RealSchool Update

We've been having a great day moving forward with a lot of our projects.

First, we're getting ready for the PSAT's by once again selling "I Am More Than A Test Score" T-shirts. Make sure you get yours -- you can scan the QR code in the image to access an order form -- so we can move our society that much closer to an SAT-less and AP-less world. Imagine that utopia!

Daniel Rothner explaining the fundamentals of how to start a non-profit

We had a great meeting with Daniel Rothner of Areyvut about a social action and entrepreneurship project that will keep us busy the entire year. Stay tuned for more details! We're excited to partner with a community organization for this project, since becoming more involved with and connected to the real world is part of the RealSchool mission.

Lunch was the perfect time to plan for Food Day this October 24 and to decide on some of the projects the Health and Environment team wants to undertake this year. We're going to focus on superfoods for the day and spread the news about the health benefits of eating them. Check out the website we're using for our information!

Earlier in the week we also launched our literacy program, which we'll let you know about soon as well. In the meantime, if you have educational games, please bring them to Mrs. Wiener's/RealSchool's office or mail them to The Frisch School, 120 West Century Road, Paramus, NJ.

All in all, it's been a really productive week at RealSchool. Next week: tech and Religious Identity meetings!

Getting School to Flow

In the book Becoming Adult: How Teenagers Prepare for the World of Work, Mikhaly Csikszentmihalyi and Barbara Schneider explore the types of learning experiences that increase student engagement and make students feel they're pursuing endeavors that are useful and relevant. Here are some passages from the book that show us how important inquiry-based and student-driven learning is in creating the most optimal learning experiences for students:

Schooling, we have found, is primarily a passive and independent activity. Students spend more class time listening to their teacher talk about a subject, taking notes, and doing individual work than doing anything else. There is a great deal of variation with respect to how challenging and important students find common classroom activities. In general, students concentrate harder and appear to learn more during activities that they find both challenging and important. 

Ferris Bueller let us all know how bored students really were in class

Unfortunately, some of the most common classroom activities are lacking both in challenge and in perceived importance to future goals. [Students show] a lack of active engagement in many of these dominant classroom activities. For example, students' concentration drops substantially while listening to a lecture or watching videos. In addition, students clearly indicate that activities like watching television are not relevant to their future goals. Students feel much more challenged when taking a test or quiz. But they do not particularly enjoy such experiences, nor do they feel good while they are involved in them.

Here's an illumination by Laurentius de Voltolina from the 1300's which shows
students sleeping and talking during a lecture at the University of Bologna, Italy.
Times haven't changed much, unfortunately, have they? *

Despite the seemingly dull nature of the activities that students are most commonly asked to do, they still feel more challenged in academic classes than in other classes. Even so, they do not appear to find most of their academic classes interesting or enjoyable. Academic classes are positively associated with challenge and importance to future goals, but they do not foster enjoyment, positive affect, or motivation. (162-163)

So what's the solution?

Get students into a state of flow through activities that allow
them to make their own choices . . . 

. . . and to be creative!

Also make sure students have opportunities to collaborate

Fostering greater engagement in schooling may be achieved not only through structuring activities but also through promoting their connection to students' future goals. This is not to say that all schoolwork should be explicitly linked to future careers, but that the process of developing particular skills and understanding necessary for future success must receive greater emphasis. Currently, school is a place where teenagers typically are assigned tasks rather than being allowed to choose them. Given that schooling is involuntary, a shared sense of purpose between adolescents and adults may be an integral part of fostering engagement in school.

To facilitate flow experiences, schools need to create environments in which students understand both the broader purpose of schooling and the specific purpose of individually assigned tasks. Adults can encourage engagement by becoming involved as mentors and advisers to students as they undertake work that challenges their skills. In school, as in other contexts, adults have the responsibility for assuring that the demands made of adolescents have a clearly defined purpose. In addition to providing support to students, adults also need to give them the freedom to direct their own efforts. (164)

* We found the manuscript through David Thornburg who, in this blog post, writes about it and the need for change in education.

Additional resources

We love this edutopia article on the way inquiry-based instruction deepens learning. 

Check out the book Flow, also by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 

Update on RealSchool 2013-14

RealSchool -- year 3 -- is getting off to a great start! 

The Arts

We had a first art exhibit at the start of the school year: it was based on the seniors' reflections on technological progress, as seen in their summer reading book, Frank Moss' The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices and on the possibility for personal growth as seen in Sefer Devarim [Deuteronomy], the book of the Torah Frisch is studying this year.

Melissa captured the faces of SixthSense, an MIT Media Lab
project designed for those with autism to be able to
read social cues more easily

We're already percolating ideas for a next art exhibit. We like to do one around Chanukah time. In fact, one of our very first RealSchool events was an art exhibit inspired by one at the Guggenheim of Maurizio Cattelan's work. Remember that? Mrs. Mantell and Mrs. Wiener are thinking they want to hang more stuff from the school ceilings!

Fashion

Planning for the Fashion Show is well under way. We don't have a tagline yet -- as you know, the show only really starts to feel official when we have a cute saying with an accompanying graphic made by Jamie Lebovics. Jamie is looking for RS members who want to be graphic design apprentices, so be sure to let her know if you're interested. 

We have nailed down some important details about this year's fashion show, which will be in March:

Mrs. Mantell secured us a grant for the show, contingent upon the fact that we're going to have an environmental component to it. That's no problem because the Health and Environment team is now working even more symbiotically than it ever has with the fashion team to make that happen. (Last year's theme -- based around fair trade practices -- also lent itself to a partnership between those two RealSchool teams.)

We've decided each grade will build a terrarium that reflects the biome the grade will represent. On Monday this past week, we finalized the following biomes for each grade:

Freshmen: Ocean

Sophomores: Forest

Juniors: Desert (because junior year feels like a trek through that kind of vast wasteland)

Seniors: the many biomes of Israel

The narrative we say at the show will explain the significance of the biome for each grade, in the way we just did for the juniors ;)

This year we'll once again collaborate with the Frisch Dance team and have them perform dances throughout the fashion show which will be thematically related.

We know you want to know how we know how to make terrariums, and the answer -- in RealSchool fashion -- is we don't! But we're going to learn by doing! We're also trying to get a Frisch science teacher involved so perhaps we stand a chance of making these terrariums correctly, but we're not daunted if that doesn't happen. We know we can tackle this one. We have lots of kids who took Bio and are taking AP Bio, and we heard there's this thing called the Internet where we can get some how-to information on how to go about this. Look what we found already!

Social Entrepreneurship

Now this team has had a slow start in RealSchool. You could say we've all been focused on building RealSchool these past two years so we haven't had time for so many other ventures, but now that RS is on solid footing, we can focus our efforts on additional start-ups. The Social Entrepreneurship team met this morning and decided to focus, for now, on two ventures, one non-profit and one for-profit one. We think it's cool that the for-profit venture is a continuation of a project students began in Mrs. Silverman's Engineering course last year. Go STEM!

Of course, non-profits are close to our hearts, and we're looking forward to working this year on a project with Daniel Rothner of Areyvut, someone we're excited to have met at the Summer Sandbox.

Talking about the non-profit we're working on this year

We're really excited about all we have going already and look forward to keeping you updated on our progress!

Welcome Back: The Kids Are All Right

So a lot of times adults like to decry the state of adolescence, complaining, "Kids these days . . . [a sad shaking of the head may accompany this]. They're rude, lazy, self-centered, and aimless." 

While it may be fun and easy to hate on teenagers -- and I cringe when I think of just how narcissistic I was as a teen -- I just can't see applying those adjectives to today's young adults. Over the past two years, as I've worked with students in RealSchool and on RealSchool-type projects in my classes, I've been blown away by just how devoted they are to developing themselves as people, to understanding and helping the larger world, and to finding meaning in the things that they struggle with in their faith. 

And it's not only Frisch students who've impressed me. The truth is, when I encounter teenagers today, I walk away with a sense that here are kids who have confidence and self-possession, but not arrogance, and who are much more thought out than I'd expect teenagers to be. At the same time, today's teens have humility enough to know that they're still learning, and, in fact, they're extremely open to new ideas, looking to expand their minds through books as well as challenging and meaningful experiences. These young adults also have a LOT of emotional intelligence and a great sense of humor, both of which I see them using to defuse potentially tense and dramatic social situations (They're still teenagers, I know the drama is there, but they seem to be managing it better than teenagers used to, not that I've conducted a formal study on this or anything.) 

The kids I meet today also have an intense desire to start changing the world now and can be found, at all hours, volunteering to help the homeless, the elderly, the hungry, the sick, the bullied, the marginalized. The truth is they just might save the world, and I'm really jealous, 'cuz I wish I were coming-of-age now -- and that's not only because it's clearly so much cooler to be able to text, video chat, Instagram, SnapChat and make Vines with your friends than it was to talk on a landline. Using a phone with a cord. (Cordless phones were only invented at the tail end of my adolescence.)

RealSchool has gotten off to a great start this year, its third in existence. Rafi W., at the meeting we had this past Thursday, pointed out that the club is successful because of all the great people in it, and I have to agree. The kids in RealSchool are incredible, and it's humbling to work with them. They push me to do more, think larger, be better.

We already had our first art exhibit, which we partnered with some Frisch senior classes to make. The idea of the exhibit was Possibilities and it focused on the fact that You can Change, and You can Change the World. I don't really think these kids need to be told that, but as I was praying on Yom Kippur, I looked into my Rabbi Sacks mahzor (of course I was using his mahzor; does anyone doubt that?) and saw these words, which reminded me not only of the power of prayer, something the Religious Identity team has focused on understanding, but also on what the RealSchool kids, and really all my students, have given to me:

" . . . [R]egular daily prayer works on us in ways not immediately apparent. As the sea smoothes the stone, as the repeated hammer-blows of the sculptor shape the marble, so prayer -- repeated, cyclical, tracking the rhythms of time itself -- gradually wears away the jagged edges of our character, turning it into a work of devotional art. . . . We come to think less of the 'I,' more of the 'We'; less of what we lack than of what we have; less of what we need from the world, more of what the world needs from us. Slowly we achieve the deep happiness that comes from learning to give praise and thanks. Prayer is less about getting what we want than about learning what to want." (The Koren Yom Kippur Mahzor, 846, 849).

I'd like to begin this year by giving thanks to the members of RealSchool for helping me learn what to want and for making RealSchool a place where we really aim to change ourselves and the world in only the most positive ways.

With much affection and gratitude,

Mrs. Tikvah Wiener

RealSchool's first exhibit this year gets made with RS students,
art teacher Mrs. Ahuva Mantell and Chumash teacher Mrs. Yael Goldfischer (not shown)

At our first meeting, the Social Action and Entrepreneurship team
sets goals. We're really excited about partnering with
Aryevut's Daniel Rothner this year.

Thanks to Mrs. Ahuva Mantell for getting us a grant to run
our fashion show, which this year will focus on biomes!
The Fashion, Health and Environment, and Arts teams as well as
the Finance, Social Entrepreneurship, and Marketing teams will
all be involved in planning the show.

The tech teams -- App Making, Graphic Design, Video Production,
and Web Design -- are brainstorming and have already formed
a Facebook group to let each other keep track of all their projects.

The Possibilities in Joyful Learning

“Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche (with thanks to Frisch teacher Mr. Joshua Gotlieb for pointing us to the quotation)

The school year has begun, and many parents are no doubt rejoicing about getting their kids back into a regular schedule. Nothing captures that parental feeling better than this famous Staples commercial:

However, we hope students, too, are pretty excited about learning. In fact, joyful learning is something we really value in RealSchool and something we try to infuse into the activities we plan and the classes that we've "RealSchool-ed." Of course, at MIT fun in learning can be seen in the pranks that are part of the school's culture. Check out this video about the hacking culture at the university. In fact, one of the first points the book Creating Innovators, makes is that PLAY is a key part of the learning process. The book quotes Joost Bonson, a lecturer at the MIT Media Lab, who says:

Look at the tradition of pranks here at MIT. What did it take to put a police car on a dome that was fifteen stories high [one of the most famous MIT pranks], with a locked trapdoor being the only access? It was an incredible engineering feat: They had to fabricate the car, get it to the base of the dome without getting caught -- and then the real challenge was to get it to the top of the dome, and get yourself down without getting caught or hurting yourself. In addition to everything else, you had to track security, create diversions. To pull that off was a systems problem, and it took tremendous leadership and teamwork. (27)

Creating Innovators also quotes Alison Gopnik, author of Scientist in the Crib, Philosophical Baby; professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley; and an internationally recognized leader in the study of children's learning and development. We were especially taken with what Dr. Gopnik said, given the exhibit we're planning for the Aseret Yemai Teshuva, the Ten Days of Repentance. We're juxtaposing student-collected verses from Devarim, Deuteronomy, about the possibility of repentance and bettering the self with students' favorite inventions from the MIT Media Lab. Frisch seniors learned about the MIT Media Lab in their summer reading book, The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices:

Dr. Gopnik writes:

We've found out that even very young children can already consider possibilities, distinguish them from reality, and even use them to change the world. They can imagine different ways the world might be in the future and use them to create plans. They can imagine different ways the world might have been in the past, and reflect on past possibilities. And, most dramatically, they can create completely imaginary worlds, wild fictions, and striking pretenses. 

Conventional wisdom suggests that knowledge and imagination, science and fantasy, are deeply different from one another -- even opposites. But the new ideas . . . show that exactly the same abilities that let children learn so much about the world also allow them to change the world -- to bring new worlds into existence -- and to imagine alternative worlds that may never exist at all. Children's brains create causal theories of the world, maps of how the world works. And these theories allow children to envisage new possibilities, and to imagine and pretend that the world is different. (26-27)


Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators, adds: "How do children learn such skills? In a word--through play" (27). 

So as we consider the possibilities of renewing and reinventing ourselves and the world, we should also keep in mind the vital role that play has in our lives and should have in our classrooms. We hope all students get to experience a year of joyful learning. 

Here's a sneak peek at the exhibit we're preparing, and thanks to Frisch Chumash teacher Mrs. Yael Goldfischer for having her students comb Devarim for quotations that inspired them to think of change, renewal, and repentance:

Frisch senior Eli chose a verse from Deuteronomy about the remission of debts
in order to show growth through economic renewal 

Another senior, Melissa, created an illustration of her favorite invention
from the MIT Media Lab, the iSet, which is a tool to help
those with autism to recognize facial expressions

For more on Devarim, click here. 

For more on the iSet, click here.

Thoughts for Aseret Yemai Teshuva, the Ten Days of Repentance

Something to think about this Yom Kippur when contemplating God's unity and His concern for mankind:

From Heschel's Man is not Alone:

According to Cicero: "The gods are careful about great things and neglect small ones" (De Natura Deorum. Book ii. ch. 66, 167). According to the prophets of Israel, from Moses to Malachi, God is concerned with small matters. What the prophets tried to convey to man was not a conception of an eternal harmony, of an unchangeable rhythm of wisdom, but the eternal perception of God's concern with concrete situations. Disclosing the pattern of history, in which the human is interwoven with the divine, they breathed a divine earnestness into the world of man.

In mythology the deities are thought of as self-seeking, as concerned with their own selves. Immortal, superior to man in power and wisdom, they are often inferior to man in morality. "Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all the things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another" (Xenophones).

The Bible tells us nothing about God in Himself; all its sayings refer to His relations to man. His own life and essence are neither told nor disclosed. We hear of no reflexive concern, of no passions, except a passion for justice. The only events in the life of God the Bible knows of are acts done for the sake of man: acts of creation, acts of redemption (from Ur, from Egypt, from Babylon), or acts of revelation.

Zeus is passionately interested in pretty female deities and becomes inflamed with rage against those who incite his jealousy. The God of Israel is passionately interested in widows and orphans.

RS Religious Identity: Some Elul Thoughts

As we approach the High Holidays, we want to contemplate the thoughts of various thinkers on why religion and the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) should matter to us. Here is Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in his Introduction to The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning:

Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. Both are necessary, but they are very different. . . . Whole civilisations made mistakes because they could not keep these two apart and applied to one the logic of the other.

When you treat things as if they were people, the result is myth: light is from the sun god, rain from the sky god, natural disasters from the clash of deities, and so on. Science was born when people stopped telling stories about nature and instead observed it; when, in short, they relinquished myth.

When you treat people as if they were things, the result is dehumanization: people categorised by colour, class or creed and treated differently as a result. The religion of Abraham was born when people stopped seeing people as objects and began to see each individual as unique, sacrosanct, the image of God. 

One of the most difficult tasks of any civilisation -- of any individual life, for that matter -- is to keep the two [science and religion] separate, but integrated and in balance. . . .

. . . [N]eo-Darwinian biologists and evolutionary psychologists have focused on the self, the 'I.' 'I' is what passes my genes on to the next generation. 'I' is what engages in reciprocal altruism, the seemingly selfless behaviour that actually serves self-centred ends. The market is about the choosing 'I.' The liberal democratic state is about the voting 'I.' The economy is about the consuming 'I.' But 'I,' like Adam long ago, is lonely. 'I' is bad at relationships. In a world of 'I's, marriages do not last. Communities erode. Loyalty is devalued. Trust grows thin. God is ruled out completely. In a world of clamorous egos, there is no room for God. 

So the presence or absence of God makes an immense difference to our lives. (2-5)