Kitah Vav 2002 proved to be a most interesting and rewarding experience. Many parents, students, and teachers were a bit concerned about replacing the curriculum midyear. However, with faith and fine tuning we settled into the new program and were quite successful in reaching our goals, albeit in a very different way than we first imagined. From the beginning of the year until the end, the objective of Kitah Vav was to encourage each student to be an informed, knowledgeable, and educated Jew able to appreciate the importance of living a Jewish life. Our classroom experience focused on building a strong Jewish foundation for our students, encouraging them to feel comfortable living a Jewish life in a non-Jewish world. We did this through teaching Jewish values, understanding life cycle events, examining Jewish law, celebrating the holidays, and exploring the many �Sifrei Kodesh,� or sacred texts of our religion. Our two core units presented a comprehensive analysis of the Jewish perspective of friendship and the Jewish view of how we are to treat other living beings. These core units along with supplemental resources completed our Kitah Vav year. Project Etgar encouraged each student to recognize and understand that Judaism is a religion of action and that our sacred texts have much to say about how we conduct ourselves in our relationships with G-D and others. Quite often the lessons of our Rabbis� are taught in the classroom, but students often struggle with the relevance of these ancient writings. With guidance and wisdom from a variety of classroom resources, students were encouraged to explore what our Rabbis� intent was, and then apply those lessons to their personal experiences. By creating, writing, and performing material that had personal significance to them, students were responsible for much of their own learning. It was wonderful to watch as many went from being passive, inactive students to active involved learners. In retrospect, The Circle of Life Project Etgar Program was quite successful as our students accomplished far more than we anticipated. By the time you read this newsletter, we will have returned from New York for advanced training in this very innovative curriculum. We look forward to working with your students throughout their middle school years. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. Have a great summer, Barbara, Kayla, and Staci |
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| PROJECT ETGAR 2002 The Year in Review |