Uncategorized – Page 10 – A Floor, But Not a Ceiling

Another Trip Around the MJGDS Blogosphere

It is that time again!

How about this week we take a trip through the MJGDS Blogosphere and kvell about some of the excellent projects our students and teachers are engaged in. Perhaps it is too much to expect folk to check all the blogs all the time – especially if they are not parents in a particular class AND with our new website still under construction. So allow me to serve as your tour guide this week and visit some highlights…

From Our Kindergarten Blog:

Our Latest Creation – A Book!

In conjunction with our literacy program, we have been discussing “settings” for books by comparing one book to another. In this case, we discussed the various settings of the “Miss Bindergarten” series books. Each student created the setting for his/her imaginary Miss Bindergarten book! We have compiled all of these “settings” into our 1st ebook.

Check out our latest creation:

Miss Bindergarten

If you own an iPad or iPhone, you can download the epub file and directly drop it into your iTunes library. Once you sync your device with iTunes, you are able to read our book.

If you are reading this post on your iPad, simply click on the epub link and choose to open in iBook.

If you do not have a device to read our eBook, you can download the pdf Where Is Miss Bindergarten? , but the children’s voices will not be audible.

From our Community of Kindness Blog:

Advisory Lunch Groups

Advisory lunch bunch groups have started. The feedback from the advisors and the students has been extremely positive! While discussing how they have become more proactive this year, one student expressed that he does his homework FIRST when he gets home from school. He said he hasn’t been late on any assignments this year, which he explained is a HUGE accomplishment for him! WOW!

Most classes have started to talk about Begin with the end in mind, the second habit. During October, the classes will be working on class mission statements and developing personal goals for each child.

The middle school students wrote down the things that they have started doing this year to be more proactive….

From our Fifth Grade Blog:

New Jobs for Kids

This week in fifth grade there are….. New Jobs for Kids! Mrs. Hernandez looked at our applications online. After she looked, she picked which person deserved which job. I got Official Scribe (by the way, I am Arin). Emily and Zach got Documentarian. Ariella, Eliana, and Josh are the Global Connectors. Ayden is Librarian. Elad and Griffith are the Researchers, and Evan and Jagger are the Kindness Ambassadors. Mrs. Hernandez hasn’t figured out who the graphic designers are yet.

Now I’ll explain what all the jobs mean. Official Scribe writes the blog posts, takes notes, and really anything that has to do with writing. Documentarian is taking pictures and videos. The documentarians send me some of the pictures they take so that I can put them in the posts. Global connectors will tweet, put our Skype calls on our map and a lot more. Librarian puts some of the new words that we learn on our word wall, updates what we are reading on the wall, and straightens the books. The designers will sometimes draw visual notes and will do other design projects. Researchers look things up when we have questions. Kindness ambassadors make sure everyone is being kind to one another and don’t leave anyone out.

Meanwhile, we have been reading Out of My Mind. We are now on chapter twelve. We just read about how Melody went into a “normal” classroom. To her a “normal” classroom is a classroom with kids that don’t have disabilities. She got to sit with one of the only nice kids in that class. She sat next to a girl named Rose every Wednesday. Now she can’t go to sleep on Tuesday nights because she’s so excited.

On whole different note, we have picture day today. We took a whole-school picture, a class picture and individual pictures. Earlier today we had a school picture. Everyone was smushed into one little area. The photographer had to take a picture when no one was really ready. I wonder if that picture will be good.

Well, have a great Friday! Have a great weekend and Shabbat Shalom!

photos and photo collage by Emily

From our Third Grade Blog:

Skypportunity… a job they’ve never heard of…

It’s a mystery indeed!

She has patients…

they are not sick…

she is not a doctor or nurse…nor does she work at a hospital…

her patients are women only…

when she is working she has to be on call 24 hours a day…

3rd graders worked SO hard to figure out this mystery…

but it just wasn’t on their radar… but they will learn about the long history of midwifery while studying the Torah with Morah Liat!

SHE IS A MIDWIFE!

Special thanks to Sharon Schmidt, a Florida Licensed Midwife and a Certified Professional Midwife at Fruitful Vine Birth Center for this Skypportunity!

From our Art Blog:

First Grade

Color wheel art project from criscoart.blogspot.com

Amazing stuff, no?

Why not more from Jewish Studies Teachers? Why nothing from Middle School? Why nothing from our student blogfolios?

Got to leave something for the next tour!

Empty Seats: Are We Asking Too Little?

No, this is not a picture from the most recent Jaguar’s home game!

But there is a link between this picture, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and our school’s experience over Sukkot this past week…

I blogged about a year and a half ago about my observations of what happens when a Jewish day school closes for the explicit purpose of celebrating Jewish holidays and finds that a minority of families appears in synagogue.

I want to revisit that conversation, update it, and perhaps offer a provocative solution…

The Issue

I am going to inch close to a third rail during this conversation even though it is not at all my intention to do so. I am going to run the risk of appearing judgmental although I really do not hold families in judgement. I am going to name the elephant in the room and point out the obvious. I am going to ask some difficult questions. I am going to make some suggestions. And I will do all of this in the spirit of trying to spark a valuable conversation and furthering the mission of our school and community…and will hope that I have built up enough credibility so that because I believe it is part of my job to raise precisely these questions that the only outcome will be an honest exchange of ideas.

When Jewish day schools close for Jewish holidays they do so with the presumption that families need to be free to fulfill Jewish obligations and to celebrate the joy these holidays bring. Yet so often, our school closes for holidays such as Sukkot, Passover, Shavuot, etc., and the synagogue remains remarkably free of our students and families.

Blaming families is easy.

The truth is, institutionally we have failed to bring the families of day school students along for the rides they have committed their children to, regardless of their motivations for doing so. Parents who themselves are unobservant and often Jewishly uneducated enroll their children in Jewish day schools for myriads of reasons – seeking their own Jewish journeys may be one them, but surely not always.

However, without the family – Judaism’s primary and preeminent educational institution – we are too often expecting too much of the children we are educating. It is not reasonable to expect children to be change agents for their parents. It is reasonable to use enrollment as the means to reach out to families and help move them with love along the path being carved out by their children.

What is being done?

Last year we launched an incentivization program that provided an extrinsic motivation designed to ensure sufficient attendance to allow for the much preferred intrinsic motivation of celebrating the joy of Jewish holidays with friends and community. I admit that I had – and have – reservations about this program. I worry that essentially bribing children to celebrate being Jewish is not a terrific message and in the long run may, in fact, be counterproductive. But we had to do something and something we did.

What happened?

Well we had more students last year for the first two days of Sukkot than in recent memory. And even if the momentum faded slightly for Passover and slightly more for Shavuot – last year’s “Journey Through The Jewish Holidays” was considered a success. We had more students than ever before AND we offered more programming than ever before. Lots of children got their Adventure Landing passes and their Jaguars tickets. And so we decided that we would do it again this year…

Well, now this year’s Sukkot has come and gone…and, although, we did have better turnout than we had two years ago, we did not match last year’s success, let alone build on it. And I would be naive to think that the fact that this year the holidays were connected to weekends did not contribute to this reduction in attendance…

Okay, so what else can we do?

Before I offer the provocative suggestion, I acknowledge the fatigue that comes with being in the same building day after day after day. And I am not immune to the ways in which life interferes in the best laid plans. I know how important extracurricular experiences and family vacations are. But I also know we can work together make Judaism come alive OUTSIDE the school – in shul and in homes – in powerful ways which only create more opportunities for sacred moments and lifelong memories.

And so I still believe that first and foremost, we can and must offer families compelling examples of synagogue life. Regardless of the age group being targeted, we have to provide appropriate, meaningful and spiritually satisfying experiences. I believe in Judaism and its ability to inspire. I believe if children and adults have an opportunity to learn and live Jewish lives, the positivity it generates becomes self-motivating. We have the responsibility to try to create those moments.

We also have a responsibility to ask for more and not settle for less.

I have been inspired by my colleague Stan Beiner, the Head of the Epstein School, in Atlanta who this year tried something bold. Despite the logistical challenges of not being housed or affiliated with any particular synagogue, he counted the first day of Sukkot as a day of school. He recently blogged about this experience and how positively it impacted his students, his parents, his school and his community.

And so I have charged our Day School Community to take on this question during our year of work together:

What would it mean for the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School to count the first two days of Sukkot as half-days of school that included appropriate celebration and programming?

Would we have more kids? Would we have more parents? Would we have more programming? Would it lead to the desired outcome – more families creating powerful Jewish memories?

I don’t know what we will decide. I do know it will be a conversation well worth having.

Feel free to begin now in the comments…

A Sukkah for Orly

[This was originally published on September 18th, 2013. In honor of Esther Ohayon’s first yahrtzeit, I am republishing with an update on Orly’s progress and important information about how you can support the family and continue to keep Esther’s memory alive. If you are inspired…please give.]

By now it is likely that you have heard, read or seen the news of the traffic accident that took the life of our beloved DuBow Preschool Teacher Esther Ohayon and placed her daughter, Orly, an MJGDS graduate, into stable, but critical condition as they attempted to simply walk to attend Kol Nidre services at Etz Chaim Synagogue last Friday evening. There are no words to describe the loss of a teacher as sweet and beloved as Miss Esther and a world where a child as kind and loving as Orly must endure such tragedy. The shock has not yet worn off and the sorrow is only beginning…

By now Esther’s body has been returned to Israel for burial and Orly remains hospitalized with a long convalescence ahead. For those in our local community, we will share information about possible memorial services once they are decided and, for now, despite the multitude of fundraising vehicles that have been created to support Orly and her family, we are honoring Etz Chaim’s Rabbi Fisch’s request that those looking to help make their donations directly to his discretionary fund. (You may contact Etz Chaim directly for more information.)

Teachers, parents and children returned to school on Monday and we summoned the courage to comfort when appropriate, to shelter when necessary, and to love with ferocity. Our faculty met with Jacksonville Jewish Center Senior Rabbi Jonathan Lubliner for the purpose of providing information, planning communication for parents and especially children, counseling the bereft and to take a moment as a faculty to mourn the loss of a colleague and a friend. Clergy and social workers have been available to meet with parents and students in the Preschool and the Day School to offer counseling and to answer any questions.

Miss Esther was my younger daughter Maytal’s teacher a couple of years back and Orly was in my first graduating class.

My initial message to families ended like this:

I wish there was something more hopeful, more encouraging I could add to lessen the blow, but I, too, am both at a loss and feel the loss. It is in such times as this, that I feel blessed to work and live in a community such as ours. The collective strength and love it possesses will be relied upon by us all as we do only what we can – to ensure Esther’s memory everlasting, to pray for Orly’s recovery, and to finally learn the lesson of life’s fragility and ensure we treat each day as if it could be our last.

And it is in the spirit of wishing I had something more hopeful to add and in the spirit of recognizing life’s fragility that I am moved to share what our students are doing today – on a rainy afternoon headed into what is supposed to be the joyous holiday of Sukkot.

The sukkah itself is a symbol of life’s fragility. We are commanded to dwell in these temporary structures as a physical reminder of that fact. As frustrating as it can be to deal with rain and wind while trying to enjoy meals on Sukkot, I actually appreciate the tangible opportunity to remind my children, and myself, that we are at the mercy of a life unpredictable. To remind ourselves that there are those less fortunate for whom a sukkah would be a step up. To remind ourselves that when we return to our homes and our lives when the holiday concludes, there are many who cannot and do not.

And so I cannot imagine a more fitting symbol than the sukkah as I think about Orly Ohayon. No one knows more about life’s fragility than she. And as we return to our normal lives after Sukkot, Orly upon recovery will never know normal again.

As hard as it is to find something hopeful in a situation such as this, I must share that as a principal I am inspired by an act of lovingkindness that the Middle School of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School is performing today. Recognizing that holidays come whether we feel like celebrating them or not and recognizing that those staying in the hospital with Orly would be without, our students, under the leadership of our Middle School Vice Principal Edith Horovitz and with the additional help of students from Torah Academy (housed at Etz Chaim Synagogue), are on their way to the hospital to build a sukkah for Orly. And even though she will be in no condition to dwell in it, it is in her honor and the honor of her mother’s memory that it is being built.

Esther Ohayon was a teacher of young children. She loved, nurtured and protected them. She was their sukkah. And so we will build a sukkah in her memory so that, in some small way, she can continue to love, nurture and protect those who now care for her own child.

This is what it means to be a true community of kindness. This is what is means to be a true community. This is what happens when students grow up in a school where learning about things is not sufficient. This is why we do weekly mitzvah trips. Learning must lead to action. Learning must inspire us to make the world a better place. Learning must make a difference in the lives of others.

So on a rainy Wednesday in Jacksonville, Florida, we will build a sukkah for Orly that she will never dwell in. But by doing so we will honor the memory of Esther and demonstrate our love for Orly. I pray this Sukkot that even as our joy is tinged with sadness, that we take the time to celebrate this happiest of holidays with loved ones and friends and as a result of a tragedy unfathomable, to finally learn the lessons of life’s fragility.

Chag sameach.

October 7, 2014 – Update

As I was getting ready to walk to synagogue this past Erev Yom Kippur, I was thinking about Esther and Orly and revisited this blog post. It struck me how easy it is to be motivated in the moment, when the emotions are fresh, and how hard it is to stay motivated when the moment passes, and we – the lucky ones – return to workaday concerns. So when the holiday ended, I reached out to Edith Horovitz, the Middle School Vice Principal of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School, where Orly graduated from and to Shereen Canady, the Director of the DuBow Preschool, where Esther worked, to see how Orly is doing, how the family is doing, and most importantly, what we can keep doing.

From Edith Horovitz:

Orly is looking great! She is here with her sister for her senior year of High School. All of the schools dedicated all tzedaka on Friday in Esther’s memory. The Day School collected over $300.

From Shereen Canady:

I saw Orly and Ilana recently and both look well. Ilana will be here a couple more weeks and then will go back to Israel. Orly’s other sister, Simi will be coming mid-October to stay for a while with her.

We dedicated our preschool Shabbat in memory of Esther last Friday. Rabbi Lubliner spoke about her and joined us.
All 3 schools collected tzedakah and we collected over $600.

Chabad had a nice event planned in Esther’s memory. The Megah Challah Bake was well attended by women from Chabad, the JJC and Etz Chaim. We advertised it to our folks and several of our moms and some teachers attended.

By the way, Orly’s birthday is Oct. 13.

I was pleased to hear the news and look forward to more updates as time goes on. But now I would suggest that as Esther was always there for her students, her colleagues, and her family, let’s continue to be there for hers…now and forever.

In honor of Esther’s memory, in celebration of Esther’s life, in support of Orly’s journey, in the spirit of community, let’s join our schoolchildren in the act of giving tzedakah.

Please contact Shereen Canady ([email protected]) if you are interested in making a donation or contribution.

Lessons from Dad

It is amazing how much life takes place in a relatively short of amount of time. Three years ago, I blogged about my aspirations as a parent and a principal on this exact same day on the Jewish calendar – on the morning of what will soon be Kol Nidre and the beginning of Yom Kippur. They feel newly appropriate. Three years ago we were new to this community, this synagogue and this school. We had had a great transition and were full of excitement about what the future would bring. We had plans, hopes, dreams, fears, concerns and a whole host of other emotions.

And I had a father.

Of all the myriad of changes that has taken place between now and then, this one looms largest even though it is sometimes difficult day-to-day to always understand how. There are days when it feels like it happened years ago. There are days when it feels like it never happened. And there are days where it feels like it is happening all over again. I am assured that this is all normal and I am sure that it is.

So.

Now that I have been blogging for a few years, I am sometimes moved to revisit prior posts and see how they hold up over time. Occasionally, I am inspired to update in light of new realities. This is one of those times, as I revisit words of prayer written by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov from his Likutey Moharan (2:7) that now speak to me with the same words, but with new meaning…

Dear God,

teach me to embody those ideals

I would want my children

to learn from me.

Let me communicate

with my children – wisely

in ways

that will draw their hearts

to kindness, to deceny

and to true wisdom.

Dear God,

let me pass on to my children

only the good;

let them find in me

the values

and the behavior

I hope to see in them.

I now read those words of three minds – as a son who lost a father, as a parent of two and a principal of many. It reminds me why our faculty handbook quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, saying, “We need to have more than textbooks, we need text-people”. We can have the best books, most well though-out curriculum, and the most sophisticated technology – and hopefully we either do or will soon – but without the right people what does it really amount to?

And we can have read all the best parenting books and have our children in all the best schools and extracurricular activities – but without us parenting as our best selves, what can it really mean?

Among our traditions during the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur include the act of teshuvah – the complicated act of acknowledging past wrongs, correcting past mistakes, promises of changed behavior, etc. For my part, please allow me apologize to all those I have wronged or hurt, intentionally or unknown over the past year. I look forward to working on myself to be the best “me” I can in the upcoming year. For me, my mother, my wife, my children, my family, my friends, my colleagues, my teachers, my students and their families – I hope this year to live up to the words of Rebbe Nachman and Rabbi Heschel.

And I hope to take the lessons of my father of blessed memory to heart as I now follow his footsteps on the journey of my own fatherhood…

Habits of Kindness

As we head into the High Holidays, it seems an appropriate time to revisit and update where we are as a school and an academy when it comes to “community of kindness“. The truth is that the last substantive update came as part of a blog post that dealt with day school faculty and did really not include a lot of specifics.

Let’s rewind and review what we accomplished in the pilot year.

Last year was a pilot. We learned through surveys that our most significant failing when it comes to kindness in our schools is social exclusion. We learned through experience that one significant roadblock to kindness in our schools is what happens outside of school hours and places. We also recognized the unique challenges that living in the 21st century bring to issues of kindness. And we acknowledged that without parents as sacred partners we are unlikely to be the community our children deserve. We provided support to faculty, facilitated experiences with students and hosted two parent forums.

Was it successful?

Well, I would say “yes” with limitations. We succeeded in raising awareness. We began exploring structures for addressing the issues and there were individual successes with specific children that we can point to. But I do not think we had the sort of systemic impact we had hoped for. We are better off for having gone through the pilot than had we not done so. We learned what worked and what didn’t. And so as we head into a second year working with this initiative, we have made significant changes that we hope will lead to an increased impact felt not only within the times and spaces of school, but in our community writ large – our academy, our synagogue, and beyond.

It begins with staffing, but goes much deeper.

The first strategic decision was to pull the initiative in-house (last year we worked in partnership with Jewish Family & Community Services) and give the position to a full-time employee with knowledge, experience and relationships that transcend the academy, and so we have named Stephanie Teitelbaum as our Galinsky Academy Community of Kindness Coordinator. We believe this strategic combination of personality and position will help ensure we are dedicating the proper resources to an initiative of such great import. It continues to serve the faculty, parents, and students of our Academy’s schools, but now with an insider’s knowledge and access.

As important as staffing is a plan.

“Community of Kindness” makes a great slogan and a lousy call to action. We all recognize the need to be more “kind” and to ensure that our community act with increased “kindness” to all…but what exactly do you do? To answer that question and to provide us with a common vision, language and set of behaviors we are turning to a well-researched set of habits, seven of them to be exact.

With a huge assist from Andrea Hernandez, who has been quietly encouraging this for at least five years, we are going to go ahead and adopt and adapt The Leader in Me:

The Leader in Me process is designed to be integrated into everyday language so that it isn’t “‘one more thing” teachers and administrators have to do. It becomes part of the culture, gaining momentum and producing improved results year after year, benefiting schools and students in the following ways:

Develops students who have the skills and self-confidence to succeed as leaders in the 21st century.

Decreases discipline referrals.

Teaches and develops character and leadership through existing core curriculum.

Improves academic achievement.

Raises levels of accountability and engagement among both parents and staff.

The Leader in Me process also helps to create a common language within a school, built on proven principle-based leadership skills found in Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

Habit1: Be Proactive® • You’re in Charge

Habit2: Begin With the End in Mind® • Have a Plan

Habit3: Put First Things First® • Work First, Then Play

Habit4: Think Win-Win® • Everyone Can Win

Habit5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood® • Listen Before You Talk

Habit6: Synergize® • Together Is Better

Habit7: Sharpen the Saw® • Balance Feels Best

It is important to note that there has also been work in the Jewish Day School field work on translating the habits into Jewish settings and value language. Our friends at CAJE-Miami who work in this area offer the following helpful chart from their website:

We began at Faculty Pre-Planning when we held a joint session of DuBow Preschool and Martin J. Gottlieb Day School Faculty introducing the big idea and how we plan to proceed. Teachers of similar ages and grades were led through brainstorming activities on how to incorporate the first two habits as it is our plan, beginning in September, to focus each month on one habit. [The Bernard and Alice Selevan Religious School and Makom Hebrew High are coming on board as they open up.] Activities will be grade and age appropriate and will include stories, lessons and resources. Parents should look for evidence of how the habits are coming to life on school websites, classroom blogs, student blogfolios, as well as in parent forums and synagogue events. This month we are focusing on “Be Proactive”.

For my part, I am going to try to “be proactive” by dedicating my first blog post of each month – this being the first – to its habit.

Community of Kindness isn’t going anywhere. We are committed to getting this right because there is no other alternative. And we will need your help. If you are a parent in the academy, you are welcome to read and learn along with us. Incorporating the habits at home will only make what we do at school that much more powerful. So you can “be proactive” as well.

As we sit on the edge of 5774, let’s make this the year that kindness ceases to be a slogan and starts to be a habit.

Shana tovah!

Emails from Naomi Shemer

Each afternoon between 1 and 1:30 PM, I receive an email from “Naomi Shemer”. Not the Naomi Shemer. From the iPad in our school named “Naomi Shemer”.

See?

One of our founding 21st century learning teachers, Silvia Tolisano, decided when we first got our iPads that we ought to name each one after a famous Jewish person and sneak a little extra learning in. So we have iPads named “David Ben-Gurion” and “Ilan Ramon” and “Sarah Aaronsohn” and (of course) “Solomon Schechter” and so on. Awesome idea.

And because of the way our gmail is constructed it also allows you to receive unexpected emails from names you thought you would never see in your inbox!

Hey! I just received an email from Naomi Shemer! How awesome is that!

So…why is “Naomi Shemer” sending me a daily email?

Because my oldest daughter is in Grade 3 this year and according to their class blog:

And that is what happens. Each day Eliana takes a picture with an iPad of where her clothespin ended up for the day and emails it to both me and her mother. Besides the ease of communication the technology allows for, what I really appreciate about it is that it shifts ownership from the teacher to the student. We typically talk about students “owning their learning” – this is an example of our students owning their behavior.

Grade Three is a pivotal year in our school when it comes to a student’s digital presence. We have blogfolios for each student in our school, Kindergarten through Grade Eight. [NOTE: We are in the second week of school here in Jacksonville and all of our blogfolios have not yet been carried on to the next grade. They are going live as we update them.] But the teachers have primary responsibility for them in Grades K-2 – although reflection is there from the beginning, they function more like digital portfolios than true blogfolios. Grade Three is when our students begin to assume ownership of their blogs and begin to learn how to be digital citizens. They are beginning by learning how to comment on their own class blog.

I have written often about why we put such an emphasis on blogging in our school. And I, myself, have been blocking off for the last couple of years about an hour a week to comment on student blogfolios. But now I have the opportunity to view the experience wearing my parent hat. And I can see the idea that “with 21st century learning education need not be bound by time and space” playing out before my eyes in my own kitchen. Eliana was not required to comment on her class blog and her teacher was not required to comment back. But she was interested as we were cleaning up after family dinner and he was responsive during prep and now their student-teacher relationship has a different nuance than it otherwise would have had.

And both the father and the principal in me couldn’t be happier.

Shofar, So Good!

The very first thing we do at the beginning of each school year is gather together as a school community and celebrate the ceremony of Havdalah. Havdalah literally means “separation” and is the ceremony that marks the transition between Shabbat and the weekday. Because of its length (short), melody, and prominence in Jewish camping, Havdalah is a relatively popular ritual even with those who are less ritually observant. Part of what makes any ritual powerful is its ability to infuse the everyday with transcendent meaning. My small way to lend transcendence to the typical “Back to School” assembly is to use the power of Havdalah to help mark the transition between summer and the start of school.

And so this past Monday morning, the students and faculty of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School marked the transition between the summer that was and the school year that is presently unfolding with a heartfelt Havdalah.

I told my faculty during “Pre-Planning Week” that I had never been this excited for the start of a school year in my 9 years as a head of school. All the work of the last three years combined with a cast of talented, dedicated, loving, enthusiastic returning and new teachers has led us to this point. We are as ready as we have ever been to deliver on the the promise of “a floor, but no ceiling”. And this first week has more than lived up to my expectations.

It has been wonderful to walk the school, to feel the positive energy oozing through the walls and see the smiling faces of our students and parents. As we say this time of year, “Shofar so good!”

Our newest faculty members are acquitting themselves with great aplomb and our returning teachers have plenty of new tricks up their sleeves to mix with their tried and true excellence. We are focused on ensuring that we take the time at the beginning of the year to create classroom communities of kindness under the leadership of our new Community of Kindness Coordinator Stephanie Teitelbaum. We are paying extra attention to lunch and recess to make sure the good work of the classroom teachers don’t full through the cracks of unstructured time.

The first week of our new 1:1 iPad program in Grades 4 & 5 has been a success (with the normal amount of confusion newness brings) and the addition of a full-time K-8 Science Teacher has already raised the bar for science education at MJGDS. And in my meetings with faculty to discuss their professional development plans for the year, I can see the impact their summer reading is already having on their practice.

Confession.

I don’t think I am alone in this, but I will admit that in the eight prior years of being a head of school, that whenever I had the time to do a school walk-through, in addition to all the positive things I was hoping to see…a part of me was always steeled for the possibility of the things I was hoping not to see. If a principal is honest, s/he knows which teachers s/he has concerns about, which students s/he is worried about, and, yes, which parents s/he has difficulty with. We don’t share that information with anyone, but in our hearts we know the score. And we go into each year optimistic that those problem areas will improve, but realistic that there will inevitably be fires to be put out.

I took my first walk-through of this school year yesterday.

I visited each classroom. I saw every facet of our curriculum. I saw each teacher. I saw every space. It took me about a half-hour before I could put my finger on what was different this time around. And then I realized that the small sinking feeling of the possibility of something going wrong that typically accompanies me on my walk-through’s was absent! Room after room, teacher after teacher, activity after activity, student after student…it all looked…like how it was supposed to. It has taken us four years, but it just might be possible that we have finally begun to become the school we have all worked so hard and with such positive energy to become!

I am no pollyanna. Things are going to go wrong during the course of the year. We will still have behaviors to correct, programs to improve, teachers to grow, parents to connect, lessons to be learned, and yes, probably a few fires (metaphorical ones this year!) to put out. But if the next thirty-nine weeks go as well this one, the 2013-2014 school year will, indeed, be a very special one.

MJGDS Pre-Planning: A Storify

Tried something new this week!

[View the story “MJGDS Pre-Planning Week” on Storify]

To everything there is a season…

Life does move on…

A friend who came last week to pay a shivah call who had recently lost a parent of his own, shared with me that although you would think the goal of shivah is to provide the mourner with ample quiet time to grieve, reflect and reminisce; that, in fact, it is to exhaust the mourner to such a stark degree that any return to normalcy is welcome. I do not believe that explanation is sourced in Jewish tradition, but I do second the emotion.

And so I have returned to school, to work, to synagogue and to life. Return is bittersweet – I am glad to be home and welcome the opportunity for meaningful work to fill the void grief left behind. But it also makes it way too easy to forget that I am still grieving. I am embracing Jewish grieving rituals – continuing to wear the keriah after transitioning from the shivah to the sheloshim, attending minyan daily to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish, refraining from participating in overly social or joyous occasions, etc., – because they provide opportunities to remind me that I did, indeed, lose my father and to reflect upon all that that means. And after sheloshim comes the rest of a year of mourning…and I will explore how I intend to commemorate that phase when I enter it a few weeks hence. But now it is time to turn my attention back to matters at hand and what is at hand is the beginning of an exciting school year at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School as faculty and staff prepare to return on Monday (!) for an action-packed “Pre-Planning Week”.

The Transparency Files: Pre-Planning Week

At the beginning of the summer, I blogged about our expectations and plans for faculty to use their summertime for professional growth. I blogged about my summer reading and how it has impacted my thinking heading into another year. In the spirit of transparency, I would like to share with you what we will be thinking about and working on next week – a week dedicated to ensuring the first day, week, month, etc., of the 2013-2014 school year is full of wonder, discovery, meaning and success for our students.

Here’s the scoop:

Monday, August 12th

9:30 – 10:00 AM Continental Breakfast & Welcome Activities

10:00 – 11:00 AM Team-Building Activities – The Transition Cafe

11:00 – 12:30 PM Work in Classrooms

12:30 – 2:00 PM PTA Preschool & Day School Lunch & Teambuilding

2:00 – 3:30 PM Lower School & Middle School Faculty Meetings

Tuesday, August 13th

8:45 – 9:00 AM IT

9:00 – 9:30 AM Student Advisory

9:30 – 11:30 AM “7 Habits”

11:30 – 12:30 PM Student Advisor Meeting & New Faculty IT

12:30 – 1:30 PM Lunch & Learn w/Rabbi Olitzky

1:30 – 2:00 PM HR w/ DuBow Preschool Faculty

2:00 – 3:30 PM Work in Classrooms

Wednesday, August 14th

8:30 – 9:30 AM Brunch & Learn w/Rabbi Lubliner

9:30 – 10:30 AM Summer Book Club Groups

10:30 – 11:30 AM “Square Peg” Alum & Mom

11:30 – 12:30 PM Lunch [JS Faculty Working Lunch]

12:30 – 3:00 PM Hebrew Faculty Webinar

12:30 – 3:30 PM Work in Classrooms

Thursday, August 15th

8:30 – 9:30 AM How to talk to parents about “Square Pegs”

9:30 – 10:15 AM “Wonder”

10:15 –12:00 PM Work in Classrooms / MS Faculty Meeting

12:00 – 1:00 PM Lunch

1:00 – 3:30 PM LS “Meet the Teachers” & MS Work in Classrooms

Friday, August 16th

8:00 – 9:00 AM Final Nuts & Bolts

8:30 – 11:45 AM Middle School Orientation

9:00 – 9:30 AM Final Fine Tuning

9:30 –12:00 PM Work in Classrooms

A few things jump out at me…

You can see that Square Pegs has taken on a life larger just one of the books from the Summer Book Club. A number of teachers and administrators have read it and we believe its message has great resonance for our school.

You can see our belief that the 7 Habits may provide a common language for students and teachers to continue our 21st century learning journey .

You can see in “Student Advisory” the first tangible fruit of having an in-house Community of Kindness Coordinator.

You can see our ongoing commitment to Jewish learning through our “lunch and learn’s”.

But more than anything, I hope you can see our dedication to lifelong learning, our desire to be our very best, our devotion to our craft, our love for children, our passion for education, our acknowledgement of our sacred responsibility to teach, our respect for the whole child, our emphasis on personalized learning, and our promise to deliver “a floor, but no ceiling” for each child we have been entrusted with.

I say it each year, but only because I sincerely mean it. This year is going to be our best year ever. And that is because of who comes walking through the door Monday morning.

Welcome back MJGDS Faculty & Staff.

My father, myself…

It has been only four days since my father passed – only two days since his funeral – and it still hardly feels real. We have been overwhelmed by the amount of well-wishes, prayers, words, and deeds of consolation that have come pouring in from our families and friends from all the many stops life’s journey has taken us. It is impossible to convey the gratitude we feel towards those who have taken the extra step and gone the extra mile.

I managed to get through the eulogy I delivered on Monday and a number of people who were there and an even larger number of people who were unable to be there have requested a copy. I realize that a significant number of people who read this blog do so for professional purposes. And although I do occasionally weave personal anecdotes and information through my posts, I typically shy away the overly intimate. But life is not so easily compartmentalized…

Last week, when I thought things were headed in a positive direction, I blogged about how I believed this experience would be make me a better husband, a better father, a better friend, a better person…and most of all, a better son. I am still hopeful. But that last one will be awfully bittersweet for an awfully long time…

To my father…

My father was in the best shape of his life when he passed.

This was an irony that was lost on no one, including him, during the week he spent fighting back against the stroke that eventually took him from us.

“Why get in such great shape to have this happen?” he said in the hospital.

At the time, I believed it was to give him the strength to survive it. To suggest that it was to give him – and us – sufficient time to say goodbye today seems cruel, but perhaps in time will be a comfort.

It is easy to make fun of my father. He certainly had his shticks.

Expressing his political opinions too loudly at the risk of confrontation was a frequent occurrence. Hopefully heaven has MSNBC…

Treating each part-time tax return like a full-time job. Hopefully heaven has an Internal Revenue Service…

Eating cereal with warm milk was a daily meal that never seemed appealing to the rest of us. Hopefully heaven has Cheerios…

Reading book after book after book after book. Hopefully heaven has a Nook – and good customer support…

A childhood filled with such puns as “Jerry Rice and his brother Fried”. Hopefully heaven has a generous sense of humor…

Baseball caps and T-shirts from wherever he had just visited. Hopefully heaven has a gift shop…

Checking his messages with obsessive regularity well into retirement. Hopefully heaven has voicemail…

Taking out the garbage was the one household chore he could be counted on to perform. Hopefully heaven collects the trash…

Changing hotel rooms to avoid noise or the potential for noise was commonplace. Hopefully heaven has a corner room…

Nicknames for the ones he loved most. Hopefully heaven has my dad…

But my father was more than shtick, although it wasn’t always easy to see. Expressing his deepest emotions did not come easy for him, but there was never any doubt they were there. He understood his primary role in life was to take care of his wife, his sister and me and the successful performance of that role was his greatest pride. Even through their darkest times – the lost pregnancies of my youth and the lost jobs of my teenage years – he was there to protect us and to shield us from life’s difficulties. He took it all on and mostly kept it all in. He would bear the weight so we would not have to. Maybe that took such a toll on his heart that it didn’t leave space for some of the words we sometimes wanted to hear, but his actions spoke loud enough. It now falls to us to ensure those actions continue to speak on his behalf so that his memory endures.

When I delivered my grandfather’s eulogy eleven years ago, I expressed gratitude that he had lived long enough to see me married and regret that he had not lived long enough to meet his great-grandchildren who were not yet. Oh how he would have loved our Eliana, named for his wife, and Maytal, named for him. One of the last things my father said was that he planned to bless the challah at Eliana’s wedding as his father had done at mine…

Oh how he loved his granddaughters…they were his pride and his joy. Getting down on the floor with them and playing in the pool were his greatest delights. My father’s father was such an important presence in my life and all I ever wanted for my father was to have a chance to be the same in the lives of my children. My heart breaks to know he will not have a chance to watch them grow and it shatters to think that they will not have a chance to really know him and that, perhaps, they will be left years down the road with few memories of their own.

These last years were good ones. For that I will be grateful. He was slowly coming to terms with retirement and striking the right balance between keeping busy and finding purpose. He was proud of his work with the IRS and with H&R Block and with good reason. He was proud of his volunteer work with NARFE and within our Jewish community. He traveled to Israel for the first time and many trips were planned. He was working out regularly, had lost weight, and was proud of his newfound strength and energy. He had spent his whole life working and working and thinking about working and now it was time to finally relax and enjoy his wife, his children – for Jaimee truly was the daughter he never had, and his grandchildren. And in the space between his 44th wedding anniversary and his 71st birthday, his time simply ran out too soon.

And so it is left to those of us who knew and loved him best to keep his memory alive. I am counting on you to share your stories with me and my children so they will always have their Grandpa to guide them, to protect them and to inspire them as they grow up in a world diminished by his absence, but better off from having had Michael Mitzmacher – shticks and all – in it.