We ended (are ending) the school year with two virtual events.
On Friday, June 5, students will honor teachers and share some Jewish learning during a family Shabbat meet-up on Zoom.
And on Saturday, May 16, students, their parents and teachers met on Zoom for an all-school picnic. Gift bags with bouncy balls, bubbles, chalk art and snack crackers were delivered to students’ homes earlier in the week. We did fun activities together. Morim Jeff and Andrew led us in a Jewish scavenger hunt. Rabbi David counted for us in Hebrew while we kept those small bouncy balls bouncing. We blew bubbles and covered sidewalks with chalk art. Moreh Danny led us in song. We listened to The Forever Garden, and watched a video of the weekly Torah portion, which aptly, was on sustainable farming.
Moving the school online in April (due to Covid-19 concerns and Minnesota’s social distancing/stay-at-home orders that closed our physical classrooms) was an interesting experiment. And we learned a lot about what did and didn’t work.
Overall, 50 percent of our students took part in all or some regularly scheduled classes or meet-ups with teachers on Zoom. And 70 percent of our students participated in one or more of our larger group meet-ups on Zoom.
A few students completed homework type assignments, but more did not. Videos teachers made and posted to classroom folders on Google Drive went unwatched unless a teacher played the video for his or her students during a Zoom meet-up.
A major hurdle was Zoom overlaps – where families with more than one student, or families with a student in one class and parent teaching another were trying to navigate being online at the same time.
I am interested in hearing from parents what did and didn’t work from their end. Was technology or a lack of access an issue? Was there a better or preferred mode of communication? Were families too overwhelmed with working from home, participating in public schools’ online learning, and the pandemic in general to stay on top of our Religious and Hebrew School offerings? How can we design better virtual components?
These are important questions as we begin to plan for next school year and the possibility of needing a hybrid learning model that allows us to move from face-to-face instruction to online quickly in the event of local Covid-19 outbreaks or hotspots.
Moving the school online gave us the opportunity to “be there” for our Jewish youth during this scary time. Just that in itself counts as a major success.
Please help me extend a huge shout out to our teachers. They didn’t sign up for this mode of teaching when they agreed to teach in the Religious and Hebrew School this year, but they stepped up to continue this important and sacred work.
Andrea Novel Buck, Youth Education Director
