“Spring Break” definitely meant something different years, children, and lifestyles ago than it does now! What once were vacations and adventures for the unattached and unfettered have now become repapering the counters three or four times between the bookends of Passover Holidays. So here’s to Spring Break 2011 – being home with my children while my wife works! Let the good times roll!
But they do…now that our school’s six model seders, my daughter’s preschool model seder, and two actual seders are behind us, we are enjoying the first day of our true “Spring Break” in style – a little Nick Jr., some matzo brei, an annual visit to mommy’s classroom so our children remember that not everyone’s Jewish, and catching up on odds and ends…
Last week, I pulled the first of what I believe are the two greatest blog copouts – “The Top 10 List” and was rewarded by echoing silence from the world. No comments, no retweets…and so, since I’m on vacation and celebrating a near-big birthday, I will double down with the other great blog copout – “Bullet Point”.
Yes…all those ideas that you haven’t had a chance to bring to full flower or may not be worthy of exposition…the “Bullet Point” post awaits…so here’s what’s on my mind…
- After a lot of research, thought and planning we are going to go ahead next year and launch Singapore Math in Grades K-5. You can read a blurb about it here. Kudos to Talie Zaifert our Marketing & Admissions Director for the cool ad:
- Now we have a lot of work ahead of us – teacher training, linking to state standards or explaining why not, parent education, etc. But this is one of those happy confluences where faculty opinion, parent opinion, and research all pointed in the same direction. We think we have addressed perhaps our most significant academic and perceptual concern in one fail swoop. I think way back in one of my original blog posts I discussed the powerful idea we learned from Heidi Hayes Jacobs back in our Preplanning Week about how wonderful it would be if we could approach the teaching of each subject like we did teaching ESL (English as a Second Language). It is a powerful idea on its own, doubly so in a school already committed to teaching Hebrew as a second language. Now, we plan to learn how to teach Math as a second language and cannot wait to see how this new math fluency impacts our students’ educations. You can revisit Heidi Hayes Jacob’s message to our faculty this past August here:
- Theoretically, the links to our school’s Annual Parent Survey are closed, but they really are still open (someone turned one in two hours ago). So far we have over 50% accounted for – not bad for a survey! I have taken a cursory glance at the results and there are no tremendous surprises. I am pleased to see how seriously those who have filled them out have taken the enterprise and how well, overall, the school is grading out. I will be sending out a report (not via blog) to parents after the break with the details. Thanks to all who filled out the surveys!
- Sometimes it is really awesome when nobody is at home to turn up the music really loud. This is one of those times.
- In addition to the Annual Parent Survey, I am also being evaluated by my teachers. It only seems fair – I get to evaluate them; they ought to have a chance to evaluate me as well. Thereto, I have taken a cursory glance and found both things to take pride in and work to do as well. I will likely expound on this in a future blog post. Stay tuned.
- You may recall I went through a Wordle phase summarized in this blog post? Well thanks to our amazing Art Teacher, Shana Gutterman, I now have a new toy, which I’ll end with. She just sent me a link to Tagxedo, which is kind of like Wordle, but it uses a slightly different algorithm and lets you choose images to house the words. Pretty awesome! So, I ran this blog through Tagxedo and came up with this:
Yes, I know the colors don’t match the flag and the Star of David is hard to make out in the middle, but gymnastics class is almost over and my blogging time is just about up. I do think it makes a nice summary of the ideas and topics we have discussed here weekly since we began last summer.
Off to enjoy the rest of my “Spring Break”, my almost-big birthday, and the rest of Passover. We are back to school next week and I will be out of quick-fix, blog copouts. A full blog post is forthcoming…
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Dear John
I am currently working at a modern orthodox Jewish Day School in Sydney Australia. I have put myself forward for a promotion. I am particularly interested if you have a view (or know of any research or material I can get over the internet) of Jewish Schools benefiting from making sure that their leadership are Jewish. It would seem that the trend at my school is not to worry anymore and leave the Jewish life aspect of the school to the Jewish Studies teachers and coordinators. It is a trend that is worrying me as I am Jewish and even though I teach mathematics, I would like to think that a Jewish educator would still bring value to the organisation in their leadership positions.
Thanks
Tracey
That is a fascinating question!
There is not, to my knowledge, significant research or data about Jewish educators running Jewish day schools. In the Solomon Schechter world, I would say that the majority of school heads are Jewish educators. I think there has, in recent years, been a trend of importing secular educators (whether they are Jewish are not) into Jewish school administration as a way of demonstrating seriousness about secular education.
Personally, I think it is hard to run a Jewish Day School if you cannot be a role model for your students…
I truly knew about much of this, but that being said, I still thought it turned out helpful. Very good task!
Major follower on this blog, plenty of your articles or blog posts have really helped me out. Awaiting news!