Category: Community Building

No Wordle’s.  No iPads.  No blogfolios.  No SmartBoards.  No Skype’s.  No 21st Century Learning.  Not even 20th Century Learning.  No amount of global connectedness or educational technology will make this happen.  And, it appears, no amount of money, seminars, interventions, blog posts, or acts of discipline can will it into existence.

This cannot be done without you.

Nothing extraordinary happened this week at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School.  This is not predicated on an event.  If anyone thinks this is connected to him or her, s/he is mistaken.  There is no crisis nor emergency.  There is simply honesty.

This cannot be done without you.

I have written 14 blog posts about “Community of Kindness”.  We have invested thousands of dollars in new programming and interventions.  We have hosted Parent Forums.  We have preached from the pulpit.  We have made faculty and student movies. We have meted out significant consequences.  We have accepted responsibility.  I have made a number of personally awkward phone calls or meetings with parents.

This cannot be done without you.

We are not unique.  Having recently returned from a national conference, I am reassured to note that issues of kindness rank high on all administrators’ lists of priorities and that we are all struggling with similar issues.  Although it is somewhat comforting to know that we are not the only Sisyphus pushing the kindness boulder up the hill, it resolves nothing.  We share resources and uncomfortably shrug shoulders.

This cannot be done without you.

There is nothing poisoning the water in Jacksonville.  The students, teachers, and families of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School are not uniquely unkind.  We want our school to live up to our highest Jewish values.  We want our children to feel safe, protected, nurtured and loved within (and without) our walls.  In my heart of hearts, I cannot believe that anyone doesn’t have the best of intentions.  And yet.

This cannot be done without you.

Facebook.  Instagram.  Twitter.  Minecraft.  Text.  Skype.  Who knows what else?  It is true that our ability to be unkind has gotten easier and faster.  It is also true that we have dedicated class time and coffee talks to digital citizenship.  Pushing unkind behavior from the playground to the PlayStation does not satisfy.  Our ability to be kind has not gotten harder.  We just have to remember to practice it.

This cannot be done without you.

Birthday parties.  Play-dates.  Sleepovers.  Concerts.  Virtual Gaming.  Who is included and who is left out?  Which children come to school having shared an out-of-school experience and which children come to school having lived through its exclusion?  For that matter, which parents?  And how many of our teens and parents are forced to confront their exclusion via social media as pictures and videos of what they are missing are paraded, exchanged, and liked before their eyes?

This cannot be done without you.

I am as guilty as anyone else.  I have children in our schools.  They have friends and they have acquaintances.  They have play-dates and sleepovers with the former, but rarely with the latter.  I use social media.  We have become obsessive self-documentarians and I am no different.  I want to provide friends and family a window into our lives and social media allows us to.  Have I unthinkingly posted pictures of such play-dates and sleepovers without thinking through the consequences?  Absolutely.

So this cannot be done without me as well.

I am not in despair.  We are not giving up.  We have had successes.  Students refer to “community of kindness” in the lunchroom and during their Bnai Mitzvah speeches.  We continue to reward kindness and penalize meanness.  I continue to push myself to intervene in the grey areas.  Our middle schoolers are attending an important play on the topic this very afternoon.  We have a movie screening coming up for our teens and parents.  And, most importantly, our teachers care deeply and are willing intercessors in the lives of their students.  When children are in our care we can, in fact, ensure communities and kindness.  But.

This cannot be done without you.

No amount of programs, interventions, assemblies, blog posts, sermons, coffee talks, dollars, hand-wringing, or complaining will make us into a community of kindness.  And no amount of saying “Community of Kindness” will turn us into one.  It will take simple, everyday acts of kindness, piling up one on top of the other, day after day, week after week, until one day we look up and realize that we are, indeed, a community that is a little kinder than it once was.

Please, God, let that day be soon upon us.

There is nothing like returning to school after winter break, midweek, to scramble your brain!  As wonderful as breaks are, returns can be equally wonderful.  It has been a pleasure welcoming parents, students and teachers back for a new, secular year.  We anticipate 2013 being a wonderful 52nd year at MJGDS!

A lot happened as we were heading into break…

…I invite you to revisit the exciting news of our new game development venture with Jewish Interactive by clicking here.  We’ll have an update on this groundbreaking new project soon.

…and I invite you, here, to join the ongoing conversation about the impact of Newtown and our plans to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all our children at the Jacksonville Jewish Center.  We are continuing to meet internally and I look forward to sharing updated information about preparedness shortly.

But today I want to revisit territory I first staked out, here, in a blog post titled, “Do I have a stake in who my students are when they are not in school?”

In that post, I asked the following question: “Do I or does the “school” have a responsibility to address behaviors that take place outside the bounded times and spaces of school?”

My answer was most affirmatively, “Yes,” and I will let you (re)read the post to see why.

But, I also qualified my answer in the following way: “Let me be clear that I am purposefully leaving parents out of this behavioral equation.  Not because I either blame parents for their children’s behavior nor because I abdicate parents of their responsibility to effectively parent.  I am simply asking a different question.”

Well…I think I would like an opportunity to ask that question: “Do I or does the “school” have a responsibility to address the role parents play in behaviors that take place outside the bounded times and spaces of school?

And, again, I think the answer is, “yes”.

But, boy, is that more complicated.

The simple truth to explore is how to help parents best partner with school to truly become a Community of Kindness.  The simple challenge is how to lovingly intervene when it becomes apparent that help may be required.

We are parenting in uncharted territory.  Our children have access to information and to each other in ways we, not only never anticipated, but in ways that continue to change – and we may, or not, even be aware that is happening.  Whether it is through texting, chatting, or gaming, our children are in constant contact.  And just like in reality-reality, their behavior in virtual reality provides opportunities for kindness and opportunities for its opposite.  And parents play a crucial role in determining the outcomes.

Unfortunately, with rare exceptions, if it finds its way to me, it means the outcome was not-so-good.  When it finds me, it usually means that a child has been excluded or disparaged.  When it finds me, it usually means that a child has been exposed to language or content which may be inappropriate.  When it finds me, it usually means that a parent is concerned about which influences are following their children from other homes to school to their home without an invitation.

And when it finds me, I have to ask myself what am I to do?

This is normally the point in my blog where I would proceed to ramble on for another 500 words or so and provide the answer to my own hypothetical question.

But in the spirit of partnership, I don’t want to answer my own hypothetical question. Why?  Well, it isn’t hypothetical and I don’t actually know the answer!

So, please, dear reader of this blog, whether you are a parent, educator or concerned party, make a quality comment and let’s collaborate on an answer.  You can take the time it normally would have taken you to finish this blog post to formulate your response.

How do I address my fully accepted responsibility to care about the role parents play in behaviors that take place outside the bounded times and spaces of school?

Let’s get crowd-sourcing!

I must have read 30 “Special Messages” from my colleagues in Jewish day schools and other Jewish institutions to their constituents over the weekend and into this afternoon. And with each one, I have felt the need to issue my own grow stronger and I have felt my inability to articulate grow stronger along with it.  Words typically come fairly easy to me, but not today.  I don’t know how to express as a principal or a parent the impact of last Friday’s events.  While our Day School spent the day celebrating the miracle of Chanukah and the advent of Winter Break, unspeakable horror was taking place at Sandy Hook Elementary.  The jarring juxtaposition was not lost on those of us tracking events with one eye on the computer screen and the other tracking dreidel scores.  With facts just coming in as students were checking out, we made the conscious decision to allow the day to proceed as normal and permit people to begin their Winter Break uninterrupted.  That was the last easy call to make.

What do we do now?

I am no different than any other parent in our Academy.

I have two daughters in our schools.  And I demand that when I kiss them goodbye and send them off to their classrooms that every possible security measure is in place to assure me that they are safe and protected.

I am no different than any other staff person in our academy or synagogue.

I work in a school.  And I deserve a workplace that recognizes risk and has in place protocols and procedures to ensure my wellbeing.

The Jacksonville Jewish Center takes its security responsibilities with the utmost seriousness.  I have been in constant contact with Don Kriss, the JJC’s Executive Director, since Friday and I can report that along with our lay leadership, the Security Committee, our contacts in law enforcement etc., all necessary conversations are taking place.  I have complete confidence that our students in Winter Camp are being watched over with all due diligence and that when all our schools reopen their doors in January, that all our security measures will have been thoroughly revisited with an eye towards heightened readiness.  There is nothing more important we do than keep our children (and teachers) safe and it is my sacred promise that all that can be done, will be.

It will be 18 days between the events at Sandy Hook and our first day back in school.

I am not sure if I should be more concerned about how our students are going to react about being back in school or that the world will have moved on to the next big issue or, God forbid, the next tragedy.  We will be prepared regardless.  Our tefillah will include words of prayer for those no longer with us and words of hope for those of us left trying to make meaning of the meaningless.  Our partners at Jewish Family & Community Services along with our clergy will be available to provide counseling to those in need. Our Preschool and Lower  School students will pick up where they left off.  Our Middle and High School students will tackle the topic organically – if our students have need to discuss, we will ensure appropriate discussion takes place.

I will leave the politics to those who know better.

I simply recognize that between last year’s local tragedy (we are still mourning our dear colleague Dale Regan, head of Episcopal School, gunned down just last March) and this month’s national tragedy that something is very much amiss.  I pray that we soon live in a time when “Special Messages” are no longer necessary.

Please God that it be soon.

Hamakom Yehanchem Otam Btoch Sha’ar Avlei Tzion Virushalayim – May the almighty comfort the families of Newtown among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Wow again.

Last year, I blogged here, about our annual Middle School Retreat to Camp Ramah Darom calling it “We left as a school and came back as a family.”  The intent was to bond us together more closely and I believe we succeeded.

This year the goal was to build on feelings of family and emphasize the moral imperative of community.  Therefore, the theme of the retreat was “Community of Kindness” and in addition to social activities (apple picking, corn maze, horseback riding, campfire, zip-line, etc.) our educational activities focused on how our middle school can function like a true community of kindness.  We visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Site in Atlanta. We engaged in informal educational activities on topics such as “gossip”, “conflict resolution” and “friendship”.  Our tefillah incorporated the theme as well.  Everything we did was in that spirit – a spirit we intend to keep alive now that we are back in school.

After having spent a good chunk of time, in between catching up with the rest of the school, putting together a video of our experience, I will let the video do the talking – for now.

The flip camera was held by lots of hands and so I apologize to parents and students that not everyone made it in – it is not a reflection of anything other than happenstance.  We have more than made up for it with the photos published on our website, here.  It is, I hope, a taste of why this retreat is such an important part of our middle school.  Our relationships are forever changed – for the good.  We will be able to do things within the walls of the classrooms that we never would have without having spent time together outside of them.