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!