|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Friday LetterFriday Letter Archive | Friday Letter AlertsFriday, February 12, 2010
Feb. 13-21 Presidents Week. School Closed Feb. 15-19 Fri. Feb. 26 Purim Celebrated in School. Special Guests, Sat. Feb. 27 Erev Purim Sun. Feb. 28 Purim Fri. March 5 4th Grade “Coming Home” Play. Parents and guests warmly welcome. 9:00 AM. (No schoolwide Kabbalat Shabbat program) Sun. March 7 Fine Arts Festival – All school (elementary, middle and high). Gallery opens at 1:15 PM, performances begin at 2:00 PM. @ Glen Cove Campus. Click HERE for flyer. Wed. March 10 Annual Science Fair Grades 3 -5 @ elementary school gym Sun. March 14 SSDS Choir at Merrick Jewish Center Cantor’s Concert. 7:00 PM. Click HERE for flyer. Mon. March 15 ES Report Cards sent home Thurs. March 18 ES Parent-Teacher Conferences (evening) by appointment Parent Association Book Fair Fri. March 19 ES Parent-Teacher Conferences (daytime) by appointment – NO SCHOOL Thurs. March 25 Broadway @ Schechter – Musical Theatre Review, performed by our ASK Theatre Club members. Two daytime performances: 8:55AM and 1:55PM. Parents and guests warmly welcome. Fri. March 26 Last day of school before Pesach Break. Transportation Deadline Due by April 1st. Mar. 29 – Apr. 7 Pesach. NO SCHOOL
SSDS Board of Trustees Nominations - The Board of Trustees seeks candidates who are committed to serving Schechter’s long term vision and strategic plans, willing to enhance excellence in our children’s education, have demonstrated leadership skills, and are able to follow through with necessary responsibilities. If you wish to nominate a candidate (you may also nominate yourself) to the Board of Trustees, please complete the information below and submit to Fouad Pouyafar at foupou@msn.com no later than March 15, 2010. Click HERE for Board of Trustees Nomination Form. Dear Parents and Friends of the Solomon Schechter Day School Elementary School, What a crazy week this has been! As a true lover of children and childhood, I must admit that I was praying for the second snow day, so that once the blizzard past and the digging out took place, the children would have the pleasure and privilege of a proper romp in fresh, virgin snow! I am so pleased that my prayer came true! There is no greater fodder for building enduring childhood memories than a snow day. And believe it or not, there is also no greater fodder for developing crucial life skills, skills that schools are often remiss in developing, due to the heavy demands to meet ever-increasing academic standardization and state requirements. A double-snow day – one stormy and the other sunny – like the one we just experienced is not only a child’s but an educator’s dream-come-true. That is, so long as the time is taken advantage of and not squandered. Snow day # 1 was a day to stay indoors, with all the ingredients at one’s fingertips for experimenting, creating, building, designing and collaborating. Take baking, for example. I bet lots of families had some baking going on in the kitchen, including measuring, mixing, pouring, and perhaps even spreading and sprinkling. All great math and fine-motor skills we often skip over. I bet lots of families were assembling big puzzles, that usually stay stowed away until the time comes when you have unexpected time on your hands. Just think how much problem-solving and spatial intelligence it takes to assemble a puzzle, and how much patience and perseverance it takes. We simply don’t have time for large, time-consuming puzzle-assembling in school. That has to take place at home on family-time. Did you make hot chocolate, and pause and think about when you were a kid? Did your family play a board game together? Did your children pull out the blocks or Lincoln Logs or Kinex or Legos and build something grand? Did you tell your children stories about the biggest, best snow storm you could remember from when you were a child? Have you told this story before, and did you pause, so your child could fill in the details from your childhood story? It was a long blizzardy indoor day, and no doubt lots of TV and movies were watched, video games played with, and computer games as well. God willing, you also made sure that everyone also spent some time reading a good book for pleasure, a “just right book” that is not too easy but not too hard, so that reading will be enjoyable, opening yours and your children’s minds to new ideas. Maybe you even read aloud some great stories or jokes or mind-puzzlers! All of these perfect “stuck-in-the-house” activities help develop your children in multi-dimensional ways, perhaps without your even realizing it. Real-life application of mathematics, fine and gross motor skills, advanced planning, cooperative teamwork, listening, building memory, losing with grace, winning without gloating, these are just a few of the many important learning activities for which blizzards were made. Then, after many children were already tucked into bed, the automated call came, with Rabbi Herrnson’s voice announcing the news: no school for a second day! An ear-piercing “gashry” rose up to the heavens as every child screamed “Hurray!!” and could be heard all the way up to the spy satellites in orbit! The hearts of working parents pounded in their chests, but the lucky ones could work it out to spend part of the day working at home and part of the day hanging out with the children. There was more – and different – crucial learning to be done on day #2 of the Blizzard of 2010! With the sun shining overhead and the winds having died down, the snow itself was the perfect texture for forming snowballs and rolling tiny balls into body parts for a snow man. Or woman. Old clothes and questionable vegetables were collected for the snow-man’s facial and wardrobe prep, since not everyone is satisfied with the standard carrot nose and Scottish plaid scarf. But we’re a family and everyone has to pull their weight, so even the smallest toddlers have to help clear the snow from the driveway and sidewalks. No free rides when the whole family has to pitch in. Then what’s to be done with the big piles of dumped snow? It’s time to build a tunnel or castle...bring out the building supplies! By noon, most everyone’s cars were dug out, snowmen and tunnels and castles built, so it was time to “hit the slopes,” or at least ride over to a local park or golf course, sleds and saucers in tow, for some good old fashioned sleigh riding. Adrenaline rushes and imaginations soar as little minds imagine themselves on the luger and bobsled courses in Vancouver, as the winter Olympics approach, hour by hour. Stomach muscles tighten to steer around the slow-pokes, and at the end of each run comes the hike back up the hill, huffing and puffing, dragging the sled, using muscles your child had forgotten about. A few times you have to yell to your child to slow down, because you definitely don’t want this day ruined by a visit to the emergency room, but on the other hand, your child has this competitive nature and seems like a natural, her body and the sled melding into one. Despite the shining sun, everyone’s clothes are now soaked, sweaty and frozen, and so you head back home for some more of the indoor activities you took delight in the day before. Or maybe you pulled out some old family photo albums or watched home movies, some recent and some transferred from super-8 to VCR, some even in black and white. Yes Schechter parents, while the “Snow Day Celebration” was taking place in your homes, from afar, your principal was cheering on your family. This may sound like a sacrilegious statement for a career educator to make, but if parents do it right, snow days offer unique forums for some of your children’s most crucial learning to take place – developing imagination, creativity, problem-solving, cooperation, ingenuity, measurement, kinesthetic awareness and ability, endurance, patience, turn-taking, dreaming, and connecting to family, both present and past. I take great pride in my work and in the work of the teachers and administration of the Solomon Schechter Day School, but we can only do part of the job in educating children. So much that children can and do learn is learned best within the home and with the family, side by side, eye to eye, knee to knee, with the ones who love us best. One of the characteristics that makes Schechter such a special school, is the fact that the students come from such terrific families, families who care so much about their children and are so invested in their well-being. I am past the point of building snow-men, and with my children at college, my husband and I had to do all the shoveling alone. But I spent a good deal of these two snow days thinking about education and using the time for the kind of important “work” that educators rarely get the time for, such as imagining, dreaming and reading a book by Yong Zhao, a distinguished professor of international education at the school of education at Michigan State University. The brand new book is entitled, “Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization.” It was meant to be the subject of today’s Friday Letter, but with this letter already quite lengthy, I guess it will have to wait until next week. Two final words about families. The first is that not all families are as fortunate as ours, and this week, the children in the elementary school joined forces with the middle and high school to collect “Hoodies for the Homeless” and “Jeans for Teens.” I am very proud to say that under the leadership of the 5th graders, the children in the elementary school contributed 51 used hooded sweatshirts and 32 pairs of used jeans. Kol HaKavod to all who participated.
The last word, is that just before the first snowflakes fell, on Tuesday evening, a large crowd of 3rd grade families gathered at the Jericho campus for a very special Parent Association sponsored family education program. The 3rd graders examined a few practical applications of Mitzvot they are studying about in their Torah studies. They learned about the connections between Torah and Visiting the Sick (Bikkur Holim) as well as between Torah and providing food for the hungry. Together, they created get-well baskets for the sick, and made sculptures depicting “Our Hands are the Hands of God,” using boxes and cans of non-perishable foods to creature their sculptures. All that food (about 150 pounds worth of non-perishables) will be donated this week to the Alix Rubinger Kosher Food Pantry in Massapequa. Then the Hesed Trunk that sits in the lobby of the elementary school will once again be empty. When we return from break, I ask that you get into the habit of sending kosher non-perishables into school in your children’s back-packs. Protein sources, such as peanut butter and canned tuna and sardines are especially needed, but whatever you have, send it in. And not just once. Let’s refill that trunk, get the food delivered to the Alix Rubinger Kosher Food Pantry, and fill it again, and again, and again. Let the community know that Schechter comes through for those in need. A zillion thanks to Sheri Balsam, chair of the PA family education committee, for doing such a great job of organizing the 3rd grade family workshop, and to Rabbi Moshe Schwartz, for spending the evening co-facilitating the workshops with me. When we get back from break, it will already be the week of Purim, so get your costumes ready and we’ll see you back in school on Monday, February 22nd. Shabbat Shalom, Dr. Cindy Dolgin Elementary School Principal D’var TorahParashat Mishpatim Exodus 21:1–24:18 |
|||||||||
| © Copyright 2003-2009 Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County |
|
