Getting Started in EdReform

An educator getting started in PLNs and the Twitterverse and blogosphere asked us for a list of our go-to sites. Here's what we sent:

So this is our RealSchool blog post about the first top ten education reform videos we watched to get us started:

http://frischrealschoolblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/launching-realschool.html

This is a great video about PBL (project-based learning). If kindergartners can do it, anyone can! And if older kids can do it, why not kindergartners?

http://www.edutopia.org/kindergarten-project-based-learning

The whole edutopia site is great:

http://www.edutopia.org/schools-that-work

Here are some more of our favorite blogs:

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/

http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/

Will Richardson is the education reform guru. He's a superstar:

http://willrichardson.com/

And we like Scott McLeod too (and the name of his blog):

http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/

Have fun! If you watch any of the videos or read any of the blogs, share your thoughts in the Comments section!

The Frisch Fashion Show: Who's the Fairest of Them All?

This past week, the Wednesday night #jedchat discussion touched on learning by failing and learning in real life experiences, both of which are a big part of RealSchool's philosophy (the latter practice is even embedded in our name). Many people have asked us to explain what RealSchool is and it's always a challenge because it encompasses so many things, but the discussion last night has prompted us to try and explain what we do through a real-life example and by revealing the curtain to show Oz, even if it means that some of the things we tell you turn out not to work and not to end up in our final project.

The Frisch Fashion Show

This past week, RealSchool began planning in earnest the second annual fashion show. This year, the theme for the show is "Who's the Fairest of Them All?" and we're focusing on fair food, fair fashion and a fair world. This theme enables almost all of the RealSchool teams to be involved, though admittedly only girls are planning and starring the in show. 

Outline of the Show

At an earlier meeting, we had decided to focus on Biblical women in the fashion show, and during this week's planning session, we decided that each grade would walk the runway twice with presentations by the Frisch dance team and a girls' a capella group interspersed throughout the fashion show. Here's our program so far:

Round 1: four models per grade, with a formal dress as the final piece

Freshmen: Eve and the Foremothers, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah

Clothing: Flowers a la Alexander McQueen and clothing with flower motifs

Dance routine by the dance team: Depiction of Miriam's song by the Red Sea

Sophomores: Egyptian women: Pharoah's daughter; Shifra and Puah
Clothing inspired by ancient Egypt

Juniors: The daughters of Tzlafchad, who petitioned Moses to allow them to inherit their father's land even though they were (gasp!) women
Clothing for the professional woman

Seniors: Biblical female military leaders: Yael and Deborah
Military wear

Military-inspired dance routine

Round 2: four models per grade; the seniors will model only formal wear

Freshmen: Ruth
Clothing with a royal theme, since Ruth is the forerunner of David

Freshmen planning their part of the fashion show

Sophomores: Evil Biblical women: Jezebel, Vashti, et al
Goth clothing

Edgy dance routine

Juniors: Juniors with mothers: We're the inheritors of Biblical women, living chains binding each generation together
Mommy and Me outfits!

Seniors: Esther
A beauty pageant

Seniors discussing what their models should wear

To be decided: When and what the singers are performing

Exhibit

Before the show begins, those attending will be able to view a student-made art exhibit on female oppression and female entrepreneurship that the RealSchool Arts team is creating. On one side of the walls lining the auditorium will be artwork depicting female oppression in the world. (No, we're not afraid to insert some gravity into a fashion show). On the other side of the room will be artwork showing female entrepreneurs. Therefore, the exhibit will show what we still have to do to ensure fair treatment of women and what women are doing to empower themselves and enrich the world with their talents.

The Arts team discovered the work of Kara Walker, a black American artist.
We may imitate her style for some of the art students make for the night.

During the viewing of the exhibit, attendees will also be able to buy fair-trade chocolate, and we also want to have female vendors selling vintage clothing so people can engage in ethical fashion practices by buying "recycled" clothing. We also plan on contacting Frisch female alumni who are artists, so they can show and sell their work at the event. Female jewelry vendors and the like will also be welcome.

Charity

We have yet to decide on the charity that part of the event's proceeds will go to. In keeping with the night's theme, we want to give a portion of our proceeds to an organization that works to end female trafficking and sex slave trading. The remainder of the proceeds will go to our school, Frisch.

Our To-Do List

* RealSchool's graphic designer, Karen, is working on a "Who's the Fairest of Them All?" logo for the event, one we can also print on a T-shirt we'll sell.

* We need to write a script for the Finance and Marketing team, so they know what to say to the vendors about the night and the charity we want the proceeds to go to.

* We want to weave commentary about the Biblical women into the fashion show presentation, in order to make the event have more religious purposefulness. RealSchool's Religious Identity team is working on that.

* Each grade's representatives have begun discussing the look for each outfit they want to model. Once the girls have a sense of what they want the outfits to look like, we'll use our contacts to find clothing. 

* Last year, Glam Salon in Englewood, NJ, did the models' hair and make-up. We want to contact them again as well as create student hair and make-up teams for each grade.

We'll keep you updated on our progress as the planning progresses! 

Planning and implementing an event like this shows:

1) students are excited and motivated when they're invested in the learning. We're taking a passion many girls have -- shopping and modelling clothes -- and using it to create a learning experience. Because the base of the learning is a fashion show, the girls are more interested in hearing about topics such as female oppression, female artists and fair trade practices than they would be if we brought those issues up in a regular class.

2) by widening the scope of the show and including opportunities for artists, future businesswomen and those interested in Jewish learning, we can involve more students in the project and create an event that showcases many students' talents and interests and not just one group's. The wide range of interests being combined into one event also allows students to practice an intricate type of collaboration. 

3) students can learn content that they can use in real-life settings. The information the students are learning for the event has an immediate relevance in their lives and gives them something important to consider and remember once they go out into the world. 

4) people want to care about other people. By focusing on fair trade and a fair world in our fashion show, we're taking an event that could be superficial and me-focused and turning it into something that the students can use to help others. We want them to see that they can always use their interests and passions to better the world. 

RS: Finance and Social Action: Lessons in Fundraising

Sophomores raise money at the Frisch Africa Green-a-thon

Sophomore Benny weighs in on what he learned from conducting a fundraiser for Innovation: Africa, an organization that uses sustainable Israeli technologies to improve life in Africa:

I spent countless hours working on the Green-a-Thon. The Green-a-Thon, a fundraiser and an awareness promoter, occurred at The Frisch School for a week during December.  While the event only lasted for one week, the preparations for the event were endless. The idea of the Green-a-Thon was to spread awareness about the over-consumption of energy, while at the same time, raise money for an organization that gives energy to energy-deprived villages in Africa. In order to blend these two ideas, we came up with the idea to make a coffee stand. We provided eco-friendly cups and sold African coffee beans. We also decided to hold a raffle. While there were many different great characteristics I was able to develop throughout this experience, one of the more important ones was the financial knowledge I obtained through leading this event.

            Leading a fundraiser takes many qualities. The qualities include strong leadership qualities, time-management skills, and most importantly, financial abilities to reach your fundraising goals. Coming into this event, I would have to say I possessed little to none of these traits. But coming out of it, I am able to say that I grew in all these areas. Most importantly, I obtained many financial skills.

             What I learnt was simple yet essential. The most important part of a fundraiser is raising funds. It is important to set a monetary goal for yourself, yet it is dangerous to set it too high or too low. We set our goal for this fundraiser at a very high 5,000 dollars. For one week, for a committee of high-school students, this is a very high number. In fact, all we really needed to raise was $2,500 dollars to obtain our goal. By making it 5,000 dollars, we were very disappointed at the end of the week when we counted our 2,700 dollars. When we realized we passed the true amount of what we needed to raise, I learned my first lesson in finances, not to set the bar too low, and possibly more important, not to set it too high.

            Another important lesson I learnt is pricing. This is a very important lesson for businessmen and storeowners. At the beginning of our week, we set our prices very high. Since I assumed that the demand for good-quality coffee was very high among the students, so I made its price very high. This was a mistake. I noticed after a day that many people turned away when they saw our prices, so we decided to lower them, and after a day, we nearly doubled our profits. This pricing lesson is invaluable to many businessmen who may be tempted to be too greedy. I was greedy when I set my original price for coffee, but after I learnt my lesson, my profit increased.

            One last important financial lesson I learnt through this experience was that too much variety is just as bad as too little variety. In all businesses, there has to be equilibrium of variety. I learnt this lesson too late for my raffle. A couple of committee members and I spent many nights looking around for raffle prizes, and thanks to the generosity of local restaurants in Teaneck, we got many prizes. We were ecstatic and thought with all this variety, we would surely make a lot of money. Sadly, this was not true. Giving people ultimatums on choice of products is important. People would come to our raffle and be turned away at the overwhelming thought of reading through all of our prizes. It is, however, important to give people a little variety. It is not a good business model to force people into buying something. We learnt this early in selling coffee. Originally, we had only asked our provider for three different kinds of coffee. And this did make money; however, after one day we realized people may want more. So we asked our provider for lattes, hot chocolate, etc. and again, our profits increased. So the important lesson I learnt from this was not too give too little choice, but at the same time, to be careful not to give too much choice. 

            The lessons I learned during this experience are invaluable. The business ethics and financial skills I obtained through this event will be very useful in life. Horace, a Roman poet, once said, “Life grants nothing to us without hard work.” This quote culminates all of the lessons I learned. To be successful in anything in life, especially finances, takes hard work and perseverance. It requires doing something, failing, and than trying it again. And this lesson is what I derived most from the Green-a-thon. All high schools teach arithmetic and mathematics, but what few teach are skills that are absolutely essential to be successful in life. And these are the lessons that I truly received through the Green-a-thon. 

For more information about The Frisch Africa Encounter, click on the following link:

The Frisch Africa Encounter

Genetically Modified Food

Eleventh-grader Jamie weighs in on genetically modified food:

"Genetically modified organisms" sound downright terrifying to the layperson. "You want me to eat something that's been created in a lab by a bunch of mad scientists?!" one might ask. That's the stigma speaking. It's all based on misconceptions. People are afraid of the unknown, and that fear is contagious.

The article I read induces fear with statements such as, "You’ve been eating it for a long time and no one has told you," as if it were a shocking secret that people have been trying to cover up.

Requiring that foods made with GMOs be labeled as such would only perpetuate these unfounded fears. It would create undue concern.

Unknown does not necessarily mean bad, but as the article mentions, it does not necessarily mean good either. The article fails to mention, however, the scientific process behind it. Consider the following background information: plants, and all known living organisms, have spent billions of years evolving into what they currently are. One aspect of this is random mutation of genes. A plant's genetic code may change for the better or for the worse because a base ( A, T, C, or G) is substituted for another or omitted. This is completely natural. Scientists, at least in a simplified version, achieve the same effect by purposely changing the code. The main difference? It isn't random. It is far from random and every base in every gene is calculated to do only the desired effect, whether that is protecting it from insects or increasing its nutritional value, or other beneficial traits. Then they are inserted into their place in the DNA. 

Ideally , this all goes perfectly according to plan and nothing is overlooked. We are all human though and have to consider the possibility that some food do have harmful long-term effects.

A better solution is to ensure that only the GMOs that have been studied and tested to a sufficient degree ("sufficient degree" is up to the experts to determine) should be allowed out into the public. Fortunately, there is such a system: the Food And Drug Administration. If someone believes that its standards are not high enough or rigorous enough, and that harmful GMOs get through the system, which is entirely possible, then complaints should be directed to the FDA, not the entire category of GMOs.

Tu B'Shevat Continued

RealSchool's Health and Environment team offered ways to keep us healthy in honor of Tu B'Shevat, Judaism's "Green Day." Here is a blog post FastCoExist posted right after the holiday, and in it you can learn how important trees are to human health. Read the post, and then read some student responses to New York Mayor Bloomberg's proposed ban on the size of sodas some NY vendors can sell. Is Mayor Bloomberg's plan a reasonable way to fight obesity and keep New Yorkers healthy?

An Archive of Ancient Tree DNA Will Help us Clone the Ones we Destroy

Student response 1: Con:

Mayor Bloomberg has many valid reasons for wanting to ban the sale of sodas larger than sixteen ounces, in restaurants, street carts, and movie theaters. It is a major cause of obesity, which can result in many health issues as well as death. Five thousand people in New York die of obesity each year. Research shows that an extra soda drink a day increases the probability of a child becoming obese by 60%. In addition, one or two sugar drinks a day increases the risk of getting type 2 diabetes by 25%, which is the cause of more than 60,000 amputations a year. There are many other negative effects of soda drinks, such as tooth decay. These are all conditions which nobody should have to experience, and Mayor Bloomberg believes disallowing the sale of large bottles of soda will help decrease the amount people drink and therefore also the number of people that have these potentially fatal conditions. However, many people believe this law shouldn’t be passed. It is forcefully taking away business not only of the soda industry, but also of the restaurants, street carts, and movie theaters that would no longer be able to sell the larger products. I do believe actions should be taken to help prevent obesity, but not in this way. First of all, it is unfair to many businesses. But in addition, I don’t think it will have much effect. If people want more soda, when they finish the first bottle, they will just buy another one. If they are at a restaurant, they can ask for a refill. Other actions need to be taken that won’t harm businesses but will also have a major effect.

Student response 2: Pro:

Over the past few years, many researchers have expressed their concern about the regular consumption of sodas and sugary drinks in our society. They have found that one soda or other sugary drink, which contributes the most calories to our diet, each day can increase a child’s chance of obesity by sixty percent. Sugary drinks, such as sodas, can cause tooth decay, obesity, and diabetes, which is the leading cause of amputations. Health problems related to obesity are the cause of death for five thousand New Yorkers each year. 
For this reason, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a bill to ban the sale of sugary drinks in containers larger than sixteen ounces in restaurants, street carts and movie theaters. This, he hopes, will decrease the number of obesity-related deaths and other health problems in New York. Many New Yorkers oppose the measure, though, claiming that it will cause losses to small businesses and limit their rights. They do not want the government telling them what and how much they can drink, and they have a point. Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal will probably help with the obesity epidemic, but it does have some problems. First, people can buy multiple smaller-sized bottles of sugary drinks, which will amount to more than sixteen ounces, and it would be deemed legal. Also, his proposal only bans excessive amounts of soda to be sold in establishments that receive inspection grades from the health department. Therefore, convenience stores, vending machines, and some newsstands would be exempt from the law, as well as the sale of fruit juices, dairy-based drinks like milkshakes, alcoholic beverages, and no-calorie diet sodas. I believe that Bloomberg’s proposal is a good step toward fighting obesity, but I think he should follow through fully and ban the sale of excessive amounts of all sugary drinks everywhere in New York.

Tu B'Shvat: Jewish Arbor Day

If the earth does grow inhospitable toward human presence, it is primarily because we have lost our sense of courtesy toward the earth and its inhabitants.

Thomas Berry, Catholic ecotheologian  (like that term?)

In honor of Tu B'Shevat RealSchool Religious Identity and Health and Environment teams bring you some favorite thoughts, clips and a great Tu B'Shevat salad by Tori Avey.

To start, here's Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks on Judaism's eco-friendly legislation:

Enjoy this clip, which we showed on Food Day, about returning to a more simple way of farming and eating:

If you weren't convinced to eat healthier by the Back to the Start video, maybe you need something scarier:

Now that we have your attention about making some changes to your diet, you can start by making and enjoying the following recipe:

Recipe for a Tu B'Shevat salad by Tori Avey, but don't forget to use a healthy mayonnaise, such as Spectrum Light Canola Mayo.

Click on the link to go to the recipe: Tu B'Shevat Salad

Stay tuned during the Spring Semester for RealSchool's Green Recipes. The Health and Environment team is busy compiling them. Feel free to send us your favorite green and healthy recipes at frischrealschool@gmail.com!

Student Response to #26Acts Program

By Raquel, tenth grade:

My initial response o hearing about the #26Acts program was one of awe and concern. Performing a total of 26 good deeds sounded like a lot; I feared I wouldn't be able to reach my goal. I reminded myself of the cause, the 26 lives cut way too short by the killing in Newtown, Connecticut, and decided if there was even a remote possibil ity of impacting a life through this initiative, I would try it. As my day progressed, my pessimistic attitude changed, and I became confident. I began checking acts off my list and noticed a pattern; I did most of the good deeds listed on a daily basis, even when I didn't have an ulterior motive. I think dedicating an act to each victim is special and not even close to the far-fetched concept I originally thought it was. I realized that not only I, but many people, routinely do nice things for others and are just not sensitive to that fact. And even the smallest of my gestures got a response of thanks and appreciation.

It is impossible to justify the villainous occurrence that took 26 innocent lives, but the least I could do is hope the 26 acts of kindness I did in remembrance have a domino effect. If each recipient of my 26 acts did just one deed for someone else and so on, much more than just 26 lives will have been touched by this program. An overwhelming number of people could be positively impacted and that is what gives me an even greater sense of awe.