Tag: King David High School

A week of kindnesses

King David High School Grade 8 students Noam, Judd and Joey, collecting bread from COBS. (photo from facebook.com/foodstashfoundation)

Nov. 21 saw the start of King David High School’s now-established RAC Week. Started as part of the Random Acts of Kindness program – adapted as Random Acts of Chesed – this is a five-day celebration of paying it forward. Whether it’s picking up garbage, helping the homeless or moving furniture, every activity gives the students a chance to experience the rewards of helping others.

This year, The Giving Tree formed the basis for RAC Week’s good deeds. Illustrations from Shel Silverstein’s book about unconditional love decorated the main hall and foyer. Heartwarming messages read “Kindness is Contagious,” “Spread the Love” and “Smile! It’s RAC Week!”

RAC Week takes the students outside their comfort zones. According to the director of Jewish life at KDHS, Ellia Belson, this year’s destinations were chosen based on feedback gleaned from last year’s offerings. “The Grade 12s wanted to go where there was the greatest need,” she said.

Among the destinations were the Kerrisdale police detachment, Quest Outreach and Admiral Seymour Elementary School. At the school, which is on Keefer Street, they witnessed an unfamiliar degree of tension – and fighting – among the kids. KDHS student Ethan (Grade 10) described how he “tried to get people to play together who might not do so normally.”

photo - During RAC Week, heartwarming messages read “Kindness is Contagious,” “Spread the Love” and “Smile! It’s RAC Week!”
During RAC Week, heartwarming messages read “Kindness is Contagious,” “Spread the Love” and “Smile! It’s RAC Week!” (photo by Shula Klinger)

Under the guidance of teacher Matt Dichter, Grade 8 student Noam accompanied Food Stash Foundation on their daily rounds. Started by David Schein, a former teacher at KDHS, the foundation was created to help reduce food waste in the Vancouver area. FSF collects leftover items from grocery stores, such as Whole Foods, at the end of each work day. Food Stash then delivers the food to where it’s needed most: more than 15,000 kilograms of food since September, said Schein. On the morning of Nov. 22, deliveries were made to the Kettle Society, Mount Pleasant Neighborhood House, Tenth Church and Oasis Café.

The RAC group from KDHS rescued food from COBS Bread, Greens, Fresh is Best and a number of other sites. The numbers speak volumes. Every year, each Canadian throws away approximately 127 kilograms of food. KDHS kids rescued 135 kilograms in a single day.

“I really liked working with the kids because it is a great way to raise awareness of food waste in the younger generation,” Schein told the Independent. “Half of food waste happens at home, so they can now go home and speak to their parents, start influencing food choices.” He added, “Saving me some lifting was also nice!”

With its emphasis on community service, RAC Week is a concentrated course in educating the emotions, as well as the intellect. Noam described how “it felt good to give back.” Asked whether his work with Food Stash had had an impact on his daily life, he answered with a definite yes. His intentions were clear, as he explained, “even finishing what’s on your plate” can have an impact on food wastage.

RAC Week offers a curriculum of social responsibility best taught outside the classroom, where students develop an awareness of other kids’ lives and struggles. The conversations that take place after the outings present an opportunity to reflect on these struggles and express gratitude for their own station in life. It also allows the students to teach one another, under Belson’s guidance, about what each group learned.

While the kids spoke animatedly about their excursions, their most energetic, personal and heartfelt responses were to Belson’s simple question, “What does chesed mean to you?”

At this, it seemed that half the students raised their hands, speaking with passion and clarity about “giving and not taking” (Ella). Connell quoted from the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, with the admonition, “Be a giver, not a taker.” Ethan spoke at length about how it’s easy to “take for granted a loving home, a loving family…. It’s a week to recognize that by giving back.” Jordana agreed, talking about the importance of seeing “how others live – even so close to us. It made a difference.”

Sometimes, the greatest lessons in life can be taught in the simplest of ways. Adi talked about “being a mensch, helping people who have less, making people feel happier, making them smile.”

Shula Klinger is an author, illustrator and journalist living in North Vancouver. Find out more at niftyscissors.com.

Power in three percent

Left to right: Esther Mogyoros, King David High School director of development; Shannon Gorski, PAC co-chair; speaker Josh Shipp; and Teaching for Tomorrow co-chairs Gaby Lutrin and Elaine Grobman. (photo from KDHS)

“What’s the difference between a watermelon and a cloud?” Josh Shipp asked the crowd. “Three percent. A watermelon is 94% water and a cloud is 97% water. All that separates them is three percent, but that little difference makes all the difference in the world. That little difference can be all that separates you from being average and being extraordinary.”

Shipp, a “teen expert” and motivational speaker, who graduated from Stanford and has lectured at Harvard and MIT, was speaking at Teaching for Tomorrow, an annual celebration of King David High School (KDHS), on May 17.

KDHS, which has 220 students and expects continued growth, is British Columbia’s only Jewish high school and one of six outside of Toronto. It is also one of the most successful Jewish high schools in Canada from the perspective of having growing enrolment each year.

The auditorium at the Chan Centre was packed, flanked on both sides by galleries full of KDHS students. After an introduction by emcee Liam Sasky, a Grade 12 student, the audience heard a concise, warm and humorous speech from school head Russ Klein. A musical interlude followed, with a duet about friends struggling with the romance that’s broken out between them. Following that came a video about KDHS and its values, focusing on the experience of current students and alumni – the students interviewed emphasized the sense of community at KDHS, and the feeling that they were known and valued personally at the school.

After that came the main event. Shipp was notable for his ability to get raucous laughter from the teens, who he seemed to hold in the palm of his hand throughout his talk. He peppered his speech with memorable images and questions, tech and pop culture references, and self-deprecating humor. Shipp, who was abandoned as a child and grew up a troubled delinquent in a series of foster homes, spoke candidly of his own horrific experiences of abuse and trauma. At the centre of his speech was the role that one caring adult can play; in his life, this was his foster father Rodney, who refused to reject Shipp, saving his life and turning it around. “All of you can be a Rodney to someone,” said Shipp. “Every child, every teenager, every human being is one caring adult away from success.”

Shipp challenged students to reach out to a “Rodney” in their own lives within 24 hours and say “thank you,” something Shipp said took him nine years to do after the day his Rodney turned his life around. Shipp also had a warning for students: face your ghosts.

“You guys are pretty serious here,” Shipp said. “I know it. I watched the propaganda video. You need to be unafraid to seek help for the things that are holding you back. This can be a problem in high-achieving communities like this. Don’t be afraid to seem weak, because talking about these things is not weak – it’s courageous.”

Matthew Gindin is a Vancouver freelance writer and journalist. He blogs on spirituality and social justice at seeking her voice (hashkata.com) and has been published in the Forward, Tikkun, Elephant Journal and elsewhere.

Artistic Pesach midrashim

“Question Mark” by Sydney Freedman and Rachel Pekeles  is among the works created by King David High School Grade 12 students. (photo by Nancy Current)

In conjunction with their current show at Zack Gallery, Visual Midrash, artists Robin Atlas and Nancy Current conducted a two-day workshop with the Grade 12 students of King David High School. Rabbi Stephen Berger, head of the school’s Judaic studies, and some of his more outgoing students talked to the Independent about the project.

“Every year, we do a project for Passover with our Grade 12 students,” said Berger. “The Haggadah is one of those Jewish texts that’s had the most number of interpretations throughout our history, as every generation and every family bring their own understanding. So, I ask the students every year to write their own versions, a short essay on one of the aspects of the Haggadah. This year, we decided to combine the writing with the visual component. The students pitched their ideas, which topic they wanted to explore. I tried to limit the same topics but I didn’t force anyone. They were free to choose. Now, after all the art is done, we’ll put the project online. We’re also going to publish a hardcopy as a pamphlet. One of our former students, Daniel Wiseman, is helping me with the particulars. We will distribute the copies at the JCC, at the synagogues and Jewish delis.”

The rabbi joined his students in creating his own interpretation of the Haggadah, using a sheet of matzah as the base for his artistic journey. “Matzah represents both our slavery and our freedom,” he said. His piece opens the pamphlet.

Like the rabbi, most of his students hadn’t done much visual art in years and were not going to pursue art as a career, but they enjoyed working on Visual Midrash for this assignment.

“They put so much thought into their pieces,” said Current. “Some of them first tried to come up with concrete images, but it’s hard without artistic training. Then Robin and I suggested they should think about some abstract interpretations. What ideas come to mind? What concepts are associated with those ideas? The results were amazing.”

One of the students, Izzy Khalifa, chose the most fun-filled tradition of Passover – the search for bread. “When I was a kid, it was a game in our home. I loved it,” she said. “Now that I’m older, I think it’s not simply a search for bread but it has a deeper meaning, like a search for yourself.”

“Judaism grows on you,” the rabbi remarked, and Khalifa agreed. She also liked working with the abstract concept. “People can take more from an abstract picture, interpret it in different ways,” she said.

photo - “Blue Heart” by Adi Rosenkrantz and Ashley Morris
“Blue Heart” by Adi Rosenkrantz and Ashley Morris (photo by Nancy Current)

Classmates Adi Rosenkrantz and Ashley Morris decided on more concrete imagery. Their blue heart on a blood-red background symbolizes the first plague of Egypt – the plague of blood. “The blue heart is like the heart of the Nile,” said Rosenkrantz. “The abrupt color change, from blue to red, from water to blood, disrupted the Egyptian way of life.” Their heart is almost anatomically precise. “I just did a unit on cardiovascular system,” Rosenkrantz explained, “and it was fresh in my mind.”

Ma’ayan Fadida and Shmuel Hart’s illustration was more metaphorical. They selected a controversial theme for their work – the wicked son. In their artistic interpretation, the wicked son walks a black path, which winds its way across the pink and orange brightness of other family members.

“We wanted to do one of the sons,” Fadida said. “This one makes the decision to separate himself from the others; that’s why his path is black. And the abstract allowed us to show how he was thinking.”

One of the most powerful pieces is a mixed media collage: a large black question mark with the background of newspaper snippets. Created by Sydney Freedman and Rachel Pekeles, it also touches on the story of the four sons but focuses on the son who doesn’t know how to ask.

“We wanted to take a complicated topic and present it as a symbol. The black mark blocks our ability to ask,” explained Freedman.

“The information is all there. You just have to be willing to look for it,” Pekeles elaborated. “It is a challenge. Sometimes, we choose not to ask when we should.”

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

 

 

Better access to education

Aaron Friedland at Semei Kakungulu High School in Uganda. Friedland has written the book The Walking School Bus, both as a first reader but also as a means to generate funds for students to access education. To get it published, he has started an Indiegogo campaign. (photo from Aaron Friedland)

During high school and elementary, “it was too easy for me to miss school,” said Aaron Friedland, currently a master’s in economics student at the University of British Columbia. In other parts of the world, children walk great distances to attain an education.

“Five years ago, I wrote a children’s book called The Walking School Bus,” Friedland told the Independent. It was “written with the realization that students in North America really take access to education for granted.”

It was on a trip to Uganda and South Africa, he said, when he really began to understand “the distances students had to walk to obtain an education and it was startling.”

Data from the Uganda National Household Survey Report 2009/2010 indicate that 5.5% of children aged 6-12 do not attend school because it is too far away, and the average high school-aged student must walk a distance of 5.1 kilometres to the nearest government school, more than 10 kilometres every day.

“I wanted the book to serve a purpose and the purpose was twofold. I wanted it to raise awareness … that students have to walk,” Friedland said about The Walking School Bus. “But I also wanted it to be a means to generate funds for students to access education and so, in that case, I’d say the school bus itself is metaphoric and it represents access to education.

“I submitted my manuscript to a publishing house just under a year ago and it was well received, so we started moving forward. But, in order to really have a book come to fruition, it costs quite a bit of money.”

On Nov. 9, Friedland started an Indiegogo campaign to raise $15,000 to cover the costs of publication, “everything surrounding the book,” which includes editors who specialize in children’s books and the illustrations. The campaign runs for 60 days.

The Walking School Bus has the capacity to “act as a first reader and, while it does have a picture book component, I’d also like it to serve as a coffee table book and a symbol for interfaith collaboration,” said Friedland.

Friedland’s concern about and involvement in interfaith work began in 2010, when J.J. Keki, a member of the Ugandan Abayudaya Jewish community and founder of the Delicious Peace fair-trade coffee cooperative, was invited to King David High School. Many students, including Friedland, “formed a pretty special bond with him.”

A bond that continued for Friedland. “When I was in first year [university] – while all my friends were going to Mexico and hilarious holidays – I went to Uganda with my family,” he said. “It was an amazing experience for us. We benefited so much more than the ‘recipient’ community. I recognized quite quickly that our aid had been negligible, but what it did for me was it provided me with a clear trajectory, which guided me for my four years at McGill.… At McGill, I started working with the Abayudaya community in Uganda, specifically with Delicious Peace…. What most amazed me – and my rationale for getting involved – was that they employed an interfaith collaboration model in which they united these previously disparate communities, the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities, and formed one solid frontier in which they collaborated. In collaborating, there were a variety of positive spillover effects … you see higher levels of economic prosperity in that region on Nabagoya Hill than you do in comparable areas, you see how there is much more religious tolerance.”

About his experience in Uganda, Friedland, who has worked with UN Watch, said, “I have only seen the us-against-them mentality, and this is one of the first times I have ever seen this collaboration.”

About his most recent trip to Uganda, Friedland said, “Essentially, I have been working with three schools there as well as King David over here, kind of empowering their educational sector in the interfaith forum. And the three interfaith schools I’ve been working with are the three I’m the most motivated to help provide school buses.”

While interviewing students in Uganda, he said, “One of the girls that really stood out to me was a girl named Miriam, a lovely Jewish girl from [Semei Kakungulu] high school, an 18-year-old. She was telling me that, when she walks to school, she walks six kilometres in either direction. And, in extreme rainfall events, which is pretty much all of the rainy season, she will cross a river to school and, when she goes back, the river is often flooded and she cannot cross back, so that night she’ll spend at a friend’s.”

Friedland added, “When I think about the struggle that our counterparts make to go to school and we do not – we don’t have that drive. That is something I’d like to impress on people in North America. I’m not saying you have to feel bad, just appreciate your access and your ease in getting an education and take it seriously.”

The website thewalkingschoolbus.com was created by Friedland to support the book and bus project, and sales of T-shirts and various other merchandise go towards his efforts to increase access to education. He said, “I think, as a Jew in Vancouver, in a more liberalized society, that this is the model that we should be going for … we should be supporting interfaith.”

Friedland has most recently worked with a team to connect King David’s Marketing 12 class with the entrepreneurship class at Semei Kakungulu. About his master’s degree, he said he will likely be writing his thesis on “the positive economic spillover effects from interfaith collaboration and employing interfaith collaboration, as an economic development growth model in other places, particularly Israel.”

Zach Sagorin is a Vancouver freelance writer.

United in community

Purim Project co-chairs Rachael Lewinski and Rivka Moreno with premier sponsor, Remo Mastropieri of Real Canadian Superstore. (photo from Vancouver Hebrew Academy)

What do you get when you put 90 people in an auditorium filled with delicious snacks, drinks, piles of boxes and mounds of packing materials? The Greater Vancouver Jewish Day School Purim Project Packathon, of course! GVJDSPPP, for short. 😉

photo - Some 90 volunteers put together 1,300 mishloach manot packages
Some 90 volunteers put together 1,300 mishloach manot packages. (photo from Vancouver Hebrew Academy)

Each year, Vancouver Hebrew Academy, in partnership with King David High School, Pacific Torah Institute, Richmond Jewish Day School, Shalhevet Girls High School and Vancouver Talmud Torah, join together to promote community and raise funds for Jewish education.

photo - Students Kyla Charach, Lola Belzberg and Juliette Sandler were among the many volunteers
Students Kyla Charach, Lola Belzberg and Juliette Sandler were among the many volunteers. (photo from Vancouver Hebrew Academy)

Assembling the more than 1,300 mishloach manot packages is a huge undertaking, requiring planning, strategy and oversight. Not to mention an army of volunteers! As in past years, the packathon took place in the KDHS auditorium, and this year’s volunteers included VHA’s Grade 6 and 7 students, VTT’s Grade 6 students and more than 15 community volunteers. The pre-packing and labeling were done by students from VHA and PTI the day prior.

Purim is a time to promote unity and togetherness, and the packathon is an amazing opportunity to do just that. When students help and give back to a community that supports and gives to their school, the good will created goes full circle. “What a great way to start off Simchah Week at VHA!” said one of the VHA teachers.

Taking the classroom to the world

Left to right are Shoshana Burton, Fred Miller and Jessie Claudio. (photo by Shula Klinger)

School curriculum can seem abstract, separate from the “real” world for which it is intended to prepare our children. What can a teacher do to bring the world into her classroom? She can take the classroom into the world.

This is what teacher Shoshana Burton, now of Richmond Jewish Day School, has been doing for many years. Random Acts of Kindness, or RAC (Random Acts of Chesed), week began at King David High School after the sudden death in 2010 of alumna Gabrielle Isserow z’l. Known for her tremendous kindness, it was an apt way to ease the students’ grief. Explained Burton, “RAC week transformed the students’ overwhelming sense of loss into a creative expression of chesed. It revealed a yearning for a network of support and action.”

The project gained momentum and the weeklong celebration of kindness has become “a yearlong process that grows every year, involving students, families and the wider Jewish community.”

photo - Random Acts of Chesed T-shirt
Random Acts of Chesed was inspired by the life of Gabrielle Isserow z’l. (photo by Shula Klinger)

Working at RJDS for the 2013-14 academic year, Burton wanted to add a new dimension to the project. She approached Richmond’s nearby Az-Zahraa Islamic Academy. It was a perfect match, as their principal explains on the school’s website, “Education goes well beyond the classroom door.”

Az-Zahraa teacher Jessie Claudio came on board with no hesitation and, over the last few months, the students have formed some powerful new connections. According to Burton, “We had to pull RJDS and AZIA students away from each other when it was time to go back to school!”

The new program was named Abraham’s Tent because the prophet Abraham – revered in both Islam and Judaism – was known for his generous hospitality.

In February of this year, Burton and Claudio took their students on an unusual field trip: to the centre of the Downtown Eastside, to Main and Hastings. There, they spent five days delivering sandwiches they had made, with food donated by Save-On-Foods at Ironwood, Richmond. They also handed out warm clothes.

According to RJDS parent Kathy Rabinovitch-Marliss, this trip challenged the students to leave their comfort zone and set aside any apprehensions or thoughts of judgment. She counseled her daughter, Hannah, to remember that every homeless man is “someone’s father, or someone’s son.”

Among the recipients of the group’s kindness was Fred Miller, 58, caught by a CBC camera as he observed, “If Muslim and Jewish kids can live together, why can’t the rest of the world live together?”

These words inspired the RAC students to find out more. With the help of CBC, they managed to find Miller downtown. They invited him to speak at RJDS, which ended with a massive group hug. On the RJDS blog, principal Abba Brodt describes Miller’s “unflinching” honesty as he answered the students’ questions with stories from his life. Having struggled with addiction for many years, Miller’s experiences made a change from the usual Grade 7 fare, such as The Outsiders. Brodt said the discussion covered, “spiritual strength, faith, addiction, poverty, broken family bonds and deep loneliness.” The students were “spellbound,” he added.

Abraham’s Tent gained recognition with a $3,000 award in a worldwide competition hosted by Random Acts, a nonprofit whose goal is to inspire acts of kindness. But it’s not just about the prize, of course. Claudio and Burton agree that the learning outcomes here go far beyond the regular curriculum. Said Claudio, it has been an excellent opportunity to “bring the textbook to life.” The best way to learn something, she said, is through the emotions.

And, when the students start to form their own opinions about the Jewish-Muslim conflict, Burton hopes that these friendships will remind them to be “tolerant and open-minded.”

Rather than keeping the $3,000 award for their own schools, the RJDS and Az-Zahraa students chose to give the money to Covenant House in Vancouver, a shelter for at-risk youth.

Mohamed A. Dewji, vice-president of the Az-Zahraa Islamic Centre, challenged British Columbia’s Shia Muslim community to match the $3,000 award – and they came through. Dewji hopes to spur other communities into action. “We’re challenging every church, every mosque, every temple to join us,” he said.

photo - Holding the cheques are Mohamed Dewji, vice-president of the Az-Zahraa Islamic Centre, and Jessica Harman, development officer at Covenant House
Holding the cheques are Mohamed Dewji, vice-president of the Az-Zahraa Islamic Centre, and Jessica Harman, development officer at Covenant House. (photo by Shula Klinger)

On Friday, June 7, the student group delivered both $3,000 cheques to Covenant House. They also brought boxes of shoes for the residents. George Clarke, manager of Save-On-Foods at Ironwood, Richmond, brought a gift basket packed with necessities for Miller. The atmosphere was jubilant. Jessica Harman, development officer at Covenant House, described her contact with the RAC students as “marvelous.” She added that their donations “are providing love and support to one youth in the crisis shelter for the entire month of June.”

A soft-spoken and articulate man, Miller told the Independent, “It doesn’t end here. I want to work with youth now.” Having already published a set of his stories, he is honing his craft in a journalism class.

Ruby Ravvin, a Grade 7 RJDS student, described Miller as “awesome!” He then ruffled her hair.

The students have created a binder full of cards to help brighten Miller’s day when he feels lonely. In a letter, Breanne Miller (RJDS, Grade 7, no relation to Fred Miller) speaks of inspiration, wisdom and not taking the good things in life for granted. “You have opened my eyes,” she wrote. “You inspired all of us.”

Prior to her involvement in RAC, student Hannah Marliss had never had a conversation with a homeless person, nor did she have any close Muslim friends. Now, she said, “We’re hoping to invite the Az-Zahraa students to our grad. We’ve started something together!”

She described the change she has experienced in her own life. “Life’s not about technology, iPads and iPhones. They’re just things,” she said. “It’s about family, people you have connections with.”

On a scale of one to 10, the RAC experience was “definitely a 10,” said Hannah. Her mother agreed: “This was the highlight of Hannah’s elementary school life. It has changed all of our lives,” said Rabinovitch-Marliss.

Omid Gha, a counselor at Az-Zahraa, summed up the experience with a quote from Aristotle: “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

Shula Klinger is a freelance writer living in North Vancouver.

Taking on good deeds

Linda Cohen, author of 1,000 Mitzvahs, spoke at King David High School’s Teaching for Tomorrow earlier this month.

Imagine channeling your grief at the loss of a loved one into something exceptionally positive and using that something to honor their memory.

That’s what Linda Cohen, 45, set out to do two years ago when she undertook the lofty goal of doing 1,000 mitzvot in honor of her late father. “My goal was to heal from the grief I was feeling,” said the Portland, Ore., mother of two. “The idea of doing 1,000 mitzvahs came to me in the night, during a dream. When I woke up and told my husband about it, he wondered how I might keep track of my mitzvahs, which is why I started a blog. But I never expected people would actually read the blog!” she admitted. “It was just a place to track what I was doing.”

image - 1,000 Mitzvahs book cover
Linda Cohen’s blog became the book 1,000 Mitzvahs.

The blog evolved into a book, 1,000 Mitzvahs, published in 2011 by Seal Press. The book contains stories about those mitzvot, why they matter and what readers might glean from each one. Each mitzvah is described in a page or two with another paragraph on why it is important and what readers might do to implement something similar in their own lives. Last week, Cohen flew into Vancouver as the guest speaker at King David High School’s Teaching for Tomorrow annual lecture program and fundraiser, to discuss her mitzvah project. The Teaching for Tomorrow event supports the school’s chesed programming.

The word mitzvah literally means commandment, but Cohen defined her mitzvahs as good deeds and acts of loving kindness. The mitzvot she documents in her book range from fundraising for important causes to giving someone else’s kid a ride home, from volunteering on a committee to giving someone a cake. She said none of the mitzvot she took on was life-changing or particularly huge but they did change her life. “It made me more aware of opportunities to do good things, more attuned to what other people were doing,” she reflected. “Though my mitzvah project ended two-and-a-half years ago, I think I’m still as aware today of the importance of doing mitzvahs.”

The mitzvah that stands out most in her mind was a visit to her rabbi, Rabbi Yonah Geller, when he was on his deathbed. She had been conflicted about visiting during his short illness but, in the end, felt she had to be there. “My five minutes with him made me so happy,” she recalled. “For me, that was the most significant mitzvah.”

On a personal level, focusing her energies on mitzvot helped Cohen heal from the loss of her father in December 2006, a man with whom she admittedly had a troubled relationship for many years. “My dad was an amazing man and though our personal relationship was challenging, I feel gifted by the fact that we knew he was dying and had a year to put our affairs in order,” she said. “But I do feel sad that we wasted some of our years together struggling.” In her book, she writes of her grief and describes feeling very connected to her father. “Whenever I need him and am unsure of anything, he’s right near me, holding my hand and helping me get through the experience,” she said. “I feel like he visits me as a black crow.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Local classrooms get technologically smart with help from ORT

A smart classroom in Israel that uses technology and expertise provided by ORT. (photo from ORT Vancouver)

ORT is an organization that doesn’t seem to register a great deal of recognition in Vancouver. It is, however, one of the largest and perhaps the oldest international Jewish nongovernmental organizations. Established more than 130 years ago in Russia (ORT is an acronym for the Russian words that translate as the Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor), ORT sought to train Jews in modern trades and agricultural practices. It established schools for technical training all over the world and currently provides technology-focused training in 100 countries. But who knew?

Vancouver ORT would like to everyone to know. In order to raise awareness of the work ORT does around the world and in Israel, Vancouver is hosting a pilot project new not only to Canada, but a first internationally. “ORT Canada has always sent support to Israel. Now ORT Israel is supporting ORT Vancouver,” said Naomi Pulvers, one of Vancouver’s longest- serving ORT volunteers.

photo - ORT Israel has developed a successful program in schools around Israel’s physical and socio-economic periphery, bringing cutting-edge educational technology into the classroom
ORT Israel has developed a successful program in schools around Israel’s physical and socio-economic periphery, bringing cutting-edge educational technology into the classroom. (photo from ORT Vancouver)

With its emphasis on technological education, Pulvers explained, ORT Israel has developed a successful program in schools around Israel’s physical and socio-economic periphery, bringing cutting-edge educational technology into the classroom. Started in 2010 in the Galilee, the program expanded to the Negev when Israel’s Ministry of Education recognized the benefits of this interactive way of teaching. Currently, 420 classrooms around Israel are using ORT’s program.

This technology will soon be implemented in three local Jewish schools.

“We have chosen King David High School, Richmond Jewish Day School and Vancouver Talmud Torah as the recipients of a ‘smart classroom,’” Pulvers noted. “We will have to raise $25,000-$35,000 locally for each classroom.” Equipment provided includes projectors, Smart Boards, remote software, laptops, handheld slates, wireless routers and speakers. In addition, some classrooms may need to be hardwired for the technology to run. Eventually, students will benefit by having the opportunity to interact with learning in ways they not have been able to before.

The equipment provided is just one part of the program, however. The crucial element to implementing any system effectively is in understanding how to use it properly. Instruction and technical support are the other ingredients ORT provides to make this program effective.

“For the third week of May,” Pulvers explained, “two specialists from Israel, named Nechama Kenig and Udi Gibory, are coming with over 1,000 hours of experience with these smart classrooms. They will assemble what is already in the schools here and survey what is still needed. They will also give teachers more instruction, as well as the IT people from the schools.”

While here, Kenig and Gibory will also help ORT publicize its program by presenting two educational evenings intended to raise investments from local donors for what ORT sees as the future of education. These meetings, on May 20 and 21, will mark a new era in engagement and fundraising in Vancouver, targeting local Jewish education with an eye to the future.

Pulvers explained that ORT has always focused on the end goal of employment. “What kinds of jobs will be available in the future? We need technology to keep things going. In medicine, industry … they all need technology, and this is what ORT does. We help kids branch out into all aspects of technology,” through the use of smart classrooms. Evidence from the use of these technologies in Israel suggests that they boost the confidence and morale of students who have been reluctant learners or participants. Students are able to collaborate in the lesson, and with each other and the teacher, in new ways.

There is one more long-term goal, according to Pulvers. ORT has a respected international reputation and seeks to build bridges with local, non-Jewish organizations, as well. Pulvers explained, “We’ll start with Jewish schools and hopefully become a focal point of education. Eventually, looking down the road, we’d like to collaborate with the Vancouver School Board and meet with the minister of education.”

For more information or to attend the May 20-21 meetings, contact the director of ORT Vancouver, Mary Tobin, at 604-276-9282 or [email protected].

Michelle Dodek is a writer, mother and community volunteer who has been involved with many Jewish organizations in Vancouver.