By Shira Deener, Head of School

To be a JCDS student means that your learning does not stop when the bell rings. We value the impact a class trip can have on our youngest learners to our soon-to-be graduates. These past few weeks alone we enjoyed trips to Drumlin Farms, the State House, an in-house “Ellis Island,” and Gore Place.

Once reaching our Middle School, students look forward to various overnight trips that we bring back year after year because of the strong educational and personal impact they continuously make on our students. Like overnight summer camp, the experience of leaving home, and sleeping in a “bunk” or hotel room means negotiating a host of new social considerations. Subway surfing in NYC, and visiting the Tenement House Museum and the real Ellis Island with the breezes of the ferry on your face and the smells of NYC bialys reminiscent of Bialystok make the learning real.

Enjoy three snapshots of three recent JCDS trips!

7th Grade TEVA

Last week, the 7th graders went on their Achdoot Teva trip to Connecticut, a three-day, two-night Jewish camping and nature experience. Teva’s Achdoot program integrates outdoor environmental education with Jewish concepts and values. The program fosters group cohesion through team-building experiences. Students challenged themselves and overcame fears, developing their self-esteem and learning wilderness skills. Hiking through forests and trails, students explored the impact of t’fillah (prayer) in nature as they led one another through prayers and traveled on mindful walks. The students worked as one community to accomplish their responsibilities of filtering our water, building fires, cooking their meals, and cleaning up. Most of all, they enjoyed each other’s company as they laughed and bonded as a class!

8th Grade NYC Trip

This year’s 8th grade New York Trip was a time-spanning success. Each year, we focus our trip on the experiences of immigrants to the Lower East Side of New York City, many of whom were Eastern European Jews around the turn of the 20th century. This year, our curriculum brought us to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Ellis Island, and the legendary Eldridge Street Synagogue. Each location exposed our students to new angles and depths of the immigrant experience and allowed them to openly reflect on the opportunities they have in their own lives and the work their forebears had to do to create those opportunities in the first place. In our closing discussion before heading home, the group had a thoughtful chat comparing the immigrant stories we learned to that of Back to the Future: The Musical – which we had just enjoyed the night before. Students observed that, in both cases, a hopeful eye toward the future and the faith to believe better days were ahead underpinned both stories and allowed them to look ahead to their own post-graduation lives with excitement.

Kitat Arava (2nd Grade) Ellis Island Simulation

Fresh off their trip to Ellis Island in New York, 8th graders took on the role of Immigration Officers for Kitat Arava’s (2nd grade’s) in-school “field trip” through “Ellis Island.” Students boarded the HMS Arava with their suitcases and were greeted by the Statue of Liberty (Rose) and the Dock Captain (Abe). They then made their way into the Great Hall where they had to answer questions based on a passport they created. The 8th graders staffed the Registry (Sylvia and Noa), Legal (Micah and Micah), Medical Table (Ori and Emma), and Hospital Ward (Noam), and they helped the students write postcards home (Ruby, Naomi, and Miriam) and take pictures in the photo booth (Elya, Ariella, and Eliora).

The goal of this trip was experiential learning and text-to-self connections. Second-grade students created an immigrant persona and assumed the identity of that persona as they navigated “Ellis Island,” stepping into the shoes of real immigrants from the turn of the 19th century and tasting what they may have experienced. They felt nervous and excited, relief and anticipation. And of course, they had a lot of fun!

A sweet anecdote: One student spotted Rose as the Statue of Liberty and proclaimed “That’s not the real Statue of Liberty—she goes to our school!” That’s right!

By Shira Deener, Head of School

“When thousands of people discover that their story is also someone else’s story, they have the chance to write a new story together.”

–Eboo Patel, We Need to Build Together, Field Notes for Diverse Democracy

For years, JCDS’ commitment to intentional pluralism has extended well beyond the walls of our school. We prioritize opportunities for our students to engage with difference within the Jewish community and also with other faith-based communities in our vicinity. Once reaching our Middle School, JCDS students put their Habits of Mind and Heart and their commitment to engage with difference to the test, and this week was a most powerful example.

Our partners from Alhuda Academy of Worcester, a Muslim day school, came to visit us for the morning. This was our second mifgash (encounter) with their 6th grade this year. Back in February, we visited the Academy and focused our program around our shared forefather, Avraham/Ibrahim. Students shared their knowledge of key characteristics of Avraham/Ibrahim and presented to each other through prepared PowerPoint presentations. Very quickly, they realized there are many common threads taught in our respective traditions including the value of hospitality and faith. Perhaps even more importantly, students found commonalities between each other as people. They shared their English/Hebrew/Arabic names and spoke of their countries of origin, the traditional

foods, and holiday celebrations they experience. As Eboo Patel says, “Show me a religion that doesn’t care about compassion. Show me a religion that doesn’t care about stewardship of the environment. Show me a religion that doesn’t care about hospitality.” A foundation for friendship, connection, and curiosity began to develop.

Many months have passed since our first meet-up. With the backdrop of the pain and suffering in Israel and Gaza escalating we knew we needed to continue this relationship and to navigate it with the utmost sensitivity and care. This time focusing on the shared value of ‘honoring our elders’ played center stage. Through a big-paper silent conversation lesson, students explored lessons from Rabbinic, Biblical, and Quranic sources.

Inspired by the beautiful JCDS grandparent-led and student-created challah mosaic in the chadar ochel (cafeteria), our Alhuda friends tasted challah for the very first time. We made hanging plaques whereby students worked together to write messages in Hebrew, English, and Arabic for a special elder in their lives, and the day ended with spirited basketball and soccer games outside under the very hot sun.

The question of how people orient themselves around religion or interact with one another positively or with suspicion is not something we can just will into the future. It is indeed one of the most pressing questions of today and the JCDS-Alhuda partnership is an example of hope that I carry with me closely – especially during these very charged and challenging times. We look forward to continuing this relationship into next year and building on what we have started.

By Shira Deener, Head of School

We find ourselves on day 224 since October 7th, since life as we knew it ceased to exist. It is still unfathomable to me that that day ever occurred, that there are still hostages held in captivity, and that there are displaced citizens from the North of Israel all the way down through the Gaza Envelope as well as throughout Gaza itself. The loss of life across the entire region is devastating.

This week at JCDS, we commemorated Yom HaZikaron. This day took on an appropriately somber tone that reflected both the tradition and meaning behind this day fixed to the Jewish calendar and enacted into law in 1963. As a school, we felt the gravity of the day acutely.

We also celebrated Israel’s 76th birthday on Yom HaAtzmaut the very next day. We began the day with stories told by our staff who grew up in Israel or spent significant time there creating a colorful tapestry of Peoplehood and Ahavat Israel throughout the school. The day continued with the preparation and enjoyment of Israeli food, personalized Matkot (raquets) made in the makerspace, Chidon HaTanach (Bible Contest), Achdut (teamwork) exercises outside on the soccer field, leaving notes at our makeshift Kotel, and our annual Israeli dance party – all marked the day with celebration and meaning.

For months we asked ourselves how we approach this year. What is the appropriate tone when so much devastation on both sides of the border continues throughout this extended war? Is any semblance of celebration acceptable?

The words from the Zohar helped put this week in perspective for us. In our Niggunim Tefillah elective, we learned a new song, קוֹל גַּלְגַּל הַמִּתְגַּלְגֵּל, “The Sound of a Rolling Wheel,” with the following lyrics taken from our Kabbalistic tradition:

The sound of the wheel going up and down. It rolls up from the depths in our bones. Like the tradition of breaking a glass at a Jewish wedding, we, as Jews, are in a constant dance between joy and sorrow. Built into our celebration is the directive to remember the pain and suffering of humanity. The wheel goes up and down. It comes from the depths out into the open and like a shofar it sounds the melodies. That was the answer to our approach to these two Yoms this year: like the wheel that the Zohar describes, we acknowledge that the pain and suffering in the depths exists, but anticipate that in time, it will turn and the shofar will sound its melody throughout the world.

May peace prevail in the coming days and may we know war no more.

Yom HaZikaron

On Monday morning, we held a somber Yom HaZikaron Tekes (Memorial Day Ceremony) to commemorate Israel’s fallen soldiers and victims of terror. We concluded with Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem, a hopeful note as we hold the duality of the sadness of Yom HaZikaron followed by the joy of Yom HaAtzmaut. We will carry both with us as we continue to navigate an increasingly complex world.

Yom HaAtzmaut

Art teacher Vered Singer has taught at JCDS since this school’s inception in 1995. She opened Tuesday morning’s Yom HaAtzmaut Tekes (Israeli Independence Day Ceremony) with the following words:

“Today we celebrate the 76th Independence Day of the State of Israel. I have been here at JCDS for 29 years, and here at school, we celebrate this day every year with a tremendous amount of Ruach (spirit) and “trip to Israel.” But today I am here with mixed feelings. For me – it is not a complete celebration as long as the hostages are not at home. And so every day, hour by hour, I pray with all my heart that everyone will come home in peace. Only then and only when it happens can we again fully celebrate the day with hope and joy.”

While holding the duality of sadness and joy, we celebrated Israel’s 76th birthday with Middle School-run airport security and border control, an annual 8th-grade skit aboard the “flight to Israel,” activity station rotations, an epic all-school dance party, and a mixed-grade art project to create messages of hope for displaced families in Israel.

By Naomi Greenfield, 2nd Grade General Studies Teacher

This past Monday, JCDS commemorated Yom HaShoah v’Hagvura (Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and Heroism) together as a community. We welcomed 30 8th-grade students from the Hillel Day School of Detroit who made joining our ceremony a priority on their Boston trip. Focusing on individuals and their stories has long been understood to help make the 6 million number associated with the Jews who perished during the Holocaust a little more understood. Every year on Yom HaShoah, we work to simultaneously convey the magnitude of loss of the Holocaust and the details and specifics of the individual lives of people impacted. This past Friday, May 3rd at JCDS, we had the unique opportunity to honor the memory of two individuals who were also survivors of the Holocaust, Joe and Rachele Greenfield z”l, grandparents to Naomi Greenfield and great-grandparents of Sylvia Bargar (’24) and Isaac Bargar (’27).

The Greenfield family sponsored a Day of Learning, which included an 18-artifact “museum” created by Naomi and her dad, David Greenfield over the course of 2 years that helped tell the story of Joe and Rachele’s lives before the Shoah, during the Shoah and their Life and Rebirth afterwards. The artifacts consisted of videos, documents, letters, photos, objects, and art. After a short presentation, students engaged with these artifacts and asked and answered questions. Grades 2, 5, and 8 also got to make wooden mezuzot, in recognition of Joe’s woodcraft skills and Rachele’s skill in creating a warm Jewish home.

Naomi and David put together a website of all these artifacts and the content of the museum so that students could explore more in their classes. You can also check out photos from the artifact exploration and mezuza-making here (password: tmunot).

Naomi reflected upon the Day of Learning: “It was so special and meaningful to share my grandparents’ remarkable lives and stories with the JCDS community. Our hope is to be able to bring this program to more schools and engage more students and communities in these stories and artifacts. Especially in a time when there are less and less survivors to share their stories, it feels ever more important to me as a descendant of survivors to know and be able to share their stories.”

As we look ahead to Yom HaZikaron on Monday, we will gather together as a community from 8:15-8:45am. We invite you to join us as we honor the fallen and victims of terror in Israel. Now more than ever, we lean on each other during moments of grief and sadness and look forward to moments of joy.

Highlights from the Past Week

Yom HaShoa

On Monday, we commemorated Yom HaShoah, more formally known as Yom HaShoah V’Hagevurah (Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and Heroism), in a number of age-appropriate ways. These included a moving morning tekes (ceremony) for grades 3-8, learning about current parent Natty Hoffman’s family’s incredible story of some family siddurim that were buried during the Holocaust and then re-earthed afterwards in 2nd grade, and hearing from a guest speaker who was a Holocaust survivor for grades 6-8.

We invite you to join us on Monday from 8:15-8:45am for our Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day) tekes.

By Shira Deener, Head of School

JCDS is privileged to be in close partnership with Boston College’s DevTech Research Group under the leadership of Dr. Marina Bers, JCDS alumni parent. A few years ago, Marina approached me and asked if JCDS would be willing to work alongside her remarkable staff (some of whom are current PhD students at BC). We have a long history with Marina and have full confidence in the quality of her work and her laboratory’s educational content. Through our partnership, we have met amazing educators from around the globe including most recently a large group of teachers and administrators from Atid School, the Jewish Day School in Mexico City, Mexico.

We also benefited from Jessica Blake-West who helped lead a JCDS Generations Create-Along online experience with our students/grandparents/special friends last Spring. Her work with the Scratch, Jr. introductory programming platform and the work of JCDS’ K-2 Engineering teacher, Catherine Ross, dovetailed beautifully. We are now well into another exciting project for this year. Please enjoy the latest and greatest from our Dev Tech-JCDS partnership.

Last month, JCDS 5th and 6th graders participated in DevTech’s co-design sessions for the Smart Playground project. Students participated in 3 sessions: ideation, creation, and iteration. On ideation day, undergraduate mechanical engineering students from Tufts University visited both grades to demonstrate their robotic prototypes showing the example of sensors and light and sound outputs on models of playground structures. Students then began paper-prototyping their own designs. On creation day, students built those designs into physical prototypes and prepared for user testing: interviews and demos with the lower school students. Finally, on day 3: iteration, children from the Middle School paired up with students from the Lower School to demonstrate their prototypes and collect feedback in order to improve their own designs. The 5th and 6th graders were prototyping experts and fantastic user-researchers.

The DevTech Research Group is extremely thankful for the opportunity to work with our students and looks forward to continuing their school-research partnership moving forward.

Check out some photos from the sessions below.

By Shira Deener, Head of School

The best teachers teach in multimodal classrooms. This means their classrooms are often replete with props, texts, student voices at the center, and, perhaps most importantly, opportunities that encourage the asking of questions. We know that when students of any age generate meaty questions, it leads to feeling a new sense of confidence, power, and agency, and a real ownership of their learning. Asking questions helps students move from a passive stance to one that is active and present. They wake up and understand that questioning can be the first step towards making change. And for the quieter child, asking questions can allow them to hear their voice — a first step towards participation and belonging.

The tradition of a Pesach seder, historically thought to have begun in the late 1400s, is perhaps one of the oldest and best classrooms. It brilliantly weaves together opportunities for multi-sensory exploration and scripted questions along with the opportunities for commentary and questions generated by its participants. The seder plate alone offers a series of props that elicit questions: Why a shankbone? What does Karpas symbolize? What is Haroset and why do we eat it with Maror? What is the reason we have salt water on the table? Why is the middle matzah broken into two? Why do we not say a blessing the first time we wash our hands? What does it mean to me to see myself as if I too was freed from Mitzrayim? This is experiential learning at its best. In my own family’s Pesach tradition, each participant is assigned a section of the Haggadah and we are expected to research in advance and shed light on that section with new commentary, personal reflections, and lots of time for questions. The very act of questions keeps the Pesach seder relevant from year to year and this year is no exception. I can only imagine the questions that will be brought to the discussion in the wake of October 7th. Exploring the meaning of freedom will surely take on new meaning.

My office shares a wall with Gan Nitzan and it is my distinct privilege (most of the time!) to hear the Nitzanim practice their newly learned songs and t’fillot. Leading up to their first Pesach as students at JCDS, I witnessed them enter the tradition of Pesach curiosity by practicing Ma Nishtana, the Four Questions, boldly and proudly. Today, the 4th grade celebrated their milestone centering around the Haggadah. This class is known for its curiosity, sense of justice, and inquisitive questioning. They showed off their learning and a connection they explored between Halachmah Anya and Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi, as well as Vehe Sheamda and Bechol Dor’ V’Dor and the connection to the hostages in Gaza. When questions are invited, the depth of thinking is expansive and limitless.

I wish you all a Chag Kasher V’Sameach and a meaningful experience together with family and friends.

By Shira Deener, Head of School

In years to come, we will be able to say we were there. Together in community, we witnessed the much-awaited eclipse of April 8, 2024. While Watertown wasn’t exactly on the “path of totality,” parents along with their children jointly experienced something they likely will never forget. Sometime in the future, they will be able to say they remember standing outside of JCDS and witnessing the temperature shift from the first sunny 70-degree spring day to a rapid drop in temperature as the moon shaded the sun before our sunglass-shaded eyes The breeze picked up, the sky darkened to an ominous gray and, through our protective sunglasses, students from Gan Nitzan through 8th grade bore witness to this astrological phenomenon.

In preparation for the eclipse, Rabbi David Winship’s 6th-grade Toshba class wrestled with the question of whether to and how to bless an eclipse. For our ancestors, eclipses served as bad omens. For us, they can serve as a reminder of the miraculous nature of God’s creation. With both these ideas in mind, our students created either a personal brachah or kavanah (blessing or intention) based on six sets of text studied by the students. Some took the option to use SchoolAI to finetune the language of their brachot.

Enjoy some examples of the student work:

Blessed are the heavens that dance in eternal harmony, and the heavens that align the celestial lights. Eclipses, where shadows and light intertwine in a celestial waltz.
— Yahel H

Blessed is the moment when sun and moon align, and G-d reaches out on Earth, and covers the sun with His holy shadow. When tummies grumble and wumble, giving us awe over G-d’s incantations over Earth. And when the moon shows us our emotion by blocking out the great celestial force that provided us light from generation to generation.
— Dalia

We work to let us live and the moon is our great star. And we hope to have God leave us be. When new beginnings fall upon us and we have feelings of happiness.
— Lily

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech HaOlam…Who creates natural occurrences, And a pause in our day of wonder and thought.
— Hadara

Blessed are you, Protector of the Universe, who shields us from harm and guides us through celestial wonders.
— Miriam

By Maya Clarke, Lower School Math Coach

The best way to understand what we mean when you hear us say terms like child-centered education, differentiation, learning supports, extensions, critical thinking, and “talk math” is by doing it. We were so excited to roll out our inaugural Lower School Math Night this week. Parents came together for an evening of meta-understanding of our approach to teaching and learning math and practice and the application of what they learned from our whole lower school general studies team. Math came alive and parents gained an insider’s view of how we teach math at JCDS.

Parents heard an overview of our curriculum and philosophy of math education before engaging in some math of their own. They got to experience a lesson pulled from the K-2 and from the 3-4 curriculum that asked them to suspend their parent brain and put on the hat of their student. We enjoyed having “math talk” with parents as they noticed patterns on a 100 chart and tried their hands at a fast-paced dice rolling and adding game called Don’t Break the Bank. If you have a fourth grader, ask them if they’ve ever gotten to 1,000 without going over. Most of us think it’s almost impossible! We really appreciated the enthusiastic participation of the parents and their willingness to be curious and to collaborate on lower school math work.

Parents and teachers alike reflected on the way students are being taught math at JCDS and how it differs from how we were taught in school. At JCDS, we focus on understanding concepts and the “why” behind strategies and algorithms, instead of just rote memorization of several steps that don’t make sense. It is our goal to move every child to a higher level of understanding. Students engage in daily math warm-ups that are designed to get them talking, reasoning, and justifying their math thinking. We give challenging work that takes children deeper into concepts and helps them gain problem-solving skills. We reach every child by collaborating with Learning Services to make sure our curriculum is accessible to every student. Our goals are to make math feel connected, approachable, and figure-out-able.

We are grateful we had the chance for faculty and parents to engage together in our math curriculum, and we look forward to holding another Lower School Math Night next year!

By Shira Deener, Head of School

At JCDS, we take Purim very seriously! Last Friday (pre-Purim), our 8th-graders led a Megillah highlights reading, paired with K-8-made visuals to demonstrate students’ understanding of the text, and had tremendous costume fanfare. This was just the beginning of the day’s festivities! The faculty serenaded the students to a Taylor Swift-themed parody about Purim, the 5th graders ran a Mishloach Manot store, and students in grades 6-8 organized and ran a fun-filled Purim Carnival for the school.

Thank you to photographer David Greenfield, JCDS grandparent, and father of teacher Naomi Greenfield (2nd Grade General Studies Teacher and photographed in ’80s gear!), for taking these beautiful photos and more during Friday’s Purim Carnival!

By Joanne Baker, 7th & 8th Grade English Teacher; Rosh 8th Grade

“Everyone has a story… or two, or five, or a dozen or more,” seventh graders will triumphantly tell you, having just completed their Tales of Childhood writing projects.

Using Roald Dahl’s, Boy, Tales of Childhood, as the book model for whimsical autobiographical writings, 7th-grade students reflected on their own childhoods, wrote their memories as short stories affectionately called sketches, and over time, read them aloud to classmates for constructive feedback. Once revisions were made and stories completed, each designed a creative means by which to showcase their collections of… as Dahl put it, “loosely connected childhood memories!”

On its surface, the Tales of Childhood project appears to be six class weeks of rigorous writing, thinking, drawing, sharing, peer editing, and continuous revising, but it is so much more. It is a beautifully focused deep dive into reflecting on one’s younger self. Stepping back, and coming to realize that experiences, lessons learned, and relationships forged from all of these moments of years past, reveal the person you are today. And how perfect a time for young adolescents who are no longer children, yet not quite adults, to take this personal narrative journey through time and seal it on paper.

As author Joan Didion said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means.” And the seventh graders did just that in English class!

These glorious projects are on display outside of the Beit Midrash for the school community to read and enjoy. Please come by and see them for yourself!