Good to Great

Four positions for which we are planning promise to catapult our school forward, adding significant services to students and enabling us to support very good teachers to become great and great teachers to become even greater.

Positions:

Enrichment Specialist: An enrichment specialist whose role will be to support teachers to design enrichment experiences for students will join our department of student services. This educator will work directly with students who, based on assessment, demonstrate the need for enrichment or acceleration exceeding grade-level learning. The enrichment specialist will be able to teach students in their classrooms and, as needed, pull students out of class to provide an enriched curriculum. In addition, our enrichment specialist will serve as a coach to teachers, assisting us to design enrichment experiences that will challenge and nurture the talents and passions of all our students.

Singapore Math Coach: As we implement a Singapore math curriculum in the school, we will benefit from the “gold standard” of professional learning in curriculum implementation for our teachers – an outside expert providing five days of intensive training for teachers as well as a workshop for parents, alongside a full-time in-house coach to provide ongoing professional learning and training for our teachers.

Library/Media Specialist: Leading the process of shifting our magnificent library into a twenty-first century library/media center is vital to our efforts to prepare our students for success in our rapidly changing media-rich world. We will be welcoming a library/media specialist to our faculty who will support our students to develop research and media literacy skills. Our library and media specialist will also coach our classroom teachers in more skillful integration of research, media, and literacy skills into educational experiences in the classroom.

Educational Technology Coach: Technology in the twenty-first century can no longer be relegated to a lab, but must be infused within classroom experiences. An educational technology coach will provide students with a comprehensive technology curriculum in the lab, but even more significantly, will support teachers to infuse daily learning experiences with technology in order to enhance and improve the quality of learning at our school.

Coaching Team:

What do the four positions described above share? You got it! Each of these positions includes some form of instructional coaching for our teachers. Our enrichment specialist, Singapore math coach, library/media specialist, and educational technology coach will join Ann Berlstein, our science coach, and Hadassah Wrightman, our Hebrew coach to form a coaching team. Jen Gensior, Chair of our Student Support Department, will also work with coaches and will be providing additional instructional coaching support to our faculty in literacy and learning strategies.

These instructional coaches or “teachers of teachers” will enable us to support very good and great teachers to become even greater. That commitment to the ongoing learning of teachers, not via outside workshops but through job-embedded learning experiences and collaboration among peers, is at the essence of what distinguishes the very best schools today.

Over the course of the next several months you will learn more about our curriculum enhancements, our hiring processes, and our instructional coaching team. You’ll have opportunities to meet our instructional coaches and gain greater insight into our commitment to continue to improve the quality of learning for our students. Please share with us your questions, insights, and ideas.

It’s Not about the Gifts!

I hadn’t intended to blog about Chanukah this year since I tend to address hot issues for our parents, and Chanukah was not on the list of topics, or so I thought.

Just yesterday, two concerned families individually shared one potent message with which our school entirely agrees – it’s not about the gifts!

Families in our community choose to observe Chanukah in a wide range of ways and have varying perspectives on the place of gifts in our celebrations. Some believe strongly that gifts are out of place on Chanukah. Other families wish they could give gifts but are not financially able to or are stretching to provide modest gifts. Others enjoy the exchange of presents symbolizing the appreciation they feel for one another. We respect all approaches.  But most of all, we respect children and their sensitivities.

This year there have been some exuberant conversations among children describing their gifts. They have not meant to cause discomfort, yet inadvertently they have. Our teachers will be gently guiding classroom conversations away from gifts and towards other, substantive components of the celebration of Chanukah. I share this with our families so that as conversations about gifts arise, you consider speaking with your children about your perspectives on gift giving, support them to understand that different families have different customs, and help them to embrace your own practices.

It’s not about the gifts!  It’s about the values and teaching by doing and by example.

OK, it’s a little about the gifts – but in the spirit of Gemilut Chasidim (Social Action), it’s not what we receive, rather what we share.  Working with Westchester Jewish Community Services, our students and families filled requests of more than 140 children whose families cannot afford holiday presents. We provided gifts for the children of teen mothers who are going to school and seeking employment. We supplied presents for needy babies and elementary school age children through local community clinics.

In a modern twist on Chanukah, our fifth grade Hebrew classroom visited the Amit School in Meitar, Israel – a suburb of Beer Sheva in the south of Israel via Skype. Our students and their partner fifth graders in Meitar celebrated together: lighting the chanukiah (menorah) and singing Hebrew holiday songs. They played dreidle and with each spin asked one another questions about the holiday in Hebrew. Our children enjoyed celebrating with new Israeli friends, speaking with them exclusively in Hebrew, and nurturing Ahavat Yisrael (Love of Israel).

Each of the three school days during Chanukah we are joining together as a kehilah (community) with a joyous school-wide Tefilah U’Shmirat Mitzvot (Prayer and the Observance of Mitzvot) and a lighting of the chanukiah (menorah). Each day is dedicated to a different theme: light, heroism, and miracles.  Thursday evening we will enjoy a Chanukah dinner and celebration coordinated by our PTO.

Let’s not forget the arts. In the school’s front hall there is a display of creative chanukiyot (menorahs) designed and built at home by students as a means of self-expression through ritual art. Additionally, our choir has been singing each of the weekday evenings of Chanukah at the Ritz Carlton in downtown White Plains, bringing a love of Jewish music and celebration to the broader community. We even made it onto News 12 Westchester!

Did I leave out any of our core values? There is Talmud Torah (Love of Learning) – engaged, substantive learning in classes throughout the school about the meaning of Chanukah. With Kavod (respect), I end this post where I began – let us all strive together to support our children to be respectful of the range of perspectives in our community about gift giving and remember, whether or not we give gifts – it’s not about the gifts!

Chag Urim Sameach - Wishes for a joyous Chanukah celebration!

Applying Science and Math in the Real World

“We don’t have science anymore,” one of our fourth graders nonchalantly explained to me as he jotted notes on a clipboard rating the appropriateness of various areas on our campus to plant tulips for Journey North, an international citizen science project collecting data on climate change. 

“Really?” I queried. “But what are we doing now?”

“We’re figuring out the best location to plant tulips,” he replied.

“And why are we doing that?” I questioned.

“To help scientists learn about climate change,” he confidently answered.

“Isn’t that science?” I asked.

“Not really,” he answered.

That brief dialogue has remained with me for the past month, the most potent of a series of conversations and queries, mostly with parents, but sometimes with students as well, about our science program.  There’s also been much conversation about Singapore Math, coming soon to our school. To engage actively in this vital dialogue about science and math, we invite you to an important science/math curriculum evening, December 14 at 7:30 p.m. Come learn about how we are restructuring our science and math programs to ensure rigor, depth, creativity, and critical thinking.

As a preview to our conversation on December 14, let me share with you our primary goals:

• to prepare all of our children to have the conceptual framework and skills they will need to excel in middle and high school science and math courses, and
• to gain understanding of the vital issues in science and math our children will face in the real world, in their daily lives as well as in college, graduate programs and the ever-changing workplace

How do we reach those goals? In science, we have designed a program with strong units providing the fundamental knowledge and critical skills Lower School students need in both biological and physical science.  These units are learned primarily in the classrooms with the general studies teachers, supported by our science specialist, Ann Berlstein.

Mrs. Berlstein brings science to life through hands-on learning experiences in our in-door science lab as well as our outdoor labs — walking trails, the butterfly garden, and the vegetable garden.  She also infuses our classrooms with science centers and investigative learning experiences.

Science is no longer a “special.”  In the past labs were not necessarily connected to our classroom studies. Now, they are vital components of our science units. In addition, as with Journey North, students engage as participants in pressing scientific  concerns of our day.

In math, we will be implementing Singapore Math, a curriculum we have chosen because of its intensive focus on the skills and conceptual understandings necessary for success in higher level math. A faculty task force is currently designing the most effective ways for us to implement this method.

For us, as a mission- and values-driven school, the goal of science and math classes in general, and for academics more broadly, is not for students to collect good grades (as much as we are proud of our students’ good grades) but rather to prepare our children for lives of contribution and meaning.

We look forward to seeing you at our math and science curriculum night – December 14 at 7:30 p.m.  In the meantime, don’t hesitate to share your insights and questions so we can better design the evening to address your interests.

Another Day Off? Whatever For?

Jewish holidays in October, parent-teacher conferences in November, and a professional learning day for teachers in December; what’s a parent to do with so many days off from school? Not only do we want our children in school and learning, but many of us also struggle with child care. It isn’t easy to juggle all these days off. We understand.

So, first answers to the question – why these days off from school? Second, some thoughts on what we can do as a kehilah (community) to craft the best school calendar we can, remembering that our calendar reflects our core values. We must observe the Jewish holidays. Parents and teachers must talk about our children’s learning as well as their social, emotional, and religious growth. Teachers must continue to learn so they are able to support our children.

Jewish Holidays
Yes, parents understand that as a Jewish school we will be closed on those Jewish holidays on which Jewish law prohibits work: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, the first two days of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah (as well as Pesach and Shavuot later in the year). Some who do not observe the holidays (particularly a lesser known holiday like Shemini Atzeret) might wish there was school. Still, parents understand.

But Erev Chag (the day before the holiday)? Why must we be closed? Because holidays require preparation – sometimes cooking, sometimes building a sukkah, and other times traveling. We embrace the wide range of observance of our families and faculty and are committed to making it possible for those who need to prepare as a family to be able to do so. Parents should know that in past years we were also closed Hoshanah Rabah (the seventh day of Sukkot or Erev Shemini Atzeret) but now have a regular 2:00 p.m. Friday dismissal. We have celebrations in school for Hoshanah Rabah, an interesting day on which there are special customs. Yet, besides the customs connected to Hoshanah Rabah, there are not more preparations for Shemini Atzeret than for Shabbat. Consequently, we were able to fit in an extra day of school. We hope parents are pleased!

Parent-Teacher Conferences
Yes, parents understand and appreciate the opportunity to meet with our children’s teachers.  But, why are there two days of conferences instead of one? And, why aren’t there evening hours?  We must have parent-teacher conferences on two days so Judaic studies teachers can be at conferences for both of their classes. We know, in Kindergarten conferences could be on one day, but having a day of school only for Kindergarten and not the rest of the school raises numerous complications.

As for evening hours, we are working on it. We know that many parents are finding it ever more challenging to take time off from work. During the March conferences we have two half-days of school and then have conferences from 1:00 to 8:00 p.m.. We are considering a similar structure in the fall, with conferences from 1:00 to 8:00 p.m. on two consecutive Thursdays. Why Thursday? Teachers are exhausted from conferences and need the weekend to recoup. We would then have school on Veterans Day and hold Professional Learning Day on Election Day. We do not like having students in the building on Election Day as we are a polling place. Although the White Plains Police Department provides us with security, we still prefer not to have students in the building on a day when there are so many unfamiliar adults present. There are some other options being discussed for parent-teacher conferences and we will do our very best to accommodate parents’ needs.

What about technology? Can’t we Skype for conferences? Well, maybe. We don’t yet have webcams in most classrooms, however moving forward we would love to know parents’ thoughts on video conferencing.

Professional Learning Day
Quite simply, in order for students to learn, their teachers must continue to learn. On this upcoming professional learning day our general studies teachers will be learning about Singapore Math (coming soon to our school) and our Judaic studies teachers will be continuing training in our Hebrew literacy curriculum. There will be other vital activities such as exploring “learning walks” in which faculty will visit each other’s classrooms in order to improve their own skills. There will also be a range of faculty driven professional conversations on topics that directly impact student learning. The benefits of this time as an investment in the skills of our faculty are profound, enabling us to continue to improve the quality of our school. Not only schools, but successful organizations broadly, need to invest in professional learning in order to continually improve, maintain excellence in areas it exists, and address areas in which we must be doing better. To serve our students, we must address in serious, substantive ways, the learning of our faculty.

What About Those Snow Days?
If we face a difficult winter, there will likely be questions about the snow days. While officially it is Dr. Spiegel, with input from the school’s senior administration, who decides whether to call a snow day, in practicality, it is the bus companies who decide. If the bus companies believe it is not safe to drive, we really cannot run school. If we have more than five snow days, we will begin to add days on to the school year. Hopefully, we won’t face this challenge, but we want to be prepared.

Finally, we want to assure you that there is a rhythm to the year. We know what we must accomplish by the end and pace ourselves so that we get there.

Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Fighting Hunger and Sharing Our Blessings: Because Giving Away Our Halloween Candy Just Isn’t Enough

Halloween has come and gone. To trick-or-treat or not to trick-or-treat is no longer the question. Our community’s enthusiastic reaction to last week’s blog post Is October Anything Other Than, Well, Monday? was evidence that trick-or-treating was never the question, not really. Our more profound underlying conversation is how to help our children incorporate into their identities our multiple roles as Jews, Americans, and citizens of a diverse world, embracing core values to guide us throughout our lives.

This Friday, at our Veterans Day commemorations, we will send off the bountiful collection of candy we have gathered to share with our troops. It’s an impressive amount of sugar! The colorful piles of candy show us in the most concrete of ways how together we transformed Halloween into an opportunity to do Hadavar Hanachon – The Right Thing; but it’s not enough.

And so, we immediately turn our attention toward Thanksgiving and our year-long campaign to fight hunger. Our leaders in this important endeavor are the fifth-grade volunteers to our Lower School Student Council. They give up a full lunch and recess period weekly and engage in follow-up work during the week, coordinating gemilut chasidim (social action) programming for our school.

Each day in our lunchroom between now and Thanksgiving, Student Council members will introduce Birkat Hamazon (the prayer after meals) by either sharing insight into the meaning of Birkat Hamazon or by offering information about hunger  locally, nationally, or globally. Learning however, while essential, is also not enough. We must act.

To that end, Student Council will set up boxes in the lunchroom and encourage our students to place in those boxes donations of non-perishable foods. They will also prominently display a large jar in the lunchroom and motivate our students to bring in tzedakah money to be placed in that jar and used to help the hungry.

Unlike Halloween, as a school we are not at all ambivalent about Thanksgiving. We celebrate this distinctly American holiday as our own, with joy and gratitude; but, this year will be different. We’ll forego the cranberry cobbler and corn bread treats, as well as the song festival focused on the theme of thankfulness for what we have, and instead transform Thanksgiving preparations at school into an opportunity to do Hadavar Hanachon – the Right Thing.

Our Student Council is reaching out to representatives from a number of organizations dedicated to fighting hunger. These special people, who will be honored guests at our Thanksgiving assembly, have committed their lives to helping the hungry; some focusing their efforts right here in Westchester, others serving the hungry within the Jewish community, and still others who address problems of hunger globally. They will speak to our students about their work, accept our gratitude for their tremendous contributions, and take with them the food and tzedakah money we are collecting to distribute among those who need it.

How can our families help? Provide opportunities at home for children to give what they can: portions of their allowance, money received as birthday gifts, or money earned for chores around the house. Consider giving students the option of foregoing desserts or other non-essential food treats and using the money instead to help the hungry, either bringing the money in or purchasing non-perishable food items with it to donate. The amount is not what matters. What is essential is that together we support our children to develop the habits of helping others, recognizing that it is not enough to count our blessings: we must share them.

And so, let the preparations for Thanksgiving begin. Without any guilt or remorse, enjoy creatively dreaming up luscious menus and savoring thoughts of travel to be with family. Just add into your preparations some attention to providing for the needs of others. Our Student Council is proud to help.

I’ll Tweet You: How Social Media Is Connecting Us With the World and Each Other

I was a guest speaker yesterday about Judaism in Mr. Clark’s seventh grade world religion class in a public school in Indiana. Joining me was my colleague Rabbi Akevy Greenblatt, principal of an Orthodox Jewish Day School in Memphis, Tennessee. Nope, Rabbi Greenblatt, and I didn’t fly out to Indiana. We merely took ½ hour out of our day and communicated with some middle school students who had questions about Judaism via Adobe Connect, a free web conferencing tool.

How did it happen that we were invited to Mr. Clark’s seventh grade? Brett Clark, Rabbi Greenblatt and I, along with many other principals and teachers from throughout the country and throughout the world have been study partners on Twitter. No, it’s not traditional Jewish learning in which we sit together face-to-face with a text, engaged in animated argument over the text’s meaning. Yet, we do stretch each other’s thinking. We share articles and blogs worth reading, ask each other questions, brainstorm, and engage in conversations about improving the quality of education in our schools.

Later in the day I tweeted Mrs. Roman’s second grade in Phoenix, Arizona from Mrs. Perten’s second grade right here in Westchester, New York. Mrs. Perten’s class was learning about the desert and creating canyons out of sand. Thinking Mrs. Roman’s class in Arizona just might have some first-hand knowledge of deserts and canyons, we asked what they could share with us. They replied with informative answers to our question.

At the end of the day, I set up our Lower School Twitter account. You can follow us now @SWestchesterLS to find out about interesting learning experiences in which our students are involved. You can also follow our K-12 Twitter account @SWestchester for updates and information about our school. We will be very pleased to set up some workshops for parents to get you started on Twitter. Let us know if that will be helpful.

But, there’s even more. I started the day early speaking with Israel Connect, an organization connecting Israeli schools with Jewish schools throughout the world, about partnering our fifth grade with a fifth grade in a school in Israel. More projects are in the works including one that will connect our Kindergarten with another kindergarten, and one that will form a connection between our Student Council and the student government of a lower school in Atlanta, Georgia. Stay tuned!

It’s a small world. We can now utilize more technological tools to connect to so many from whom we have so much to learn! We can also connect more easily to one another. Stay close by reading this blog, friending us on facebook, following us on twitter and reading our teacher web pages.

And, not to worry – face-to-face communication will be enhanced, not diminished. Social media adds; it does not take the place of our in-person connection. So, paradoxically, I end a blog on social media encouraging you to sign up with Brianne Gioio in our office for a face-to-face parent-principal conference with me on our parent-teacher conference days. It will be an opportunity to share anything on your mind; or simply to spend some time getting to know each other better. Attend our first coffee on Wednesday, November 2 where we will share information on our new literacy programs in both English and Hebrew. Make time to volunteer or just to visit.

We want to see you on blogs, web pages, Facebook, and Twitter. We also want to see you right here, face to face.

See you soon and see you often!

A Day In the Life: My “No Office Day” With Our Fifth Grade

I was exuberant on the morning of Tuesday, September 13 when my phone buzzed with the happy message: No meetings scheduled today!

That was the only “appointment” entered on my calendar. I spent our first No Office Day

Rabbi Leibowitz in class during "No Office Day"

with our Fifth Grade, engaged in their daily experiences from arrival through dismissal. Ilanit Curi-Hoory, our assistant principal, spent the day with the Kindergarten. We’ll have five more No Office Days during the year during which Ilanit and I will each spend an entire day with all of our grades. We will also have at least two No Office Hours daily.

What did I do on No Office Day? I joined Fifth Graders as they happily greeted our Kindergarteners and walked them to class, hung out with 5B during early morning independent reading, led tefilahwith 5B and talked about ways our feelings are reflected in the words of our prayers, facilitated a reading group in 5D focused on the reading strategy of asking questions as we read, taught a literacy lesson in 5A comparing  and contrasting a Jewish and an African tale which were both cultural retellings of Cinderella,  was interviewed in 5C’s chumash class, and then enjoyed listening to 5C students interviewing each other in their literacy lesson.

Rabbi Leibowitz davens with Grade 5 during "No Office Day"

I joined 5A for Hebrew and played a memory game with them in which we learned both vocabulary and sentence structure, watched a basketball game during recess and discovered a new location where some of our students who love nature could continue to explore. I ate lunch with 5B, enjoyed observing 5B and 5C’s dodge ball game in PE, listened to a read aloud of the book Holes in 5B, walked students to buses, and came back into the pick up room to wait with those going home by car.

It was a great day!

What is it that made No Office Day so special? I was engaged in our kehilah, our community, not to observe our teachers or our students and not to be “the leader” with a specific goal, but to be an engaged participant in learning and connecting. I was with the Fifth Grade not “to do” anything, but rather “to be” with them in kehilah.

Principals and other school leaders from across the country, and even some throughout the world, are participating in No Office Days this week and throughout the year. We are sharing on Twitter, in blogs, and in a No Office Day wiki the ways in which our presence can best make an impact on learning in our schools. We are connecting nationally and internationally for the purpose of connecting more meaningfully in our daily face-to-face interactions in our own school communities.

So, today, with only two hours scheduled for time in classrooms, I’m already feeling withdrawal pains. I think I need to post my blog, get away from the computer, and back into class! Looking forward to sharing more with you!

Bye for now. I’m off to class.

Remembering Hadavar Hanachon (Do The Right Thing) Day: September 11, 2001

Where were you on September 11, 2001? Our Lower School students don’t remember. The vast majority, all but a few fifth graders who were infants, were not yet alive. So what should we tell them? What are appropriate messages about 9/11/01 for Lower School students?

Those of us who were part of the Schechter Westchester Lower School community a decade ago share a collective memory of September 11, 2001. It was Hadavar Hanachon (Do The Right Thing) day – the inauguration of our intensive character education program. Students and teachers all wore t-shirts saying Hadavar Hanachon and were participating in a day dedicated to the celebration of helping others. When another administrator first whispered to me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center I was with our fifth graders, who were helping our Kindergarteners to plant flowers on the school grounds. As the day unfolded we set up a television in the faculty room where teachers listened intently to the news and checked in with loved ones in lower Manhattan. Still, we continued on with our school celebrations, not wanting to unnerve our students before we determined what to tell them.

For the first several years after 9/11/01 we had moving, age-appropriate commemorations, but as the years passed and fewer and fewer of our Lower School students remembered the day we stopped. Since 9/11/01 we have grappled thoughtfully with responsible ways of addressing frightening news events with children, striving as a rule of thumb to create spaces where we talk regularly, answer questions honestly, and make a sincere effort not give more information than children are ready to absorb. This year, in our ongoing attempt to interpret that guidance on speaking to Lower School students about frightening events, we at Schechter Westchester Lower School agreed that, just like in the past few years, we would not address September 11th in our Lower School.

As reflective educators, we question our decision and wonder if we have a history to reclaim. As much of the country commemorated the day with acts of service to others, we remember a day that was, paradoxically, dedicated to celebrating care for others. The potent memories of that painful day have prevented me from holding another Hadavar Hanachon Day since. The Hadavar Hanachon t-shirt I wore that day sits at the bottom of a drawer untouched as if wearing it would bring back the horrific memories. Yet over the weekend, I began to reconsider. Perhaps September 11th every year at our school should be a Hadavar Hanachon Day on which we acknowledge goodness, both ordinary, everyday goodness and more courageous acts in the face of adversity. Perhaps that is the most appropriate way to honor the memory of those who perished and those who helped on September 11, 2001.

And so, I bring the question to our community, to grapple with collaboratively for future years. Perhaps there are some humble ways of claiming our collective communal memory of September 11, 2001 as an annual Hadavar Hanachon Day. Please share your thoughts in comments on this blog and in face-to-face conversations. I welcome the thoughtful dialogue.

No Office Day – I’m Closing My Office And Going Back to the Classroom

Scheduled into my calendar for two hours every day – color coded in red, thanks to my assistant, Brianne Gioio’s ingenuity – is classroom time. During these two hours I commit to visiting classrooms. It’s not the only time I get out of my office (I’m with students and teachers at lunch and recess, at school-wide events, and for other programming), but despite my best intentions, classroom time often gets gobbled up.

What fills in its place?

You likely guessed it: meetings. Yes, the meetings are (mostly) important – curricular and programming meetings with faculty, meetings with parents who deserve to share their insights and concerns, and strategic meetings with professional and parent leadership.

Yet it is in the classrooms as well as “extended classroom spaces” such as our library, computer lab, science lab, and outdoor trails and gardens that true education happens. Teachers and students deserve to see me, their principal, in their places of learning, offering support, providing feedback, and rolling up my sleeves to get directly involved in teaching and learning.

I know I’m not the only educational leader who feels the gravitational pull of the office. Many principals and other school administrators, when speaking honestly with one another, share similar frustrations. It is from this place of deep commitment that I have embraced and have become involved in coordinating International No Office Day.

It is a day – actually several days during the week of September 12 – to accommodate different schedules. Educational leaders will close their offices and be with teachers and students in classes. Assistant Principal Ilanit Curi-Hoory and I will hold our first No Office Day next week, on Tuesday, September 13. It’s not the only day we’ll be in classrooms.

Indeed, the conversations among colleagues far and wide about how to spend the day are energizing us to consider ways of having many no office days and daily no office hours. The dialogue with colleagues is also stretching our thinking on ways to make our time in classrooms more meaningful.

Making Homework Meaningful and Manageable

I read a blog post recently from a teacher struggling with what to give his students for homework. It was the first time a piece of writing on homework made me smile. He wrote about examples of homework he gives – play outside, pet a dog, read for pleasure, practice what you didn’t understand, and make up work you missed.  We’re with him! No, not all our faculty have the same opinions on meaningful and manageable homework. Neither do all our parents. But, we all share a commitment to doing right by our students. Teachers are reflecting on homework that makes sense for us and they welcome parents’ insights.

We are also very proud as a school to add another support to help make homework manageable. Our afterschool library program has long been a place in which students can sit and do homework with teacher supervision. This year, we will not only provide supervision, but active, engaged homework support.  Marlene Levine, a general studies teacher and Ornit Atia, a Judaic studies teacher will monitor, instruct, support, and offer feedback. Classroom teachers can recommend that particular students take advantage of this service and all students are encouraged to utilize this free homework clinic. It will begin on Monday, September 12 and will run daily Monday-Thursday from 3:30-4:45 p.m.

We look forward to seeing our students learning together, and keeping our homework meaningful and manageable.

Check out our homework animated movie!