Eighth Graders Begin Journey to Israel

Very early on Wednesday morning (4:00 AM) I rolled out of bed and into my jeans, sneakers and Boston Red Sox hat and drove to the airport.  When I arrived at the Continental counter I found 23 PJA eighth grade students and their families gathered into what looked like a “PJA Island at PDX”.  Everyone was wide awake and energized about the trip to Israel that was beginning.  As the Continental customer service people worked with Tracy and Nathan to put boarding passes and baggage checks into the students’ passports, the kids became even more excited about getting on the plane and starting their journey. The students have been studying in preparation for this trip, but the experience of being there and feeling the history and connection to our past lies ahead and will be transformational.  We have received phone calls from our teachers who are now in Israel and know that everyone had a safe trip.  We will keep you posted throughout the trip.  Check out the PJA website and you’ll find a wonderful picture of the 8^th graders just before they left PDX.

PJA “Helping Hands for Haitian Honeys” Aide to Haiti Moves Forward

It’s really wonderful that PJA students have responded to the earthquake in Haiti by collecting items that will go directly to helping children at an orphanage in Haiti.  One of the items that the orphanage requested is liquid Tylenol.  The boxes have been piling up outside my office door.  Yesterday I helped some students count them and pack them in a shipping box.  PJA students collected 104 boxes of liquid Tylenol!  They will be shipped along with donations of toothpaste, baby wipes, diapers, and soap to a distribution center in Colorado that will deliver them to the orphanage.  You will receive final counts of all items collected by PJA students before they are shipped next week.

Second Graders Help Break Guiness World Record!

On March 3th, 2010 - 1,133,246 students, from 56,082 schools, in 235 countries set a new Guiness World Record for correctly answering the most math questions in one day during World Math Day. 

Portland Jewish Academy’s contribution to setting this new World Record is 21,726 correctly answered questions! 

Congratulations to our Second Graders!

Pacific Northwest Shabbaton

Rabbi Chaiton, Nil Rozenberger, and 15 of our 6^th grade students left this afternoon on the first ever Pacific Northwest Shabbaton in Seattle. They are spending Shabbat with the Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle (the school that these very same students went to Islandwood with in 5^th grade!), and the Vancouver Talmud Torah (Vancouver B.C.) 

We are thrilled to start a tradition of having these three schools gather together for a Shabbat experience and see friendships grow through the region.

Passover Break Reminder

Our Passover Break begins on Monday, March 29^th and ends on Wednesday, April 7^th.  The last day of school before the Passover Break is Friday, March 26^th.  The first day back after the break is Thursday, April 8^th.   

B'shalom,

Last week I had the privilege to spend a few hours with some of our students who were at the Mercy Corps Action Center for the week through their chosen Taglit session.  They were learning about poverty and now understand that 70% of the planet’s population lives in extreme or moderate poverty.  They learned that the major causes of poverty include lack of access to education (illiteracy), food shortages, contaminated water, war, violence, lack of medical treatment and natural disasters.  More importantly they are learning that there are things they can do to address the conditions that poverty inflicts on people.  After a week of study, they left Mercy Corps with ongoing projects, hearts filled with the desire to take action and heads filled with the knowledge about the right way to maximize their efforts.  All in all it was an amazing week for these students.

But this wasn’t the only amazing session during Taglit.  We had students studying Oceanography on the Oregon Coast where they had the rare opportunity to observe a cockleshell clam resist the attack of a sea star.  On their last day they went on a five mile hike through a rain forest and they emerged on a coastal headland where they saw a herd of 30 elk. Students learning about Portland’s history (and haunted history) had a fascinating tour of the Shanghai tunnels underneath Old Town Portland. In another Taglit session, students went on a virtual cultural tour of Israel through study, language, and imagination. Other students learned about bread and the fascinating way grains are milled for flours (thanks Bob’s Red Mill!). Still other students studied Israeli cities through the creation of board games in great detail.

We had some wonderful art opportunities as well, as students learned to weave by first spinning and coloring wool with which to work. Some students took a film class and others learned printmaking and the study of M.C. Escher’s work.  Just in time for the Winter Olympics, we had a group study the music and message of Matisyahu’s “One Day” which has been chosen by NBC as an anthem for the 2010 Winter Olympics.  They brought their own instruments, learned to play it and will be performing it later this month (details to follow…)

Taglit is such an extraordinary opportunity for PJA students learn about what interests them in a way that makes it personal for them.  Seeing the delight and inspiration in our students coming from this week-long session, reaffirms our jobs as educators and partners in your child’s education.

We are INDEED PJA Proud.

B'shalom,

Next week our middle school students will have Taglit.  Taglit (which literally translates to “discovery”) offers our students a week of enriching classes between semesters, designed to inspire creativity, open their minds to new and different things, and literally discover a new passion for learning.

The sessions are created to give them new insights about the world in which they live and opportunities to explore hidden personal meaning or trigger a deeper connection to their work.  Classes include things like Oceanography which will have students spending four days at the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center and discovering the scientific and cultural history of the Oregon Coast, BYOI: Bring Your Own Instrument, where students will form an impromptu band, learn a popular Matisyahu tune and perform it in the Middle School spring showcase on February 26, and Global Youth in Film, where students will apply the concept of a design cycle to analyze the unique challenges of youth around the globe.  This session will conclude with a presentation of their sequence to the class.

There are also other wonderful sessions in which the students will be participating.  My goal is not to list them all here, but to boast a bit about the wonderful and exciting things our students have the opportunity to experience in order to complement their in-class learning during the semester.  And while much of their work during the semester is truly extraordinary, Taglit is unique and very special in its own right and introduces concepts and ideas to our students that broadens their view of their world, both locally and globally.

That’s a discovery I think we can all get behind.

B’Shalom,