Religious School Reflections: A Year of Growth and Belonging

Once again, I cannot really believe that the final religious school session of the year is this coming weekend.  I hope you have registered to join us tomorrow night as we honor our teachers, madrichim, and graduating seniors at Share Shabbat.  I will have more to say individually about our teachers tomorrow, and will take just a moment here to reflect on the year.

We started off the year with a first for Temple: our Pickleball Picnic that brought our religious school and Temple community together after the summer to reconnect.  The emphasis of the year has been on self-regulation, connection, and growth.  Coming off the Pandemic, it became evident that in addition to the academic deficit from a year and half of virtual learning, students (and adults) were struggling more with interpersonal interactions, self-regulation in the classroom (or group settings), and other areas of social-emotional development that we just didn’t’ have the ability to practice as much while in virtual learning and later in social-distancing.  By exploring Torah texts through the lens of the Biblical figures’ emotions, to social-emotional learning with Tara Feiner and A Little Spot of Emotion, to encouraging argument and discussion for the sake of understanding and learning (rather than to be correct), our community has grown through the year.  The addition of our sensory room, the gaga pit, pickleball, and Krav Maga special have given an outlet for students to take a break, move their bodies, and get out some energy.  Recess is now an official part of the day for the third/fourth grade.

All of our classes spent at least one unit of learning directly on Israel – not necessarily the current conflict with Hamas – but also the history, culture, and people who live there.  For our students, building a connection to Yisrael (Israel) in all of its senses, is vitally important for young Jews to be able to continue to understand and respond to current situations.  We are looking forward to deepening this learning next year, with a city-wide program that will look into the beauty of the cultural experiences in Israel over the years.

We couldn’t do any of it without all of you, thank you for your contributions, large and small, direct and indirect to our religious school experience.  As we go into seeming “hibernation” over the summer, I encourage all of you to continue your commitment to our youth: offering up a a talent of yours, to organize a supply closet, to encourage a new family to enroll (or an existing family to return their registration forms), donations of materials or towards the program, or just telling a friend how awesome it is here – all of these will help make next year as incredible as this past year.