5000 Year-Old Artifacts, Basketball Politics, Adam & Eve….
Hey everyone!
The 7th graders had an AMAZING night this week during their elective block. In Arts & Crafts class, there was a guest speaker (our teacher Leora’s dad) who brought in Israeli artifacts that were literally thousands of years old and had the kids use them as models as they worked on their own clay sculptures. In Judaism & Sports, the kids learned about the current conflict between the NBA and China before and shared their thoughts on what they think is the ethical thing for the NBA to do before shooting some hoops in the gym. In Torah Studies, the kids thought they knew the story of Adam & Eve, but they quickly realized that a close reading of the text leaves one with many interesting questions and takeaways.
In Jewish Cooking class, the kids made some Israeli sweets. In Holocaust Studies class, the kids learned about the timeline of key events in Nazi Germany. In Rosh Chodesh, the kids continued to have conversations centered around identity and gender. All in all, all of the students (and all of the teachers!) really enjoyed their electives. There will be one more week of electives this trimester (next week, we’ll be doing something special for Halloween, and the week after that is the last week of the first trimester) and then the kids will submit elective preferences for the second trimester.
The Tikkun Olam-A-Thon rotation is also going really well. There will be one more week of the Tikkun Olam rotation where the students meet with each of the teachers, and then after that they will their submit their preferences for which Tikkun Olam class is the one they want to focus on this year. Speaking of Tikkun Olam, a few students have asked if they can do a separate Tikkun Olam project that’s not related to the themes we are offering. While we encourage students to pursue whatever community service they want to complete outside of Yachad, we are asking students to focus on one of the themes we are offering for their Yachad Tikkun Olam-A-Thon project because we are shifting the focus this year from requiring kids to do outside community service to giving them time during Yachad each week to work on advocacy and awareness projects. I know this is a change from years past, but in the past, many of our seventh graders were unable to find time outside of Yachad to complete their community service, so we are hoping that this shift in the model will enable all of our students to learn a lot about their topic and to complete a service project they are proud of without being a pressure on their already busy schedules.
If you have questions about the Tikkun Olam class or anything else related to Yachad, our Back to School Night is happening next Tuesday Oct 29, from 7-9pm. Please stop by Room Alef, where I’ll be going over the curriculum map and schedule overview for the 7th graders this year. Hope to see you there!
Best,
DiCo