A Floor, But Not a Ceiling

Reinventing Middle School: The (Soft) Launch of OJCS “Mitzvah Trips”

If you have ever moved from one place or organization to another, you know that the last thing people want to hear is, “In my last…”. There is a reasonable shelf-life for looking back to prior experiences in service of carrying forward ideas and programs that work, but here at OJCS, as I sit halfway through my fifth year, we ought to be past the, “In my last school…”. And if not for COVID, I’d like to think we would. But there is one big idea that I have been so excited to bring to OJCS that has been on pause since we teased its arrival back in the halcyon days of almost exactly two years ago in February 2020. But the time for waiting is no more, COVID notwithstanding, and I am beyond pleased and excited to share the next stage of reinventing and reimagining Middle School (Grades 6-8) at the Ottawa Jewish Community School.

Beginning with a soft launch this March, we are pleased to introduce a new Middle School Social Justice Project – The OJCS Mitzvah Project – that is predicated on the Jewish value of tikkun olam, the idea that each of us are here to do our part to make our world a better place. We will begin the work of integrating the formal Jewish Studies curriculum that our Middle School experiences on Mondays through Thursdays, with social justice experiences on Fridays, each and every week. Aligned with our school’s core values [North Stars alert!] of “We own our own learning,” and “We are each responsible one to the other,” we will create a committee of students, teachers, parents, and community leaders to develop this project, which integrates key Jewish values, deep textual learning and practical hands-on projects.

For example, during a week (or unit), students in Grade 6 would study on Monday-Thursday texts that describe the ethical treatment of animals, and then on Friday go out into the community and volunteer in animal shelters. Students in Grade 7 would study texts that help us understand our responsibility to feed the hungry, and then on Friday go out into the community and either feed the hungry, or volunteer in both kosher and community food banks.

This transition will require a “revolution” in our school that includes our schedule, our curriculum, our community partnerships and parent engagement. It will require us to redo our middle school schedule so that all of our Jewish Studies classes would flip on Friday to the afternoon, so they can end their day with our weekly “Mitzvah Trip”. It will require a brand-new curriculum (subjects, values, key ideas, Jewish sources, etc.) that is organized around the “Mitzvah Trip” experiences. It will stretch our existing community partnerships and require us to invest time and energy in creating new ones, seeking a balance between Jewish and secular causes and organizations. Logistics alone will require parent participation to help shepherd our students each Friday to the location of that week’s “Mitzvah Trip”. However, the opportunity to transform parent participation into parent engagement is a huge value-add of their volunteerism.

We want to provide our students with Jewish experiences that inspire them to learn more Torah, and we want to help our students make personal connections between the Torah they learn in school, and the larger world around them. We want our students (and families) to recognize that part of being Jewish is to make the world a better place, that doing so requires both learning and doing. Locating this work in our Middle School allows for practical connectivity to the b’nei mitzvah process. Providing these opportunities in a Jewish middle school where many parents are not looking towards Jewish high school, is critical to inspiring students and families to see and feel value to their Jewish learning beyond the walls of the school.

As a parent who had one child experience this program before and another one barely still eligible to experience it now, I can tell you firsthand how impactful it is and can be. As a principal who watched families eagerly anticipate middle school so they can start going on “mitzvah trips” and watched alumni eagerly anticipate opportunities to come back and volunteer on “mitzvah trips,” I know this creates a wonderful opportunity for our school to retain and attract students through Grade 8.

Wouldn’t you want your child to have an opportunity to make the world a better place each and every week?

Another Trip Around the OJCS Student Blogfolio-Sphere

I can assure you that this regular reminder of our student blogfolios with its concomitant plea for your visitation is not a function of my from time-to-time challenge in finding a prompt for blogging. (Although that is definitely a challenge some weeks!) It is also not a function of believing that blogging is the primary or most important thing that we do at OJCS – it is not. But because blogs and blogfolios do makeup the spine of which much else is built around; because the pandemic has required us to lean into them more regularly; and because they are outward facing – available for you and the general public to read, respond and engage with – I do want to make sure that I keep them top of mind.

For most of my professional life, I have had two children in (my) schools where they maintained blogfolios. I subscribed to them, of course, but I am not going to pretend that I read each and every posting, and certainly not at the time of publication. So this is not about shaming parents or relatives whose incredibly busy lives makes it difficult to read each and every post. As the head of school where blogfolios are part of the currency, I frequently set aside time to browse through and make comments – knowing that each comment give each student a little dose of recognition and a little boost of motivation. But I am certainly not capable of reading each and every post from each and every student and teacher!

When I am able to scroll through, what I enjoy seeing the most is the range of creativity and personalization that expresses itself through their aesthetic design, the features they choose to include (and leave out), and the voluntary writing. This is what we mean when we talk about “owning our own learning” and having a “floor, but not a ceiling” for each student.

It is also a great example of finding ways to give our students the ability to create meaningful and authentic work. But, it isn’t just about motivation – that we can imagine more easily. When you look more closely, however, it is really about students doing their best work and reflecting about it. Look at how much time they spend editing. Look at how they share peer feedback, revise, collaborate, publish and reflect.

This year, with the building still largely sealed off due to COVID protocols, our classroom blogs and student blogfolios remain important virtual windows into the innovative and exciting work happening at OJCS. In addition to encouraging families, friends and relatives to check it out, I also work hard to inspire other schools and thought-leaders who may visit my blog from time to time to visit our school’s blogosphere so as to forge connections between our work and other fellow-travelers because we really do “learn better together” [North Star Alert!]

So please go visit our landing page for OJCS Student Blogfolios. [Please note that due to privacy controls that some OJCS students opt for avatars instead of utilizing their first names / last initials which is our standard setting. That may explain some of the creative titles.] On our last tour, I pre-selected a few examples, but we have WAY TOO many to do that now, so go…

Seriously go! I’ll wait…

…

English, French and Hebrew; Language Arts, Science, Math, Social Studies, Jewish Studies and so much more…our students are doing some pretty fantastic things, eh?

I will continue to encourage you to not only check out all the blogs on The OJCS Blogosphere, but I strongly encourage you to offer a quality comment of your own – especially to our students. Getting feedback and commentary from the universe is highly motivating and will help this snowball (no pun or passive-aggressive take on what is happening outside my window!) grow as it hurtles down the hill of innovative learning.

Celebrating Jewish Disability Awareness & Inclusion Month (JDAIM)

February is Jewish Disability Awareness & Inclusion Month (JDAIM) and OJCS is excited to celebrate – even if those celebrations (like everything else these days) has to continue to come filtered through COVID protocols and a hylex learning program.

“Inclusion” is not simply an issue to discuss once a year, of course, and as we began our formal discussions of how we would celebrate JDAIM this year at this week’s Faculty Meeting, we began where our Director of Special Education, Sharon Reichstein, always encourages us to – with a shift in our mindset about what “special needs” really is and what it means:

For teachers, it’s important to always be thinking with a lens of inclusion in order to support and meet the needs of all learners (Shift the Spec Ed Mindset!!) It’s important for our students to be open, understanding, and inclusive to ALL members of our community.

There is a bit of a delicate dance we do with issues like “inclusion”. To the degree that we state that “everyone has special needs,” you run the risk of only focusing on who you presently serve and not look to see who you do not / cannot and then explore why. To the degree that we state “every month is about inclusion,” you run the risk of missing a critical annual opportunity to reflect, to learn, to grow and to change. We want to acknowledge the daily, weekly, and yearly work that we do to incrementally become better able to meet the needs of current students and to increase the circle of inclusivity. But we also want to use JDAIM as a measuring stick and an inspiration – to have our thinking challenged, our minds opened and our hearts stirred. We are blessed to be part of an interconnected Jewish community with partners to lovingly push and support us on our journey.

Even as we navigate a complicated set of safety protocols, here are just a few examples of how we are gearing up to make JDAIM a special month at OJCS…

…Sharon Reichstein, along with our Grade 2 General Studies Teacher Lianna Krantzberg , rolled out a set of “choice boards” for both Lower & Middle Schools, as well as a Padlet to our entire faculty that includes all the links and ideas that have been collected, thus far. As they put it, “While we spend time each day fostering kind and inclusive communities in our classrooms, it is our hope that you can add a spotlight to JDAIM in your classrooms throughout the month of February- pick and choose from the choice boards, the Padlet activities and/or create your own.”

…Brigitte Ruel, our Librarian, has a post on books that focus on “inclusivity”.

…we will again participate in Jewish Ottawa Inclusion Network (JOIN)’s “Youth Leadership Award Challenge” with an eye towards not only goosing individual participation but class participation as well.

…this year continues the exciting opportunity for our students to participate in the Friends of Access Israel (FAISR) Speaker Series for students in Grades 5-8. Every Monday through Thursday this month there will be a different and free JDAIM guest speaker. The lineup of speakers is incredible!

Classroom blogs and student blogfolios will be a great place to find examples of how OJCS lives JDAIM this year.

It bears mentioning that our ability to meet existing needs with enhanced COVID safety protocols is only possible thanks both to generous supplemental grants from Federation and from its “Emergency Campaign” that provides flexible furniture, assistive technology, and diagnostic software to benefit learners of all kinds whether they are learning in-person or at-home. As increased personalization is carried forward from all our COVID pivots, OJCS aspires to live a pedagogy of personalization that allows each student in our school to find the appropriate floor and to fly as far as their God-given potential permits without a ceiling.

This Jewish Disability Awareness & Inclusion Month, let us be reminded that to truly believe that each is made in God’s image requires that we apply the filter of inclusivity whenever possible. The work of becoming more inclusive has no beginning and has no ending. Inclusivity is both a process and a journey, one that OJCS has proudly been on for a while and one that we intend to keep walking with our community into the future.

Ken y’hi ratzon.

Seeding the Jewish Future: Tu B’Shevat & Enrollment

January this year brings us a wonderful confluence of events – the publication of enrollment materials for the 2022-2023 academic year and the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat – a holiday celebrating, among many things, the planting of seeds and the harvesting of fruits. I always marvel when the rhythm of Jewish living intersects with the rhythm of school life – it never fails to create meaningful and new connections.

Having our students mostly back to learning at school (while many meaningfully engage at-home), is a reminder that despite all the many challenges COVID has brought, and continues to bring, that our truest North Star are our children themselves. Our students are not an educational theory to be debated; they are flesh and blood children to be educated. What we do now matters not in the abstract realm of philosophy, but in the practical realm of whether these girls and boys will be prepared for success in high school and beyond in all the ways academic, social and Jewish that can be defined. All of the children in our school are what it is really about. They are the reminder and the inspiration; the goal and the promise.

And so the time has come to see how well we have sown the seeds of confidence and competence; love and caring; rigour and renewal; energy and enthusiasm – have we begun to deliver on the rightfully lofty academic, spiritual, emotional and social expectations our children and parents have for us?

You are likely familiar with the phrase, “leap of faith”. A “leap of faith” is predicated on the notion that one cannot really know (at least in scientific terms) religious truth and so in the end it is a matter of faith. You believe…because you believe.

However, as admissions and enrollment packets start to find their ways into parents’ hands, all of us involved in the sacred and holy task of educating children look to this time of year and hope that we have nurtured the seeds we have sown with success. We are not looking for parents to make a leap of faith and enroll their children in our school. We are looking for parents to make a leap of fact and enroll their children in our schools – confident that our school is the right place for their children to receive the education they want and deserve.

The seeds were planted during the summer. They were watered and nurtured during the fall and into the winter. As winter moves on (and on and on) and slowly moves towards spring, the faculty, staff, administration, lay leaders, donors, and supporters of the Ottawa Jewish Community School look forward to a rich and satisfying harvest.

We look forward to many, many leaps of fact.

With two sets of successful “Parlour Meetings” behind us and lots of interested folk hoping to set (COVID-Friendly) tours ahead of us, please be in touch with our Admissions Director Jenn Greenberg ([email protected]) to get more information about all things OJCS!

The Transparency Files: CAT4 Results (Yes, Even During COVID) Part II

Welcome to “Part II” of our analysis of this year’s CAT4 results! In Tuesday’s post, we provided a lot of background context and shared out the simple results of how we did this year. Here in our second post, we are now able to begin sharing comparative data, however patchy. It will take at least one more non-COVID year before we can accurately compare the same grade and the same cohort year after year. But we can get a taste of it with Grades 5-8. What you have below are snapshots of the same cohort (the same group of children) from 2019 to 2021 (with bonus data from 2018’s Grade 3):

What are the key takeaways from this comparison (remembering that any score that is two grades above ending in “.9” represents the max score, like getting an “8.9” for Grade 7)?

Now bear in mind, that the metric we are normally looking at when it comes to comparing a cohort over time is whether or not we see at least one full year’s growth (on average) each year – here we are looking to see two full year’s growth since we last took the test in 2019. This would be the place one might expect to see the full measure of COVID’s impact – these are the two years of COVID between the two tests. However, for all four cohorts in all categories save two (2019 Grade 3 to 2021 Grade 5 “Computation & Estimation” and 2019 Grade 5 to 2021 Grade 7 “Spelling”) you see at least two full year’s growth (technically 2019 Grade 5 to 2021 Grade 7 “Computation & Estimation” was just shy) and in may cases you see more than two full year’s growth.

I’m going to say that again.

During the time of the pandemic, with all the pivots back and forth, all the many challenges of both hyflex and at-home learning, all the prolonged absences by many students (and teachers), with all the social and emotional stress and anxiety, with everything we know about what COVID has been doing to children and to families, in almost each category that we tested our students in Grades 5-8 – spending no time or energy preparing for the exams and with diverse and inclusive classes – in 22 of 24 domains we see at least the pre-COVID expected two-year gain, and in many cases we see more than two full year’s growth.

As was true with our overall scores, I was expecting to see a significant number of gaps for all the reasons I just described, but surprisingly and encouragingly, that is not what the data yields.

Let’s look at one more set data points. We can also get a taste of how the same grade performs from one year to the next as well. Again, we only have Grades 5-8 to look at with (with a bonus 2018 Grade 6):

Now, remember that these scores represent a completely different group of children, so it is not unusual or surprising to see variances. Teachers can only grow students from the place they received them and it is that annual growth that we are concerned with. But over time you are looking for patterns. Ideally each domain settles in at least a full grade above with slight fluctuations from year to year depending on that year’s particular constellation of students. Even-better would be to see slight ticks up each year as a result of new ideas, new pedagogies, new programs, etc. And that is actually where much of the story currently is.

In the places where we aren’t quite where we want to be, we still have work to do. If with additional data we come to believe that Spelling or Computation & Estimation are institutional weaknesses, we will want to know whether they are weakness in every grade or do they dip in certain grades. Between COVID and gaps in testing, we simply have no way to conclude much more than we have already laid out. But in another year or so, we will be able to plot the trajectory of both cohorts (the same students) and grades over time to see what additional stories they tell.

To try sum up both posts, we have a lot to be proud of in our standardized test scores. We have two areas (Spelling and Computation & Estimation) to prioritize in two grades (Five & Seven). With regard to Spelling, it is interesting to note that when we flagged it in 2019 as a more global concern, we began providing professional growth opportunities for language arts teachers in our school on Structured Word Inquiry. The sample sizes are too small to make grand conclusions, but it is possible that those interventions help explain why Spelling is no longer a global concern, although we do need to pay attention to where and why it is lagging where it is. With regard to Computation & Estimation, we will – like with Spelling – have an internal conversation which may lead to PD for Math Teachers.

This fits in with the work we began on our November PD Day which focused on “Data-Driven Decision Making”. The Math and Language Arts Teachers in Grades 5-8 will be meeting to go through CAT4 results in greater detail, with an eye towards what kinds of interventions are needed now – in this year – to fill any gaps (both for individual students and for grades); and how might we adapt about our long-term planning to ensure we are best meeting needs.

The bottom line is that our graduates – year after year – successfully place into the high school programs of their choice. Each one had a different ceiling – they are all different – but working with them, their families and their teachers, we successfully transitioned them all to the schools (private and public) and programs (IB, Gifted, French Immersion, Arts, etc.) that they qualified for.

And now again this year, despite all the qualifications and caveats, and in the face of the most challenging set of educational circumstances any generation of students and teachers have faced, our CAT4 scores continue to demonstrate excellence. Excellence within the grades and between them.

Not a bad place to be as we prepare to open the 2022-2023 enrollment season…

The Transparency Files: CAT4 Results (Yes, Even During COVID) Part I

This may seem like a very odd time to be sharing out results from this year’s standardized testing, which in our school is the CAT4. We are just finishing up our first days in this year’s most recent pivot back to distance learning and we are confident that everyone – students, parents and teachers – has more pressing concerns than a very long and detailed analysis of standardized tests that we managed to squeeze in during the in-person portion of our school year. (The post is so long that I am splitting it into two parts, and each part is still a bit lengthy.) But with our launch of Annual Grades 9 & 12 Alumni Surveys and the opening of the admissions season for the 2022-2023 school year, one might argue that there is not a better time to be more transparent about how well we are (or aren’t) succeeding academically against an external set of benchmarks while facing extraordinary circumstances.

There is a very real question about “COVID Gaps” and the obvious impacts on children and schools from the many pivots, hyflex, hybrid, masked and socially-distanced, in-person and at-home learning experiences we have all cycled through together since March of 2020. (I wrote earlier in the year about some of the non-academic COVID gaps that we are very much experiencing, all of which I imagine growing proportionate to the length of this current pivot.) And it seems logical that there should be and are academic gaps, at least at the individual student level. One might ask why we even bothered taking the CAT4 at all this year; we didn’t take it last school year for example, so it will be really hard to make meaningful apples-to-apples comparisons. So why take them? And why share the results, whatever they may be?

We did it for a few reasons…

The first and primary reason is that we are curious. Curiosity may not be a “North Star” at OJCS, but it is a value. And we are very curious to see how our standardized test scores measure up pre-COVID and post-COVID, both by grade (2019 Grade 5 v. 2021 Grade 5) and by cohort (2019 Grade 5 v. 2021 Grade 7). We would normally be looking for patterns and outliers anyway, but now we can also look for COVID impacts as well.

Why share the results? Because that’s what “transparency” as a value and a verb looks like. We commit to sharing the data and our analysis regardless of outcome because we believe in the value of transparency. We also do it because we know that for the overwhelming majority of our parents, excellence in secular academics is a non-negotiable, and that in a competitive marketplace with both well-regarded public schools and secular private schools, our parents deserve to see the school’s value proposition validated beyond anecdotes.

Now for the caveats and preemptive statements…

We have not yet shared out individual reports to our parents. First our teachers have to have a chance to review the data to identify which test results fully resemble their children well enough to simply pass on, and which results require contextualization in private conversation. Those contextualizing conversations will take place in the next few weeks and thereafter, we should be able to return all results.

There are a few things worth pointing out:

Because of COVID, this is now only our third year taking this assessment at this time of year. We were in the process of expanding the range from Grades 3-8 in 2019, but we paused in 2020 and restricted this year’s testing to Grades 5-8. This means that we can only compare at the grade level from 2019’s Grades 5-8 to 2021’s Grades 5-8, and we can only compare at the cohort level from 2019’s Grades 3-6 to 2021’s Grades 5-8. And remember we have to take into account the missing year…this will make more sense in “Part II” (I hope). Post-COVID, we will have tracking data across all grades which will allow us to see if…
- The same grade scores as well or better each year.
- The same cohort grows at least a year’s worth of growth.

The other issue is in the proper understanding of what a “grade equivalent score” really is.

Grade-equivalent scores attempt to show at what grade level and month your child is functioning. However, grade-equivalent scores are not able to show this. Let me use an example to illustrate this. In reading comprehension, your son in Grade 5 scored a 7.3 grade equivalent on his Grade 5 test. The 7 represents the grade level while the 3 represents the month. 7.3 would represent the seventh grade, third month, which is December. The reason it is the third month is because September is zero, October is one, etc. It is not true though that your son is functioning at the seventh grade level since he was never tested on seventh grade material. He was only tested on fifth grade material. He performed like a seventh grader on fifth grade material. That’s why the grade-equivalent scores should not be used to decide at what grade level a student is functioning.

Let me finish this section by being very clear: We do not believe that standardized test scores represent the only, nor surely the best, evidence for academic success. Our goal continues to be providing each student with a “floor, but no ceiling” representing each student’s maximum success. Our best outcome is still producing students who become lifelong learners.

But I also don’t want to undersell the objective evidence that shows that the work we are doing here does in fact lead to tangible success. That’s the headline, but let’s look more closely at the story. (You may wish to zoom (no pun intended!) in a bit on whatever device you are reading this on…)

A few tips on how to read this:

We take this exam in the “.2” of each grade-level year. That means that “at grade level” [again, please refer above to a more precise definition of “grade equivalent scores”] for any grade we are looking at would be 5.2, 6.2, 7.2, etc. For example, if you are looking at Grade 6, anything below 6.2 would constitute “below grade level” and anything above 6.2 would constitute “above grade level.”
The maximum score for any grade is “.9” of the next year’s grade. If, for example, you are looking at Grade 8 and see a score of 9.9, on our forms it actually reads “9.9+” – the maximum score that can be recorded.
Because of when we take this test – approximately two months into the school year – it is reasonable to assume a significant responsibility for results is attributable to the prior year’s teachers and experiences. But it is very hard to tease it out exactly, of course.

What are the key takeaways from these snapshots of the entire school?

Looking at four different grades through six different dimensions there are only three instances (out of twenty-four) of scoring below grade-level: Grade 5 in Computation & Estimation (4.4), and Grade 7 in Spelling (6.6) and Computation & Estimation (6.0).
Interestingly, compared to our 2019 results, those two dimensions – Spelling and Computation & Estimation are no longer globally lower as a school relative to the other dimensions. In 2019, for example “Spelling” was a dimension where we scored lower as a school (even if when above grade level) relative to the other dimensions. In 2021, we don’t see “Spelling” as scoring globally below. (That’s a good thing!) [We also have some anecdotal evidence that a fair number of students in Grade 7 may not have finished the Computation section, leaving a fair number of questions blank – in the case of this cohort, it might be more valuable to know how well they did on the questions they actually answered (which we will do).]

What stands out the most is how exceedingly well each and every grade has done in just about each and every section. In almost all cases, each and every grade is performing significantly above grade-level. This is NOT what I was expecting considering the impacts of COVID over the last two years – I was fully expecting to see at least .5 (a half-year) gap globally across the grades and subjects. This is a surprising and very encouraging set of data points.

Stay tuned for “Part II” in which we will dive into the comparative data – of both the same grade and the same cohort (the same group of students) over time – and offer some additional summarizing thoughts.

OJCS Announces $1.5 Million Gift to Transform Classrooms & Learning Spaces

With the utmost humility and the sincerest of gratitude, it is my great honour and pleasure to announce what may be the largest single gift our school has ever received. An anonymous donor in our community has decided to invest $1,500,000 to help ensure that our classrooms and learning spaces are as innovative as our teaching and programming.

This represents an extraordinary moment for our school – its students, parents, teachers, supporters and community – on our journey towards long-term sustainability. Yes, of course, what happens inside the classrooms is more important than the rooms themselves. But there’s no question that more innovative learning spaces allow for more innovative learning experiences. This generous gift and the opportunity it presents will make a huge difference in the lives of OJCS students and teachers for a generation to come.

It is also worth saying that this new commitment to our school not only validates the hard work our teachers and board have put in over these past few years, but raises the bar for what we hope to accomplish in the years ahead. We hope that it also puts a smile on the faces of our current and prior set of major donors, including the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, without whose contributions would never have made this gift possible. We accept this gift not as a celebration of what we have done, but as a charge for what we now must do.

So…what happens next?

A lot! Especially if we are going to try to start the work over the summer so that at least some of our newly upgraded classrooms and spaces will be ready for use at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year! There will be lots of behind-the-scenes work with architect firms, general contractors, construction firms and vendors as we work to design our “classrooms of the future”. As we did with the construction of our OJCS Makerspace – funded by a generous grant from the Congregation Beth Shalom Legacy Fund – we will soon be convening groups of teachers and students for visioning sessions to ensure that “teacher voice” and “student voice” are appropriately included in the design.

It will be our pleasure to share designs as they come in and it will be our pleasure to show any current or prospective families the spaces we are discussing as it becomes more clear. We are so proud at OJCS to have this opportunity to do such important and transformational work. It is just another example of how OJCS is becoming an educational leader in our community.

How Studying to be a Rabbi is Making Me a Better Head of School

We have been conducting a series of “Town Hall” meetings with Middle School classes as part of amplifying student voice [North Star Alert! “We own our learning.”] and I found myself in Grade 7. We were chit-chatting at the end and a student raised his hand and asked me a question: “I heard that you were in school or something? That you are studying to be a rabbi?”

Yup!

And after a little more back-and-forth, the money quote: “Why would you choose to be in school when you don’t have to?!”

Why indeed!

As I am spending my late nights and Sundays preparing my final papers and studying for my final exams, I sometimes wonder that exact same thing! But as I am preparing to finish my first year (this marks the end of my third trimester) of rabbinical school, I wanted to reflect for a bit about what this journey has meant to me, not only personally, but professionally – how has becoming a rabbinical school student impacted my headship?

I am currently taking my fourth and fifth classes. (I barely have the bandwidth for two classes a trimester, which is why I am on a long, slow journey towards ordination.) My first class was a unique “Peace & Conflict Studies” course that dealt with navigating conflict in a Jewish workplace with a spiritual dimension. My second and third classes were a Liturgy class about the High Holidays and the second trimester (I was grandfathered in) of Beginning Talmud. I am currently finishing out the Beginning Talmud track and am taking a Halakhah class about “Genetics & Jewish Law”. However interesting or not you may think those classes sound, let me take a moment to answer my own question.

It feels good to put myself outside my comfort zone and inside a student’s mindset once again. I look forward to sitting at the kitchen table and doing my Jewish Studies homework alongside my children.

That’s what I wrote last January when I announced that I was becoming a rabbi. The first part for sure has come true. (The second part is true metaphorically, if not in practice.) And that is what I shared with my Grade 7s – that the fact that I am struggling to remember long-ago buried Hebrew, while working in Aramaic trying to unpack talmudic conversation, and having to do so publicly, out loud in front of classmates and teacher, really does give me much-needed empathy for my students. I have days when I pray that the teacher calls on me because I am totally excited to share my learning, and there are days when I pray that the teacher doesn’t notice me because I am not sure that I understand something and I don’t want to be embarrassed in front of my peers – “student’s mindset” for sure!

Whether it is time management (when do I do my homework?), imposter syndrome (will they realize that I don’t know things?), second (or third) language acquisition (please don’t make me express myself in a language that I am not totally comfortable in!), and so much more – for my students for whom academics are not their strongest suit, this experience has been and will be wonderful for my empathy. And that empathy will, hopefully, help me think carefully about the kinds of supports those students need to be – and, more importantly -to feel successful.

Of course, for those students who LOVE to learn…me too! Other than not having enough time in the day or days in the week, I am so enjoying learning again (especially Talmud)!

What is most fun for me, however, is when I can make a direct application between something I am studying and something I am working on. [Obviously, a Jewish workplace would never have conflict so that class on “Peace & Conflict Studies” wouldn’t apply. Ha.] I have the pleasure – which I mean sincerely – of leading services each morning with Grade 6. One of the things we have studied this year in Talmud is the Weekday Amidah, especially the first three brakhot. In a wonderful bit of happenstance, that exact sugya of Talmud is one that we were studying – how did the Rabbis decide how many brakhot we should say, what should they be about and from where were they derived? The fact that I could unpack that in a very grade-appropriate way with our Grade 6s is exactly why I wanted to go to rabbinical school. Not because it was neat for me (it was so cool!), but because it allows me to subtly enhance the learning of my students and to add their link of learning to the chain of Jewish learning through the ages.

So, one year down, many (many) years to go! In the meanwhile, I can put my report card on the fridge next to my children’s and I will doubly enjoy Winter Break with both my student and principal hats.

Do you want to see how JK at OJCS will set your child up for success in school? Do you have a friend or relative with a child entering JK? Please contact our Admissions Director, Jennifer Greenberg ([email protected]), to find out more or to book a COVID-friendly tour. You may also reserve your spot at our upcoming “JK Parlour Meeting” scheduled for Tuesday, December 17th at 7:00 PM (link made available when you RSVP).

We will be sending home information next week about how the school will navigate COVID protocols coming out of Winter Break, including providing families with rapid testing. Please be on the lookout for an important EMAIL.

We have a VERY EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT to share next week that you are definitely going to want to hear! No spoilers here!

Shining the OJCS Spotlight: JK – The OJCS Way!

[This post was co-authored with OJCS JK Teacher, Susan Wollock.]

During this “Festival of Lights” it seems very appropriate to kick off a new series of blog posts (to be written intermittently) that shines a spotlight on new, exciting or important things happening at OJCS. It also feels appropriate to launch this series because even if we are (please God) in “late-COVID” times, our protocols have been in place for so long that we have parents who may have never stepped foot inside our building! And if that is true, how much more so for the rest of our community. That’s the big idea – to share out big things that are happening at OJCS that you may not be in the know about.

And yes, of course, it is not a coincidence that we are beginning with “Junior Kindergarten” as we ramp up for the admissions season for the 2022-2023 school year. We are so proud of our new JK program and all the deliciousness that is happening there – what better time to share than now?

So, what are the most important things to know about JK @ OJCS?

Well, JK at OJCS is a trilingual program with lots of opportunities for cross-curricular activities. Here’s a topically specific example: Chanukah. In JK, we use Chanukah as an opportunity to learn numeracy (How many nights do we celebrate Chanukah?), vocabulary (How do you say sufganiyot in French?), and holiday songs in all three languages.

In JK we learn through play – with emphasis on social, emotional, cognitive, language, literacy, math, science, physical motor skills. In addition our JKers have daily Physical Education indoors and twice-daily outdoor play (those that nap get out once a day in the beginning of the year but then as they drop their nap they will participate in the second). Our beautiful JK classroom is anchored in Centres throughout the room that focus on art, science, sensory play, literacy, fine motor, cooperative play and dramatic play.

At OJCS, JK has weekly STEAM experiments and exploration where we follow the scientific method in an age-appropriate way in addition to other amazing weekly activities such as Art with Tashi (our Art Teacher), Music and Movement (guided and freestyle).

But most importantly, they’re just the most adorable kids in the school! [Note from Jon: I know which classroom to visit whenever I need a smile!]

Do you want to see (with your eyes!) what JK at OJCS looks like in action? Stay tuned to social media and other outlets when we debut our new JK Promo Video next week!

Actions Speak Louder Than Candles: A Chanukah Pedagogy

I guess if the High Holidays came early this year that all the other ones probably will as well? So I guess I can’t be surprised that Chanukah begins this Sunday evening! As part of my blog post last year, I wrote:

Instead of a public reading, we communicate the story of Chanukah silently, with the act of lighting candles at the window so that Jews and non-Jews alike recognize our celebration of the miracles that occurred.

I found a pedagogical “a-ha moment” in my re-reading and it isn’t so much in the “silence” as it is the “act”. Why? Well, in the case of candles, it is an action that anyone can take; it is not so ritualistically complex that only the most knowledgeable amongst us can perform it. It is an action performed publicly and in the home. And it is an act through which the meaning can be found through the doing. It is truly an act of “na’aseh v’nishma“.

This quotation from the Torah (Exodus 24:7) has been interpreted in many ways in Jewish tradition. The meaning which speaks most deeply to me is: “We will do and then we will understand.” This meaning comes from a rabbinic story (also called “midrash”) that explains Israel’s unconditional love for the Torah. The midrash is as follows:

When the Children of Israel were offered the Torah they enthusiastically accepted the prescriptive mitzvot (commandments) as God’s gift. Israel collectively proclaimed the words “na’aseh v’nishma“, “we will do mitzvot and then we will understand them”. Judaism places an emphasis on performance and understanding spirituality, values, community, and the self through deed.

Simply put, we learn best by doing.

This idea has powerfully stimulated my own Jewish journey and informs my work as a Jewish educator. I think there are two major implications from this: One, regardless of the institution, we have a responsibility to provide access to informal Jewish educational programs to our young people. Two, our formal educational institutions can stand to learn from what makes informal work. [This is precisely why in our search for a new “Head of Jewish Studies” we have expanded the position to include “Jewish Life” – our ideal person will have an informal and/or camping background in addition to their formal education and experiences.] Namely, I believe strongly in education that is active, interactive, dynamic, and most importantly experiential. It is one thing to teach Judaism; it is something more powerful to teach people how to live Judaism.

It is one thing to teach social action; it is identity-forming for our middle school students to go out into the world each Friday and in lieu of their Jewish Studies Curriculum make the world a better place by doing social action. That’s why we are working so hard to launch our new “Mitzvah Trip” program this spring, COVID challenges notwithstanding.

It is one thing to read about Israel; it is transformative to visit Israel. That’s why we are exploring how to one day transition our GRAD Trip in Grade 8 from Toronto or NYC to Eretz Yisrael.

And for this time of year?

It is one thing to study Chanukah; it is something infinitely more meaningful to light a menorah in the window, surrounded by family. Hopefully, your family is planning on joining our OJCS Family in this year’s Annual (Virtual) Chanukah Family Program on Thursday, December 7th at 7:00 PM!

Finally, this and each Chanukah, let’s not forget our Jewish values of tzedakah (charity) and kehillah (community). Along with your normal gift-giving, consider donating a night or two of your family’s celebration to local healthcare or other essential workers whose light of courage amplifies and enhances this Holiday of Lights.

Chag urim sameach from my family to yours!

BTW – if you like a playlist and a signature cocktail for your celebrations, why don’t you go ahead and make yourself a Chanukah Gelt Martini and vibe to this playlist: