SHABBAT SHALOM. Friday, March 2, 2018 Vol. 14 # Adar 5778 CALENDAR OF EVENTS. A Message from the Principal Mrs.

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1 Hasten Hebrew Academy of Indianapolis 6602 Hoover Road Indianapolis, IN Friday, March 2, 2018 Vol. 14 #22 SHABBAT SHALOM Friday, March 2, 2018 Saturday, March 3, Adar 5778 Candle Lighting 6:17 p.m. Shabbat Ends after 7:39 p.m. A Message from the Principal Mrs. Miriam Gettinger Typically we ask children to name their favorite color, number or favorite food and hear a chorus of blue, seven and pizza. When asked what their favorite school activity is they unanimously respond with recess or outdoor play unless of course they are Middle Schoolers who will avoid outdoor recess at any cost and clamor instead for study halls. But the most telling response of all is when we ask students to identify their favorite letter and go on to explain their choice. Most select an initial letter in their names while some creative iconoclasts select Q or Z daring to be different. Personally, I am partial to the letter P as it is a balanced line and round shaped middle of the pack letter going with the flow with the alphabet with just a tad of peculiarity to rate 3 points in a Scrabble game. It is the letter of the writing implements pen and pencil, the letter of professionalism, power, purchase, play, ponder and persuasion as well as the hallmark of personality. This is the season of P the Jewish holidays of the past and the present in Purim and Pesach, the math date of 3.14/PI and the local pothole blitz and Principal for a day! Moving beyond the whimsical, I have often reflected that in the world of educational rating, we would be well served to record three distinct P s on student report cards- performance, process and progress and most significantly not conflate or average them together. Performance ratings parallel grades of student achievement and do not reflect aptitude or effort expended and critically do not measure student growth trajectory over time. They resemble a still photograph rather than a dynamic photo album capturing different poses and diverse angles of the subject. Process refers to those habits of mind and significant soft skills underscoring successful academic and socioemotional growth such as grit, resilience, iteration, learning from failure, collaboration, executive functioning and time management. Ironically, these process skills may be far more valuable in predicting future student success and more closely aligned with employers quest for drive and leadership than traditional grades. Progress, the elusive line graph denoting student cognitive growth over a trimester or year of study is perhaps most valuable of all in informing instruction, a portfolio of student work samples over a period of time which measure genuine growth and improvement yielding fluency and mastery of skills. Yet I would venture to add three additional P s to share with parents and students alike in charting their educational growth- prioritization, passion and positivity. The ability to self-assess, reflect and regulate internal dialogue in understanding what truly matters in the myriad tasks before us and what we ought let go of, to judge what belongs on the to do list for today versus what is a long range goal to be strategically managed will be the hallmark of our students future success. Significantly, the passion they exude for learning independently CALENDAR OF EVENTS Homework Club for grades 4-8 will meet Monday - Thursday next week. Grades 1-3 will meet Wednesday. NO homework club on MONDAY. The next scrip order will be placed on March 6 Orders will be here on March 9. Please call Toni at ext. 158 to place an order. Woman of Valor Program Kaleidoscope March 6 7:00 pm Second Grade Winter Journal Celebration March 9 10:00 am Parent/Teacher Conferences March 13 1:30-7:00 All School 1:00 pm Dismissal Rosh Chodesh Program - Nissan Featuring 1st grade March 19 at 8:30 am and following their unique natural curiosities will ultimately define their actualization of potential. Finally, our children s positivity in the face of an ever darker and more fragile society will anchor them and allow them to continuously dream big. Alas, P is also the letter of perfectionism, the obsessive drive to excellence which propels us to overthink and to perseverate.it is time to let this article go to press!

2 Parshat Ki Tisa By Rabbi Berel Wein Artist of the Week By Mrs. MaryEllen Fellegy In this week's Torah reading we learn of the ingredients and mixture that created the incense offering in the Holy Temple. The list of ingredients and its formula are transmitted to us through the words of the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud. The ingredients and measurements were to be exact and any deviation from the established formula rendered the offering unacceptable. The incense offering differs from all other Temple offerings because of the fact that it is ephemeral and physically nonexistent. It literally goes up in smoke. However, it leaves a fragrance that is so powerful that, as the Talmud explains, the animal kingdom as far away as Jericho was affected by this fragrance. Congratulations to eighth grader Yael Cohen! Eighth grade students continue to work on an exciting project that requires cutting into a rubber soft-kut printing block. After a design or image is sketched on paper it is transferred onto this rubber block. The image is then retraced in black sharpie. All of the negative space is carved out carefully using linoleum cutters of different widths. Colored paper is then pressed on to the inked surface to produce a print! This process can be repeated over and over again. Please come see Yael s print of an ice cream cone next to the EC Library! There are those who say that the miracle attributed to the Temple in the book of Avot, that no flies appeared on the temple grounds even though it was basically a meat slaughterhouse, was due to the wafting of the smoke that emanated from the incense offering on a daily basis. Be that as it may be, there is no doubt that the incense offering was meant to be a protective measure for the Jewish people. We find later in the Bible that it was used to diffuse plagues that were brought upon the people because of their intransigence and sins. It nevertheless was a lethal offering, which if done improperly and/or without authorization, brought death upon those who practiced it. We see this from the story of the sons of Aaron and from the even greater tragedy of the destruction of Korach and his followers. The incense offering was a purely spiritual event. It was smoke and air. It left a powerful fragrance, but though it could be appreciated and even internalized it could not be touched or felt by human hands. The service of God is often purely spiritual, characterized by love, devotion and faith. These are not traits that can be held in one's hands or subject to storage. The very vagueness of these necessary spiritual traits makes them difficult to define, let alone observe. And these spiritual traits need to be handled carefully and with proper judgment. Too much faith can lead to poor decisions and a naïve view of life and religion. Not enough faith will only lead to pessimism and permanent disappointment. The same is true for all other spiritual traits they are necessary for the correct service of God but they can be easily mishandled and misinterpreted. The Torah purposely defined its physical commandments. These definitions apply even to the spiritual commandments as well. The Torah gives forth a fragrance a fragrance of goodness, kindness and a whiff of eternity. Though we no longer have the ability to offer incense on a daily basis, we do have the ability to serve our Creator, in a spiritual sense, with our minds and hearts and souls. Though these may not be physically reflective to others, Heaven recognizes them clearly. It is our incense offering. Shabbat shalom Rabbi Berel Wein 2

3 By Lonica Solomon Hello HHAI Families and Friends! It s been a dreary few flu-ish weeks for many of our students and teachers. The four day weekend was a boon for some who needed extra rest while for others it provided respite from a time when we go to school in the dark and sometimes come home in the dark too. We teachers in the middle school team suspected that returning from this long winter weekend would be a sleepy and reluctant transition. And so we hatched out plans to blow out the schedule (as we tend to do for our Integration Days ) and have some fun with our own Winter Olympics! Each advisory was assigned a different landmass of pretended origin, and each student chose a country within it to represent for a day of games. The Blue Advisory was Africa, the Green Advisory was Eurasia, and the Red Advisory was South America. When students arrived Tuesday morning, they donned the costumes they had put together, held the flags they had drawn, and paraded into the CAC for the opening ceremonies. Each presented their country, explained their costume, and told us a fun fact about where they were from, while our panel of distinguished judges (Mr. Moalem, Mrs. Gettinger, and Mr. Voskoboynik) scored them on flag, dress, and presentation. After the opening ceremonies, we broke into our three groups and prepared students for three more competitions. For math/science, students learned about the physics of bobsledding and drew up design schematics for their own bobsleds. In humanities, students learned about poetry and the art of the spoken word. Each chose their own poem and began practicing for the competitive performance to come. When students gathered in Judaics, they reviewed their knowledge of Jewish history and geography in anticipation of their own Amazing Race. With the proper mental training under their belts, it was time to gather in the gym for the most Olympic-esque events of the day: After a nice long lunch/ recessfor during which our athletes could recharge, half our students went to see Mrs. Fellegy to learn about the meticulous craft of Korean bookmark-making. The other half met with the math/science team in the makerspace to build their bobsleds. After 30 minutes, the two groups switched. Bookmarks and bobsleds built, the contenders were ready to face off in the final 3 events of the day for which they had spent the morning preparing: Bobsledding, the Poetry Slam, and the Jewish version of the Amazing Race. Their bookmarks were laid out in gallery form to be judged separately. When all was said and done, the scores were tallied and our winners picked. Closing ceremonies took place in the library before elective the next day. If you see any of our winners (listed below), please congratulate them on their medals! However, whether students were picked as winners or not, they all had a great time and supported one another in every competition. Scores from the opening ceremonies and the PE events were grouped together for each advisory so that the final medals were given to the advisories as a whole. They are currently hanging next to our posters in the MS hallway. We know our athletes enjoyed the journey more than the destination, and we hope they will take that message and run with it. 3

4 By Amanda Mazelin During the last two full weeks of February, in conjunction with the Winter Olympics, the HHAI Elementary School participated in their own version with the "HHAI Academic Olympics". Just as the official Olympic games celebrate cooperation and unity through sports, our HHAI Olympics goals were to promote classroom unity and develop the traits of good sportsmanship within our students. Our school games began with unity-building activities in all grades, Kindergarten - 5th. Each class discussed which colors represented their personalities and voted on class colors to be used in the creation of their classroom flag. On the day of the opening ceremonies, we began with a parade of athletes. The students marched into the gym with their grade level as John William's "Olympic Fanfare" played. Each class wore their classroom colors and followed their classroom flag which was upheld by flag bearers who were voted upon by their peers. We listened to one another as each class's spokesman explained their grade's choice of colors and the symbolism displayed on their flag. Over the next two weeks, six academic events were held. Two athletes per classroom participated in each event. Classes were rewarded for their participation with gold, silver, bronze, and (the most coveted) sportsmanship medals. First came the reading event, in which each class's athletes read aloud a differentiated poem for the elementary audience and displayed their reading fluency, expression, and presentation skills. The second event was incorporating writing and grammar. The athletes for this event wrote down a sentence that was dictated to them and then those sentences were evaluated upon their corresponding Indiana standards to determine medal awards. The third event was our most joyful- the PE event. The student body had a fantastic time cheering on the athletes as they participated in a "cross country skiing" race. We split this race into two heats. The kindergarten, first and second grades competed against each other in a relay from one end of the gym to the other. It was a heartwarming moment when the EN- TIRE elementary cheered our last athlete across the finish line. The third, fourth, and fifth graders had a bit of a bigger challenge- they raced each other by "skiing" through an obstacle course where some hilarious moments came to pass. Our fourth event was the sci- 4 MakerSpace event in which the athletes had to use a set of given materials to create a ramp from which their skier (a marble) could make a jump for distance with the longest jump being designated the winner. This allowed our students the opportunity to build, problem solve, and make use of their math and physics skills. Next came the art event. Our athletes were charged with decorating the classroom doors with the purpose of informing our school audience about one trait of good sportsmanship. The doors were judged upon how fully and clearly they communicated their one trait with organization and presentation being taken into account. We concluded our games with a closing ceremony. In a display of unity and cooperation, the students entered the ceremony as one elementary unit rather than individual classrooms and displayed their positive school morale by wearing their HHAI spirit wear. Each grade level received a certificate acknowledging their collective accomplishments in the games and each student received a certificate for their enthusiastic participation. The students responded to this event positively. A watchful eye was kept on the medal count bulletin board located in the elementary hallway and excitement was generated as the awards and recognition were displayed. Teachers reported many instances of peer encouragement, positive partnerships, moments of bravery, and student comments about the joy of participating which highlighted our goal of teaching our students that a good sport has fun because they enjoy playing the game more than the final outcome. Menu Fare March 5-9 The institution is an equal opportunity provider.

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6 Early Childhood Purim By Miriam Gluck Excitement filled the air all week long as the Early Childhood children eagerly prepared for Purim. Classes engaged in a variety of activities including making graggers, creating megillahs, talking about emotions, preparing mishloach manot baskets, and baking hamantashen and Purim shaped cookies. On Thursday, we celebrated Purim with lots of fun activities. The day s festivities started with classes spending time in the bounce house. After refueling with snack, the children had the opportunity to see a real megillah and hear part of it being read by R Schusterman. Making lots of noise when hearing Haman s name was, as always, a highlight. Next Ms. Ruti led everyone in a fantastic musical costume parade followed by a Purim sing along. Afterwards, classes rotated between three Purim themed stations. At the mini-carnival station, children enjoyed playing different carnival games including Purim Buckets, Tic-tac toe, and Traffic Light Toss. At the art station, children had the chance to decorate masks as wells as use loose parts at the light table to create beautiful crown pictures. Finally, building King Achashveirosh s castle using a wide variety of materials took place at the construction station. We wrapped up the morning with a delicious chicken nugget lunch and yummy Hamantasch dessert. It was another fantastic Purim at HHAI, filled with lots of bright smiles. 6

7 HHAI Middle School Girls present Kaleidoscope An evening of song, dance and drama depicting achievements of diverse Jewish women from Biblical to contemporary. Tuesday March 6, :00 pm Dessert Refreshments catered by Dina Hasten 7