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Moments of transcendence

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Last month, more than 130 people gathered at the Alliance for JCDSRI’s first annual Havdalah celebration in memory of Claudia Yellin. It was a wonderful event – and afterward I thought a lot about what it meant for our community to come together and pray. At JCDSRI, our students engage in prayer regularly. Why? Well, prayer is good for us, according to the scientific research. It helps us stay mindful and practice meditation – and this, in turn, helps us to live happier, healthier and more productive lives. Scientists have discovered that prayer can provide immunity against disease, reduce feelings of resentment, frustration and regret, and can even help us sleep better. Prayer is good for our physical and cognitive health.

 
Ultimately, however, we don’t just pray at JCDSRI so we can stay healthy. Instead, we create sacred prayer time – z’man kadosh – so that we can explore our spirituality and connection to God. We express gratitude, wonder, forgiveness and love. When we pray at JCDSRI, we remember we are the recipients of many gifts: of life; of love; of a helping hand; of hope. During prayer, we are called to reach out to others and work toward tikkun – toward repair.

As a pluralistic school, however, we also understand that our students and their families have differing ideas about spiritual expression and religious practice. We work hard to expose our students to a diversity of Jewish beliefs and observances and in response, they are encouraged to remain curious, flexible, and respectful. In our role as educators, it is our responsibility to honor familial decisions while introducing our students to the richness and complexity of understanding the Divine presence and the breadth of our liturgy. Even the siddur (prayer book) that our students use reflects our philosophy. It engages both emerging and fluent readers of Hebrew and includes illustrations reflecting the conceptual meanings of prayers. It uses gender neutral language for God and contains empty spaces on many of its pages, thus encouraging questions, contemplation, and personal reflection.

One of the added and unique benefits of a JCDSRI education is that our students learn to celebrate the beauty and resilience of the human spirit and experience moments of transcendence.  May we all be blessed with the opportunity to celebrate life with similar joy, gratitude and awe.

Snapshot from recess

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Recess and unstructured play are critically important for elementary school children.  These non-academic learning experiences promote fine and gross motor development, social emotional growth, and interpersonal bonding.  Recently, children have been constructing and deconstructing a stick fort in the parking lot — one of the designated areas where some students choose to have recess.  Using ingenuity, creativity, collaboration and design thinking, kids forge temporary structures and lasting friendships. This imaginative play is only possible when you trust children to explore their world on their own terms, a hallmark of the philosophy of a progressive school like ours.  

Design & Build Event!

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Does your child love to build, create and imagine? Join us for an afternoon of fun construction challenges. There will be creative building materials to explore and some challenges for young builders.

Sunday, March 10
2:00 – 4:00 pm

Free and open to the public

Constraints drive creativity

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Certain mantras that infuse our curriculum come from the Design Thinking mindsets that we practice in TikkunXDesign. The mindset constraints drive creativity is especially prevalent in art. By imposing constraints, Joe Mirsky, art teacher extraordinaire, challenges his students to think outside the box. A great example of this principle is the attachment test. The idea is simple: encourage children to design creative ways to attach objects together without using glue or tape. Once students demonstrate mastery in an attachment test, glue and tape become available for use in art class.

 

Local coverage of 5th grade environmental program

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It has long been a JCDSRI tradition that our 5th grade class travels to Camp Isabella Freedman in CT to participate in a 4 day environmental retreat with a Jewish lens. This year’s trip was picked up by our local paper, Jewish Rhode Island. Read more about what our students got out of the trip and what lessons they brought home with them.

Teva program inspires JCDSRI students to help heal the earth

 

Let’s Get Moving!

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Sunday, February 10
10:30 – 11:30am

Join us for an active morning of fun and games with our beloved kindergarten teacher, Emily Dennen! We’re going to get our bodies moving with yoga and movement.

Everybody is welcome and the program is free.

To RSVP or for more information, contact Naomi

First grade interprets the Hanukkah story

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As a Jewish school, we teach our students the story of Hanukkah. As a progressive school, we encourage our students to interpret and relate to the story of the holiday in their own way. First graders represented themes of the holiday in Lego creations. (A class favorite!) Students also practiced literacy skills by sequencing the Hanukkah story and telling it in their own words. Here they are reading their version of the Hanukkah story:

 

 

 

An attitude of gratitude

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“I have an attitude of gratitude,” a beaming student exclaims. As I watch her dance her way toward her classroom, I turn to a colleague and remark that every day feels like “Thanksgiving Day” at JCDSRI.
Gratitude is a core Jewish value and it permeates our school. During all-school morning assemblies, we often sing Birchot ha-Shachar, ‘the Dawn Blessings,’ that reflect the abundance of gratitude we feel when greeting a new day. The joyful sound of children singing the Birkat ha-Mazon, the blessings after meals, echoes daily throughout our building at the end of lunchtime. Our halls and classroom walls are often papered with post-it notes expressing thankfulness, written by students, teachers and staff. Students eagerly decorate the sidewalks in front of school with expressions of gratitude, which can also be found in one of our student’s haikus, written during a poetry unit:
It’s great to have life
fresh air, water,  crunchy leaves
fit peace in your life
The name “Jew” – Yehudi – comes from the same Hebrew root as the word “to thank.” This reminds me that gratitude is woven into the very fabric of our identity. Recent scientific research reinforces the wisdom of our tradition: that an attitude of gratitude helps us to live happier, healthier and more productive lives. It can help to provide immunity against disease, reduce feelings of resentment, frustration and regret, and can even help us sleep better. We are more likely to react toward others with patience, kindness, and compassion. It even can help us fly! (Just kidding. But it does help our hearts soar.)
I am grateful to spend every day in a place that so thoughtfully and intentionally cultivates this essential value. Ultimately, however, I see gratitude’s power manifest far beyond our own personal health or feelings of happiness. Instead, I believe its strength lies in reminding us that who we are, what we have, and what we do is not a result of our efforts alone. No – we are the recipients of many gifts: of life; of another’s love and affection; of acceptance; of a helping hand; of hope. In expressing our gratitude, we are humbled and called toward action: we are to multiply our blessings by reaching out to others and working toward tikkun – toward repair. I wish all those in our community – both near and far, known and unknown – the strength to cultivate gratitude and to participate in healing our world.
Wishing all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving,
Andrea Katzman
Head of School

Walk-in Wednesdays!

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Admissions season is underway! Stop by one of our “Walk-in Wednesday” parent information sessions. At each session, parents will spend time with our Head of School, Andrea Katzman, as well as other faculty members and will visit classes in action. This is a wonderful way to get to know our school and have all your questions answered.

Next Walk-in Wednesday is November 14 from 8:30 – 10:00am

Be the change you wish to see in the world

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Everyone around me was as surprised by the power of her words as I was. Standing in our beautifully decorated and colorful school sukkah with community members, current families, and alumni parents, we were moved by the powerful call to action. Our speaker that morning- despite her novice role as teacher – demonstrated emotional awareness and intellectual depth.

Our JCDSRI fifth grader was articulate and poised throughout her talk. Oh – did I not mention that our teacher was all of 10 years old?!

Yes – this student offered us an accurate description of some of the laws relating to the building of sukkot and a sophisticated analysis of the Rabbinic texts. But what was most impressive was how she used her understandings to frame an ethical approach to a complex social issue – in this case housing insecurity. Explaining that the laws of the holiday of Sukkot direct us to “build something that makes us feel a bit vulnerable,” she asserted that these mitzvot “remind us that there are some people today that don’t have houses or any shelter at all.” Her message was clear: experiencing the vulnerability of temporarily residing in a sukkah ensures that we remember that there are “people in the past and in the present who need our sensitivity and understanding.”

As I listened with pride to this student enjoin her audience toward greater self-awareness and empathy, I was reminded of the clarion call of our ancient prophets, urging us toward tzedek u-mishpat, righteousness and justice, and hesed ve-rahamim, kindness and compassion. They asked us – like this JCDSRI student – to embrace our vulnerabilities as a lens through which we can see other people’s suffering, as well as their inestimable value. And she used our sacred texts to help her respond to the world as it is with a vision for what it might become.

I also heard the echo of her words – and those of the prophets – in the writings of John Dewey, the father of progressive education. He explained that education “represents not only the development of children and youth, but also the future of the society of which they will be constituents.” At JCDSRI, our mission is essential — to give our students the skills, values and the charge to make a difference today and in the future. I invite you to come see for yourself the impact our students are making.