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.