September 2019 – A Floor, But Not a Ceiling

Shofar, So Good!

I realize that anything might sound anticlimactic after yesterday’s exciting announcement. But the truth is, that as meaningful as that gift is for both today and tomorrow, it is the actual work of teaching and learning that inspired it and us. And this is definitely the season for inspiration!

It is also the season for my most favorite and best/worst pun! How are things going at OJCS finishing our fourth week of school and headed into Rosh Hashanah you may ask?

Well. Shofar so good.

Our “Shofar Patrol” has been making the rounds, apples are being cut, and honey is being poured. Let me take a moment to congratulate all our new teachers and all our new parents on a wonderful first month of school. Your enthusiasm and your passion are welcome additions to our growing school and inspire our hopes not only for this year, but for the years to come here at the Ottawa Jewish Community School. While our newest faculty members are acquitting themselves with great aplomb, our returning teachers have plenty of new tricks up their sleeves to mix with their tried and true excellence.

Echoing my thoughts about the calm before the calm, I looked back on my last two years of “Shofar So Good” posts and in each one there were major systemic changes necessary to explain in response to lived experience and parent feedback. We had changes to carpool and dismissal (twice!), changes to our schedule, changes in online platforms, etc., etc., all (ultimately) positive changes, but all significant enough to warrant detailed conversations. What has been wonderful shofar this year, is how smooth and calm things are. I have been so impressed with how prepared our teachers have been, how positive our parents have been, and how enthusiastic our students have been to start the year.

Although, outside of French, we are not launching any major initiatives this year, what is bubbling up are major programmatic advances to align our practice with our “North Stars”. Hopefully those of you who were able to join us for this week’s “Parent Night” saw evidence of that firsthand. After conducting our AGM (Annual General Meeting), Melissa Thompson, our Teaching & Learning Coordinator, led us through our online spaces to help parents know exactly how to find the information about their child(ren)’s class(es), including homework/quizzes/tests parents want and need to know about to be wonderful partners and advocates. We did touch briefly on the whys of blogs, blogfolios, use of technology, etc., but have scheduled a “Parent Workshop” on October 24th (8:45 AM & 7:00 PM) for exactly that conversation.

For our final session, we gave parents the choice of four different topics. Some stayed with Mrs. Thompson for a little more hands-on support. We had a conversation led by Keren Gordon, our Vice Principal, about how our new Homework Policy is taking shape. We had a conversation about our new school-wide behavior management program (based on the “7 Habits“) led by Sharon Reichstein, our Director of Special Needs, and Deanna Bertrend, our Student Life Coordinator. Our new Head of Jewish Studies, Dr. Avi Marcovitz hosted a discussion on connecting the Jewish living and learning at OJCS with life at home.

If you missed any of those sessions and want more information, you can find the slides uploaded to our website and you are welcome to contact any of the above to find out more.

As the eve of a new Jewish Year approaches, it is my most sincerest hope that this is the year we’ve been waiting for. To all the teachers, staff, parents, students, donors, supporters, and friends in this special school- thank you for your enthusiasm and your hard work. 5780 is shaping up to be a quite an amazing year!

From our family to yours, “Shanah tovah!”

OJCS Announces $1,000,000 Gift

With extraordinary gratitude and sincere humility, I am thrilled to announce a gift of $1,000,000 to bridge the journey from stability through sustainability at the Ottawa Jewish Community School. This gift represents a significant milestone in our school’s journey of revitalization, reimagination and return over the last few years. The gifts we hope it inspires will ensure our newfound stability leads to long-term sustainability, through which our school will not only be able to secure the Jewish future of its students and families, but will help secure the Jewish future of our community.

We begin with thanking directly the families who, through their philanthropy, are guaranteeing our present while inspiring our future. Thank you to Stephen Greenberg and Jocelyn Greenberg. Thank you to Barbara Crook and Dan Greenberg. Your quiet leadership and meaningful investment have sustained our Jewish community for years. This new commitment to our school not only validates the hard work our teachers and board have put in over these last years, but raises the bar for what we hope to accomplish in the years ahead. We accept this gift not as a celebration of what we have done, but as a charge for what we now must do.

We must also add sincere thanks to Andrea Freedman and the Jewish Federation of Ottawa who played an instrumental role in keeping OJCS moving forward during its leanest years and who took a lead role in securing this $1,000,000 gift. It is a blessing to work in a Jewish community whose institutions are invested in each other’s success. We look forward to ongoing cooperation and coordination with Federation, not only in the fundraising work to come, but in the overall work of strengthening the Jewish Superhighway.

You may be wondering what (specifically) this $1,000,000 gift and campaigns ahead is going towards. In order to ensure a growing school is capable of providing a high-quality, progressive, personalized, innovative, trilingual, Jewish and secular education, it does take funding. We need to retain and attract passionate, professional teachers who continue to learn and grow. We need physical spaces as cutting-edge as our program. We need to provide financial assistance so that the decision whether or not attend a Jewish day school is not a financial one. We need to increase access for children with special needs. We need to keep tuition increases modest so as not to squeeze families already feeling pressure. We need access to consultants and experts to ensure we capitalize on current research and practices.

We need all this and more to truly achieve sustainability.

We look forward in the weeks and months ahead to making this case directly to our community. We look forward to the active participation of our parents, grandparents, alumni and community. We look forward to connecting and reconnecting to all those people for whom Hillel Academy/OJCS played a meaningful role. We look forward to sharing the story of our school with a wider audience. We look forward to living up to the expectations that come along with such generosity and ambition.

Thanks to these donors and this gift, together we will write the next chapter in the story of the Ottawa Jewish Community School. We write this chapter knowing its plot will include growing enrollment, educational excellence, innovative spaces, and meaningful Jewish experiences. We write this chapter knowing that we have more chapters to write. As it says in Pirkei Avot (2:16), “It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it.”

2019 OJCS Middle School Retreat

Woo-hoo!

That’s pretty much all I can say. We left exactly one week ago for our second annual three-day Middle School Retreat at Camp B’nai Brith Ottawa (CBB) and it was everything we could have hoped for in a Jewish informal educational experience. We had learning, games, athletics, prayer, social bonding, community building, hiking, white-water rafting, and a campfire to boot! It was like we squeezed a summer’s session of camp into just three days…and we were all tired enough to prove it!

After having spent a good chunk of time putting together a video of our experience, I will let the video do the talking. We didn’t necessarily know what we would come out with, so I apologize to parents and students that not everyone may have made it in – it is not a reflection of anything other than happenstance. We will more than make up for it with photos and videos throughout the year. It is, I hope, a taste of why this retreat has become 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.

Here’s a taste:

Here is a final reminder about September 25th…

In order to encourage attendance in both parts of the evening, we are (for the second year) combining our AGM (Annual General Meeting) with a hands-on parent workshop to ensure parents are able to be meaningful partners in their child(ren)’s education.

The evening will begin at 7:00 PM in the CHAPEL with an approximately 30-minute AGM. We will begin the Hands-On Workshop at 7:30 PM, beginning in the GYM, where we will start with some hands-on learning, exploring and subscribing that will help you know exactly where to find the information about your chid(ren)’s class(es), including homework/quizzes/tests/projects that you want and need to be wonderful parents and advocates. We will then move into a choice of topics for parents to attend featuring “Homework”, “Behavior Management” & “Extending Jewish Learning” – all facilitated by members of our Educational Leadership Team. The evening is intended to conclude by 8:30 PM.

This evening is about ensuring that parents know how to find, access and use all the tools we have available to help keep them in the know. We are scheduling a different day – October 24th (8:45 AM & 7:00 PM) – to engage in a more substantial conversation about the what and the why of our approach to technology and innovation. Why is the school moving to BYOD and what does it (really) mean? What are blogs and blogfolios and how are they used in service of learning? What role should schools play in developing media literacy and digital citizenship? What does the latest research tell us? If these questions, or others, are on your mind, we hope that you are able to join us at one of these conversations.

Meaningful Parent Partnership Ought Not Be Taken For Granted

This is the first week of my parenting life where I fully understand what it means to be a regular parent. And I love it. And I hate it.

As we all went back to school on Tuesday, my oldest daughter, Eliana, went off to high school. As significant a transition as it is for her, it is actually quite the transition for me. This is the first time in my parenting life that I have a child attending a school that I do not run (or recently ran). I don’t know the teachers. I don’t know the administration. I don’t fully know (or understand) the curriculum or the pedagogy or the rules or the routine. All I know about what my child is doing, or will be doing, either comes from her or what the school chooses to share with me. Sound familiar?

There is a wonderful freedom that comes without all this knowledge! As both a parent and an educator, I do have some genuine faith that teachers and schools know what they are doing. I also know that as my child is now in high school (and I guess not really a “child” anymore), that there is a necessary and natural transition of ownership of her learning more fully to her. I, too, want her to advocate for herself and I am okay with her school putting up some guardrails to help shift that onus from us, her parents, to her. I could definitely enjoy not having to know so much about the details of her education and having faith that everything is happening as it should.

Like anyone, I only have the experiences that I have, but I imagine it is fair to suggest that it is not only the differences between K-8 and high school that are in play here, nor is it only the differences between private and public or Jewish and secular. What I am learning now, in a way I never could before, is how meaningful it is for a school to open itself up to parents.

“Transparency” at OJCS is a core educational value, not a core business strategy. We don’t seek to be proactive and candid with parents about how and what we do in service of their children because it is good for business. We don’t seek and use parent feedback because it is good customer service. We are proactive and candid with parents about how and what we do in service of their children; and we seek and use parent feedback because we eagerly seek parent partnership. Parent partnership is not a business transaction; parent partnership is an educational relationship. The “we” in “we own our own learning” includes parents.

The opportunity to actively and meaningfully partner in your child(ren)’s education is not a given in every school. It is an opportunity, not a requirement, but one we want to inspire, encourage and empower. We work hard to provide parents with information and access to what is happening in school – about big picture issues and workaday activities. It can be overwhelming. My blog posts are too long. We have too many “Town Halls”. The OJCS Blogosphere is too complicated to navigate. We send too many emails and we post too much on social media.

Maybe.

It may be true that you may not want all the details of our new homework philosophy. You may not want to know how we are going to translate the “7 Habits” into a school-wide behavior leadership program. You may not want to know the details of the comprehensive PD our French teachers are participating in. You may not be interested in the details, pictures and videos being generated by teachers and students in class blogs and student blogfolios. The details of the Makerspace may be more than you care to have at your fingertips.

Etc.

And that’s okay. Each parent and family can choose for themselves how much they want to know about all the ways we think and work to educate the children in our school. Just know that we believe you are entitled to that information and, more than that, that your being in the know about the school, and your keeping the school in the know about your child(ren), enhances, amplifies and helps ensure our mutual success.

Speaking of which…

We hope to see many of you on Wednesday, September 25th at 7:00 PM for our AGM followed by our Hands-On Workshop at 7:30 PM. There we will be doing some hands-on learning, exploring and subscribing that will better help you know exactly how to find the information about your child(ren)’s class(es), including homework/quizzes/tests/projects, you want and need to be wonderful partners and advocates.

We will likely put out some additional information about the workshop (including either an opportunity for folks to participate virtually and/or where to find a recording of it) because we are still actively shaping it in response to feedback from the opening of school. I realize that that might seem a bit messy, but it is only because we want to make sure that our assumptions about how we prepared for this year are actually borne out in reality. We want to actively respond to the facts on the ground, not what we assumed to be. If you have specific questions, concerns or suggestions on the content of the workshop, please don’t hesitate to share them. We want this to be in service of parents’ felt needs.

Finally, if you need an extra incentive to be with us, please note that we will be making a major announcement that evening on how we plan to secure the long-term future of our school. It is very exciting and will be a big moment for us and our community.

[And I wrote a blog post under 1,000 words! #LifeGoals]