Welcome to Wornick!

When a prospective parent or a guest walks into one of our classrooms, an adorable student stops his/her work and walks over to the guest. S/he looks him in the eye, sticks out his/her hand offering a handshake, and says “Welcome to Grade “x”, my name is “y”, and we are working on our “z” unit right now.” This never fails to startle and impress visitors. Impressing guests is a by-product.

There is serious pedagogy in this greeting.  The greeting, connected to the social-emotional objective of learning empathy, is also connected to a core Jewish value about welcoming the stranger “for you were once a stranger in a strange land”  (Exodus 18).  The greeting is linked to another important pedagogic goal - attending (listening).  The student needs to be aware of people entering their space, and then needs to listen to that person for cues about how to make them feel welcome in this space.

Every day our students say the “Shma” which I often call the “listening prayer”.  This prayer asks us to listen...to be present and to attend to what we might hear if we just stop to listen.   It is the one prayer that is universally known by Jews.  The translated words are “Listen Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One”, and traditionally it is recited at every service, at night before going to bed and on one’s death bed.  Irrespective of one’s theological position, the universal question raised in this prayer is about listening. 

This seems like a simple task, but it is one that many contemporary educators believe is in short supply. Listening is a skill that we tend to assume happens naturally.  Listening is not a major part of any curricula, yet, we know that listening in order to learn and in order to build relationships is critical to future success in school and in life. 

Listening is in fact rather complicated.  It is complicated because the words we hear are filtered by a myriad of interpretations.  If we marry multiple interpretations to weak communication skills, we may never be able to clarify a puzzling or hurtful communication.  When you hear something, the following is possible – what you heard, what you think you heard, what the speaker said and what the speaker meant to say.  There are so many places for misinterpretation .  The conflicts that emerge from failed listening are the grist of great literature and movies, they also are the fabric of children’s altercations throughout a typical school day. 

At Wornick, we help children become skilled listeners through practicing the following: a) listening without judgement, b) listening empathically, c) listening for feelings d) listening for needs, e) and listening with maintained eye contact.   Each of these has several dimensions, and each leads us in different directions in responding best to the communication we are receiving.  This is what is really behind our student greeters.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dr. G.

Wicked, Rebellious or Innovative

It’s funny how engagement in tradition can lead to new ways of seeing things.   Our Passover dishes are stored for another year, matzah crumbs have been swept up and we have returned to our busy routines.  I find myself reflecting about the new insights gained from our sederim (plural for seder) this year. 

I have attended over 100 Passover Sederim (plural of seder) in my lifetime.  When my grandfathers’ presided over my childhood sederim, I don’t remember much questioning or variety in the format.  When my husband and I began conducting sederim, they began to change each year.  Sometimes it was because of the age of our children or because of the knowledge or interest of our guests.  Our sederim are active - filled with questions, serious discussion and analysis, playful singing and activities.

This year, it seemed to me that there was a recurrent theme throughout our preparations for Passover and during our participation in different Passover activities (sederim and synagogue services).  The focus in each case was on the part of the seder referred to as the “four sons” or “four children”. 

The four children is the part of the seder where four different children are represented – the wise, the wicked, the simple and the one who doesn’t know how to ask.  The conversation in the haggadah (the text or the playbook for the seder) is that we need to respond to each of these children in different ways.  It is one of the earliest examples of “differentiated instruction”.  Over the years, there have been endless artistic renditions of these four children and there have been many questions about these children – do the questions they ask really fit their labels? Are they really representations of different sides of every child? Do the answers in the Haggadah really satisfy their different needs? And so on. 

This year, it seemed that everyone who spoke (or perhaps it was my particular interest) focused on the wicked child.   Traditionally, most of us assumed that this child was labeled as wicked because of the question he asks, “what is this service to you?”  The Haggadah responds. “To you, and not to him.  And since he excludes himself from the community, he denies the main principles of faith…tell him bluntly ‘this (service) is on account of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt….for me and not for him…” 

I saw this child differently this year.  First of all, I saw this child asking a perfectly good question – what does it mean to you?  His question was trying to gauge what other people around the table might be thinking.  Additionally, I saw the response to the child as the real source of alienation and separation. 

One of the “drashes” that I heard by Mishael Zion (the co-author with his father Noam Zion of “A Different Night” Haggadah) included an analysis of the many different artistic depictions of the four children.  As we interpreted these, it became clear that the “wicked” child was really always the “rebellious” child or the “innovative” child.  It was the child who was still sitting at the table and connected to the seder, but also somehow had a foot in another world.  He/she was the forward thinker who still remained connected to his/her family and community.

I also read an interpretation of the same passage by a woman who wrote about how she was always asked to read the “wicked child” verses at her family seder.  She noted that as she has moved into adulthood, she now proudly “owns” that depiction.  She is the “rebel” in the family….the one who has forged a different and successful path.

I naturally make the connection from this to the children that I see every day, and the conclusion I drew by the end of the holiday is that our task is to connect them to tradition and history while giving them the opportunities “to disrupt”, “to innovate”, and “to find a different path.”   

Shabbat Shalom,

Dr.G.

Strangers

Last year around this time of year, I was asked to give an impromptu 2 minute speech at my weekly Toastmasters club.  The person in charge of table topics that day set the topic in the season.  She talked about how spring reminded her of Easter and she discussed her happy connections to that holiday.  Everyone in the room nodded knowingly.  Then she pointed to me and asked me to speak.  As I walked to the podium, the only idea that kept rattling around in my mind was that I really don’t have anything to say about Easter.   As I got to the lectern, I decided that my connection to spring was Passover.  The first theme that popped into my mind was the concept of welcoming the stranger on Passover.

I talked about how the powerful connection for me to this holiday was the concept of welcoming the stranger since “you were once a stranger in a strange land” (the Biblical reference to being an oppressed stranger in Egypt).  Having lived away from my hometown and my close-knit family for most of my life means that I can feel the values of a community by how they treat me and my immediate family as strangers.  My children grew up knowing that our house was open at any time to “outsiders”, and as adults, they now live this value as well.  Our seder this year, as in years past, includes a few people who are not known to us but who are in need of a seder.

We go through the traditional seder and each aspect of the seder provides multiple levels of meanings for me.  But the statement that the entire experience should be mediated through the idea of “experiencing the exodus as if each of us had personally left Egypt” is the one that is most meaningful for me.  As an educator, I always think about how to generate those feelings of connection and empathy for the stranger without having experienced their absence personally?  I’ve come to realize that each one of us has experienced losses and alienation at some time in our lives. Even young children in our very nurturing environment experience those moments.  We need to call up those memories in order to fully connect to this story. 

When I completed my speech (and won an award for it), one of the club members who had joined the club a few weeks before this speech approached me.  She said,

“I’d like to be a stranger at your seder.  My Dad was Jewish, my mom isn’t and I was raised as a Christian.  I would really like to experience a seder.”  She and her family will be the strangers at our table this year.  Next year, they will no longer be strangers – and that is how our seder grows each year. 

I wish all of you who are celebrating Passover, a Chag Sameach – a joyous, inspirational Passover.  For everyone, I wish you relaxing family time.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dr. G

Homework without Boundaries

For as long as I’ve been in education, the efficacy of homework has been debated among American educators and parents.  One of the most frequent questions asked by prospective parents is “what is your homework policy?” I usually say “reading 20 minutes each night, 10 minutes general studies, 10 minutes Jewish Studies, no more than 2 hours per night….never new material and always meaningful review."  Even as I say this, I know that there is something flawed in that answer – more about that in a minute.

In a recent article in the New Yorker, Louis Menand (“Today’s Assignment” 12/17/12) laid out the different sides of the debate.  Those against homework argue that it creates undue stress, that it is either unrelated, or negatively related, to academic achievement.  He notes that parents hate it because it makes their kids unhappy, and kids and teachers hate it for other reasons.  Those who support homework argue that it creates useful work habits, and that it has positive academic effects. 

An international study cited by Menand, found that the country that ranked number one in education (Finland) gives virtually no homework, and the country that ranked second (South Korea) has an inordinate amount of mind numbing homework.  It’s not homework, therefore, that accounts for the differences.  Menard’s conclusion: 

Both systems are successful, and the reason is that Finnish schools are doing what Finns want them to do, which is to bring everyone up to the same level and instill a commitment to equality, and South Korean schools are doing what South Koreans want, which is to enable hard workers to get ahead.

So what does the American ambivalence about homework mean?  We have diverse interests.  There are those focused on happiness, others who want compliant workers.  Others want more time to take kids to museums, to after-school enrichments, and some who want their kids occupied with activities that might stretch their thinking or that will keep them off the streets. 

When I think about my standard answer to the prospective parent, I realize that I too have grown to understand that homework is really a question about our understanding of the purpose of education.  It is never a question of too much or too little.  If we recognize that children have very different ways of learning, shouldn’t there be different types of homework for different children?  And if real learning takes place through exploration, through mistakes and revisions, why aren’t we letting children explore new material for homework?

At the end of the day the answers don’t satisfy because they are framed in terms of a model of teaching and learning that harkens back to the “industrial model of education” where the goal is compliant workers.  It’s about piece work doled out by “the boss” (=teacher).  It’s the model of education that we know does not fit this century nor the children in our school.  It probably shouldn’t fit previous centuries either – if we really want an informed citizenship that takes responsibility for their learning and for their actions.  Here’s the alternative model – the model that fits learning without boundaries:  children so engaged in their reading or work that they can’t wait to get home to finish reading a class book or writing an essay begun in school.

I can remember several years ago when I observed a frustrated second grade boy.  He was upset because he had to close his journal since “writing was over” for the day.  I looked at him and said “why don’t you take your journal home and keep working on writing at home? ”  He answered, “because my teacher didn’t give it to us as homework…” and “our journals don’t go home.”  Those boundaries need to come down.  Homework needs to be about education without boundaries.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dr. G.

What Counts?

This has been my week of “counting”.  We began the week with the news about our three seventh graders who entered the San Mateo STEM Fair.  All three will now compete at the San Francisco Bay Area Science Fair.  Zach B. placed second in the earth/space division, Joseph B. placed second in the biology division and David L. placed first in physical science.  David is scheduled to compete at the State level and he also won a citation from IEEE (International Electrical and Electronics Engineers).   To really appreciate the significance of this outcome, there were 314 entrants in the Fair representing 40 schools in the district.  The majority of the 40 schools are at least 10 times as big as our school.  

Then, on Monday, I received a welcomed, but unexpected, visit from a Wornick graduate.  This student told me about her work in honors English and Social Studies, and about her new friends, about the rest of her classes.  But the numbers part had to do with her participation in the North Peninsula Jewish Teen Foundation.  She wanted me to know that of the twenty-four high school students selected to participate in this program (students are invited to participate) nine of the participants this year are Wornick graduates.

And two weeks ago, two of our students won a greater Bay area art competition sponsored by the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.  Leah T. and Sam T. won honorable mention for their book cover designs.  We were the only independent school that entered that competition. 

School leaders have notoriously shied away from counting – we usually believe that a child’s or a school’s story is too complex to be reduced to a few digits.  And most of us believe the quotation “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts (Attributed to Einstein, but the attribution is disputed).  Yet numbers do have an important role in telling a story in a succinct way. 

So I started making a list today of what else counts.  We had 21 volunteer homes that hosted Feast Your Mind last week.  We have 52 applicants in our admissions pool right now.  37 students signed up for tennis this season.  Four of our teachers and I have presented at several conferences this year.  Our staff will have logged in over 100 hours each of formal professional development time. 

There is so much to count that displays our successes.  The numbers are important and they need to be fleshed out with the more nuanced stories about each of these successes and about any of our challenges.  But we will keep counting and spend some time sorting out and then sharing with you the numbers that count.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dr. G.