, along with our Tweeter in Residence, Rabbi Akevy Greenblatt, to show the students what Twitter was and how it gave us the power to instantly reach thousands of people with common interests across the globe.  Of course, we took the opportunity to talk to the 4th graders about the potential hazards of social media as well and insisted that they only use these types of forums with the help of an adult.

Believe it or not, that only begins to scratch the surface of all that has happened here over the past month, but at least it provides a small taste of the rich learning experiences in which our children are engaging.  I hope to return to far more regular blog posts after we return from our winter break.

 

Cooper Invitational 2011

Sunday marked the end of another magical Cooper Invitational high school basketball tournament.  Fifteen teams and nearly 350 people from across the country descended upon our community to join our Cooper Macs and our Memphis Jewish community for four days of intense basketball, inspiring speakers, and unrivaled camaraderie.  Once again, Josh Kahane and his team of volunteers tended to all the logistics and ran an incredibly smooth operation thereby ensuring that the reputation of the Cooper Invitational - the tournament every Jewish high school basketball player in the country longs to be at - continues to grow.

Along with high profile, top tier NCAA coaches and former NBA players, one of the less known, but perhaps most inspiring personalities to address the tournament participants was Charlene Lerner.  Here's her story from ESPN.com:


Here are some more highlights from the weekend:

MHA College Guidance Site

If you haven't yet seen it, be sure to check out our new College Guidance website created by Mrs. Tsuna, our Director of College Guidance.  It is chock full of important information regarding the college admissions process, Jewish life on campus, and options for a gap year in Israel.  This is but one way that Mrs. Tsuna is ensuring that students and parents alike stay on top of the multi-faceted and often arduous process of applying to school post high school and that students ultimately land up in the schools best suited for them.

Fall Festival 2011

Our annual Fall Festival this past Sunday was a wonderful success.  Parents, grandparents, and children from across the community came together for a fun-filled day of hayrides, moon bounces, petting zoo, face painting, arts and crafts, and - new for this year - our scholastic book fair.  As the smiling faces in the video below attest, a good time was had by all!

U9 and U12 Soccer

As the soccer season draws to a close, I wanted to share some of the sights and sounds of what has been a terrific experience for so many of our kids.  Click on these links to visit the albums of our U9 team and our U12 Boys team.

Many thanks to Coach Nokes for making it happen!

C21: 6th Grade Joins ePals

Our 6th Graders, under the guidance of Mrs. Cindy Massey, recently joined the ePals global community.  They are already in contact with students their age China, Russia, Alaska, Lithuania, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Uganda.

One of their first eye-opening discoveries was that one of the two classes they are in touch with in Uganda, a class of gifted students in an orphanage for children of AIDS victims,  is in a town that is largely without electricity.  As a result, our kids are going to have to learn some new tools in order to communicate with them: paper, pens, envelopes, and stamps.  They were also a bit taken aback when their new friends asked them whether we wear shoes to school - implying that they do not.

The lessons in cultural sensitivity, poverty, and global health crises which these relationships are teaching are immeasurable.  And they've only just begun.

Zionism Blog

I just added the class blog from Mrs. Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein's Girls High School Zionism class to my list of school blogs on the lower right column below.  Check out these thoughtful comments by our students regarding the release of Gilad Shalit.

C21: Project Based Learning in Pre-K3

The following is an article written for our school newsletter this week by Morah Barbara Kutner, our Pre-K3 teacher, describing how she and her assistant teacher, Ms. Katie Minner, brought Project Based Learning into their dual curriculum 3 year-old classroom as part of our Curriculum 21 initiative:  

The “Project Approach” is an in-depth study of a certain theme, incorporating children’s interests and ideas, which evolve into a concrete learning experience over time. After observing the “Project Approach“ in another school last year and discussing it in our inspirational workshops about “21^st Century Learning” at In-Service, Ms Katie and I were very excited to try our first “Project Approach” about apples. The results were overwhelming. The timing was perfect. We were learning all about the customs of Rosh Hashana and of course the apple takes center stage. As Sukkot, the holiday of Harvest, drew near, our learning experiences continued to build upon each other.

One of our goals was to involve parents and strengthen the home-school connection. We sent home a survey asking parents to see which apple products they had in their home. The students were so excited to present their results to the class. We invited parents to share their best apple recipe with us and many came in to bake. The children loved having their parents in the classroom. One parent, who is a teacher, even brought her class with her. They acted as buddies with our kids and helped in the baking.

We made so many things from apples – applesauce, baked apples, apple kugel, and applesauce cake and of course dipped apples into honey! We learned math as we measured flour and sugar and enriched our vocabulary with new words such as recipe and ingredients. We made a Venn diagram comparing applesauce, which we cooked on top of the stove and the baked apples, which were made in the oven. We included many of these recipes in our class cookbook for the housekeeping corner.

Apple tasting and choosing our favorite apple provided the opportunity to do graphing. We examined apples and looked at all the parts. We became artists as we made a still life drawing of an apple and apple prints. We cut open an apple and were surprised to find a star inside, making a perfect holder for the seeds. We planted the seeds and are waiting for our apple tree to grow.

Making our giant paper tree gave us an opportunity to work together and use many skills. We searched on the computer for apple tree pictures. We talked about the parts of the apple tree and labeled them. The students decided how they wanted to decorate our tree.  We gathered real bark to glue on the trunk and some chose to do crayon rubbings to make a rough texture. We used our cutting skills to design our own leaves and sponge painted red apple shapes on the top.

We met together and discussed all of our activities, making charts and diagrams of all of our work. Come see our apple display hanging in the hall and you can catch a glimpse of all the exciting activities that took place as we explored all about apples. Collaborating together, science discovery , strengthening math concepts, expressing creativity in art, language development, parent involvement – all from one little apple. That’s the magic of the “Project Approach!”

Kohelet Kickoff Event

Our second year in the Kohelet Fellowship Program officially kicked off on Monday with an orientation program at the JCC.  The program, funded by the Kohelet Foundation, provides tuition incentives to parents who participate in one of two adult education programs:  the Jewish Learning Institute run by Chabad or the Kohelet Conversations peer study program created by Yeshiva University's Center for the Jewish Future.  

The orientation event brought 60 parents from our school and from the Bornblum Solomon Schechter to the Memphis JCC for an evening of communal Torah study.  After an introduction from Avi Narrow-Tilonsky, the CJF's liason for the Kohelet Fellowships Program, and a video message from David Magerman, president of the Kohelet Foundation, the group watched a trigger film about a Katrina victim who took his neighbor's boat and used it to save numerous lives.  When the boat went missing, though, the owner filed suit against his neighbor - "the hero" -  for having unlawfully taken his possession.  The next 45 minutes were spent in lively group discussion and analysis of traditional Jewish legal texts which explore the extent to which one is allowed to go in order to save a life and who bears the liability for damage incurred in the process.

Feedback from the evening was overwhelmingly positive and it set the stage for what we hope will be many more enjoyable and insightful encounters with Jewish texts and Jewish wisdom for these parents over the weeks and months ahead.

Sukkah Building Competition

Another catch-up post...

One of my favorite pre-Sukkot events is our Boys High School sukkah building competition.  Instead of judging them on the carpentry or aesthetics, however, we judge them on the near misses - halachik near misses, that is.  

The competition begins with the boys spending considerable time  learning the intricacies of the laws of sukkah building with their teachers.  Then, their challenge is to construct a sukkah (just the walls, not the schach) which looks like it would not be permissible for a variety of reasons, but, in fact, uses various halachik provisions to ensure that it is.  

Below you can see their handy-work as well as a bit of the spontaneous Sukkot spirit which erupted from one of the groups.

Operational Dinner

Although it's a bit late, I'd be remiss if I didn't blog about our annual operational dinner.  Hosted again this year at the magnificent home of Dr. Joe and Cindi Weinstein, this yearly get-together which caps off our annual campaign, is always an inspiring event.  It is the night, more than any other, that we come together to celebrate the breathtaking culture of sacrificial giving which permeates our community, and the way in which our community understands that its future is tied directly to the future of Jewish education in our city.  Year in and year out, our little school puts far larger and far more affluent schools to shame with regard to the funds we raise - all without the help of a single fund raising professional.  Just an incredible group of volunteers whose tireless energy is matched only by their enormous hearts.



Here is a clip from the speech given by Josh Kahane, our Board President:

And some more pictures from the beautiful evening:

C21: Videos for Next Generation

As Yom Kippur approaches, I wanted to share with you a rather unique experience I had with a group of our high school boys over the past six weeks and the rather inspirational results that emerged from it.

You can read all about it and watch what our students produced on the website I created for the project: www.bit.ly/SacksLetters. If you find it meaningful, please share it with others.

C21: 12 Year-Old Teachers

Last week it was our 3rd grade and 6th grade who took a turn at experimenting with cross-grade collaboration.

At the beginning of the school year we rolled out Google Apps for Education for all of our teachers and students.  For our older students, already familiar with Microsoft Office, email, and many social networking sites, learning to navigate Google Apps was not much of a challenge.  In a matter of days we had teachers launching Google Sites, students collaborating on Google Docs, and flurries of Gmail criss-crossing our high schools and Jr. High.

For our third graders, however, it was all very new.  With the help of Mrs. Laura Malbogat, our C21 consultant, our 3rd grade teacher, Mrs.Lisa Lukien, and our 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Cindy Massey, devised a plan to provide each 3rd grader with a personalized tutorial on navigating the new technology: the 6th graders would teach them.

So, on Tuesday of last week, our 3rd graders paired up with their across-the-hall neighbors, the 6th graders, to complete an assignment designed to orient the 3rd graders to Google Apps and to help hone the 6th graders internet navigation skills.  The lesson began with the 6th grader helping his or her 3rd grade buddy to log on to Google Apps and access their Gmail.  Once they were in, they found an email waiting there from Mrs. Lukien, with instructions for an "internet scavenger hunt."  Together, the 3rd graders and 6th graders searched the internet for the information needed to complete their "hunt," and the 6th graders then showed their younger buddies how to enter their findings into a Google Doc and share it with others.

Once again it was exhilarating to watch how much student learning was happening, on how many different levels, all without any frontal presentation from any of the teachers involved.  They were there at all times and the learning could not have happened without them, but their role was markedly different than that traditionally assumed by teachers in a 20th century classroom.  They were there to structure the learning experience and to facilitate it, but it was the world wide web and their 12 year-old school mates who supplied the information.

High School Selichot

The geographic location of our school literally in the heart of our community, affords our students opportunities throughout the year to come together in ways that go well beyond what is traditionally thought of as school or even as extra-curricular activities.

One such occasion is selichot night. The combination of the late hour (selichot are traditionally recited at the midpoint between sundown and sunup on the Saturday night preceding Rosh Hashanah) and the ancient liturgy, makes the selichot experience in most shuls rather difficult for teens to relate to.  Therefore, a few years ago we began running programs for both our boys and our girls high schools in the hours leading up to selichot in order to make the experience more meaningful.

This year's program, designed by Rabbi Stein, started at 10:30 with pizza and ice cream in each of the respective schools.  Then, both sets of students watched a lengthy clip from Disney's The Lion King followed by a discussion about the teshuva-related themes which the film explores: running away from the past versus facing it, living up to expectations, changing course, and making up for past mistakes.  Each group then had a kumsitz to further set the mood and then finally, at 12:50am, the boys and girls came together in the Beit Midrash for selichot led by Rabbi Gersten.

Below you'll find some pictures from the program as well as a short video clip of the boys signing at their kumsitz.

Gemar chatimah tovah to all.

C21: Now You See It

Cathy Davidson's new book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn, provides the most thoughtful, readable, and engaging work I have seen yet on the rationale behind and the need for 21st Century Learning.

Many of her main points are also covered in this lecture she gave recently at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.  The lecture is good.  The book is better.

Playdough, YouTube, and the Hypothalamus

With their college textbooks laid out in front of them, a video of a dissection playing on the SMART Board, and playdough in their hands, our AP Psychology students in the GMSG set out to construct a brain...

What People in Wheelchairs Can Do (in Hebrew)

It is for moments like this that people enter the field of education.

When Morah Hemda informed her 4th grade Hebrew class that as part of their Tal Am unit on Ha-Kitah Ha-Me'uchedet (the cohesive class) their virtual classroom would include a character in a wheelchair and they'd learn just how much a wheelchair-bound person could do, one 4th grader got particularly excited.  She quickly let Morah Hemda know that her mother is wheelchair-bound and how little that stops her from doing.

Sensing a teachable moment, Morah Hemda asked the fourth grader if she'd be willing to prepare a powerpoint presentation for the class - in Hebrew, of course - on what life is like for her mother.  She excitedly obliged.

Below is a video of her presentation.  The only thing more remarkable than the display of her Hebrew skills, is the display of her courage.