1 The Monthly Roar INSIDE THIS ISSUE Important Dates ...........2 2019-20 Re-enrollment Deadlines ………………..3 Development ……......4-5 AJA Happenings & PTO…………...….…....6-7 After school activities & more!.......................8-14 25 Shevat 5779 January 31, 2019 LETTER FROM OUR PRINCIPAL Dear Parents, At the heart of project-based learning is the component that compels students and teachers to work toward efforts beyond their classrooms. Learning begins in classrooms, among peers, situated in a community of scholars. When the lessons we explore indoors carries children beyond the walls of their familiar spaces, then we can expect transformative education. While we seek to take our learning out into the world, the adage that charity begins at home couldn’t ring more true. This month, our children have partnered with Shalom Austin’s Early Childhood Program (ECP) for Shabbat programming, sharing with them Tu BiSh’vat AJA-style and sprouting up smiles as we danced in a pre- show Lion King performance. Together, the kindergarten and ECP children marched in a Torah parade to the ark where Torah scrolls are kept in Congregation Agudas Achim. They are our family, and we are seizing every opportunity to serve them as partners on this campus. It is easier to love the people we know, our neighbors and those next door. The members of our National Junior Honors Society are accepting the charge that leaders in our local and national Jewish community have commissioned to us by loving those we don’t (yet) know. In January, I had the opportunity to hear more than a half- dozen rabbis speak about the mitzvah of ahavat ger, loving the stranger. Under the guidance of middle school teacher Kathy Rosenmann, AJA children in each grade and their families have collected many of the elements to fill a home. From trash bins to linens to pots and pans, our community has shown their commitment to a family that we do not yet know. The greatest resource we can supply to a refugee family to transform their new house (or apartment, in this case) into a home like each of ours is love. Kol haKavod! Thank you for your partnership in transforming this world into a warm home. Chris
Transcript
1
The Monthly Roar
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Important Dates .......... .2
2019-20 Re-enrollment
Deadlines ………………..3
Development ……......4-5
AJA Happenings &
PTO…………...….…....6-7
After school activities &
more!.......................8-14
25 Shevat 5779
January 31, 2019
LETTER FROM OUR PRINCIPAL
Dear Parents,
At the heart of project-based learning is the component that compels students and teachers to work toward efforts beyond their classrooms. Learning begins in classrooms, among peers, situated in a community of scholars. When the lessons we explore indoors carries children beyond the walls of their familiar spaces, then we can expect transformative education.
While we seek to take our learning out into the world, the adage that charity begins at home couldn’t ring more true. This month, our children have partnered with Shalom Austin’s Early Childhood Program (ECP) for Shabbat programming, sharing with them Tu BiSh’vat AJA-style and sprouting up smiles as we danced in a pre-show Lion King performance. Together, the kindergarten and ECP children marched in a Torah parade to the ark where Torah scrolls are kept in Congregation Agudas Achim. They are our family, and we are seizing every opportunity to serve them as partners on this campus.
It is easier to love the people we know, our neighbors and those next door. The members of our National Junior Honors Society are accepting the charge that leaders in our local and national Jewish community have commissioned to us by loving those we don’t (yet) know. In January, I had the opportunity to hear more than a half-dozen rabbis speak about the mitzvah of ahavat ger, loving the stranger. Under the guidance of middle school teacher Kathy Rosenmann, AJA children in each grade and their families have collected many of the elements to fill a home. From trash bins to linens to pots and pans, our community has shown their commitment to a family that we do not yet know. The greatest resource we can supply to a refugee family to transform their new house (or apartment, in this case) into a home like each of ours is love. Kol haKavod!
Thank you for your partnership in transforming this world into a warm home.
It is an honor and privilege to write this letter to you, and I do so proudly both as the Founder of the school and as the parent of two AJA alumni.
My husband Mike and I moved to Austin when our boys were age six and two. When asked to join a Federation taskforce to deter-mine the feasibility and viability of a Jewish Day School in Austin (way back in 1995), I jumped at the opportunity. I will spare you the details of that process, and simply share that I fell in love with the idea of creating a school in which we could blend the best of educational practice with joyful Jewish living and learning.
Over the next couple years, our living room became command central for brainstorming sessions, committee meetings, gatherings of interested community members, interviews for potential teachers, etc. Many people opened their own homes to invite their friends and neighbors to learn more about the soon-to-be-opening Austin Jewish Community Day School, as it was then called. We learned from community members what mattered most to them (excellence in general and Jewish education and a safe sense of community), and we worked hard at expanding the circle of “builders” of the school. It was thrilling and exciting, and yes…a bit exhausting!
We were very fortunate to have received one of two inaugural grants from the newly formed Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE), an organization formed to help establish new Jewish day schools around the country. We were given a $300,000 matching grant, distributed over four years. When we raised the dollars, we received matching funds. It was an important oppor-tunity, and our community stepped up in a significant way! Due to the generosity of PEJE, our local community donors, and the partnership of Congregation Agudas Achim, all of the local rabbis and the Jewish Community Association of Austin (now Shalom Austin), we were able to open our doors to 18 students in K-2nd grade with fabulous teachers, new and state-of-the-art curriculum, and a sense of stability and pride. The next year we expanded our school to include K-5th grades, and within five years, we grew, a grade at a time, through 8th grade.
Those first few years were heady and exciting times for AJA. We moved from our original location at the former Congregation Agudas Achim to the brand-new Dell Jewish Community Campus. We received accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. We continued to grow, and we continued to build our community. Our dedicated board worked incredibly hard to advance the school’s strong foundation. Scores of parents stepped up to help in every conceivable way—establishing a par-ent committee to support teachers and administrators, fielding committees to address the ongoing business of the school, holding successful community-wide fundraising events, driving on field trips, establishing a kosher hot lunch program, to name just a few. It wasn’t perfect. As Chaim Potok taught, “All beginnings are hard.” But “hard” led to great success and satisfaction. Our precious school was (and is) a place of excellence in education supported by a committed, and incredibly dedicated community of builders who cared deeply about the success of the school. A mentor of mine once said to me, “Dana, schools are very fragile organisms…whether they’ve been around for 2 years or 20 years or 50 years. They need intentional care and feeding!” Our founding students, faculty and staff, families and donors built the school and felt the pride of “ownership” that comes with creating something. Austin Jewish Academy—now in its 21st year of in-spiring and educating the next generation of scientists, rabbis, artists, mathematicians, doctors, professors, lawyers, innovators, teachers, musicians, designers, etc.—continues to benefit from intentional care and feeding.
Please consider yourselves essential partners in AJA’s ongoing process of creation. Don’t be strangers. Contact the school to see how your talents can be put to use in support of AJA. Spread the word that AJA alumni have gone on to thrive in high schools, in universities around the world, in their chosen professions and in leadership positions in their communities. And please, please join Mike and me in financially investing generously in AJA. The dollars you invest today will continue to reverberate well into the fu-ture—in Austin and wherever AJA alumni call home.
Dana Dana Baruch, Founder
A LETTER FROM OUR FOUNDER
6
AJA HAPPENINGS PROJECT-BASED LEARNING, SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING, AND JEWISH STUDIES
This month we marched to honor Martin Luther King,
furnished a home for a refugee family, held a learner’s funeral
service for the words “I Can’t”, participated in the Souper
Bowl of Caring by building models with cans of food that will
be donated to the Central Texas Food Bank, celebrated with
our fifth grade students as they
received their Tikkun, and roared
with the Lion King Musical.
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PTO MEETING
WEDNESDAY,
February 6 8 PM
Winter W
onderland Family Fun Pictures!
MESSAGE FROM THE PARENT TEACHER
ORGANIZATION
What an amazing time we had at the Winter Wonderland dinner and dance! Thank you to everyone who attended. With over 140 people in attendance, it was a great fundraising success!
Special thanks to the Dance Co-Chairs, Mandy Clairfield and Jessica Frein, to the Hensley Family for sponsoring the candy bar, to the Levy Family for sponsoring the face painting, and to Alisa Marrow for donating her photography services.
Please join us for our next PTO meeting on Wednesday, February 6
from 8-9am in the Library. We look forward to seeing everyone there!
Cheers, Lillian Schwartz and Dana Nisenfeld AJA PTO Co-Chairs
