"Getting to Know You; Getting to Know All About You"

Some of you may recognize the song lyrics above from "The King and I" Broadway musical. They describe exactly what we did yesterday morning at JQuest. The song continues, "Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me." And I think we succeeded - at least that's what it looked like to me.

We met upstairs in the Social Hall, where a sumptuous pancake breakfast was set out. As each student and his/her parent(s) came to our Edot table to sign in, I had a chance to meet most of our new students (a few couldn't join us yesterday) and welcome back our returning students.

Here I am with Kyra, one of my fabulous Avodah TA's, waiting to greet everyone.

And here are 3 of our returning students, connecting after a long summer (or perhaps seeing each other again since Camp Kefli ended a few weeks ago).

Plenty of food for plenty of people!

Once everyone had a chance to eat and schmooze, all the students joined their teachers and went down to the classrooms, while Rabbi Greninger spoke to the parents about our focus this year on Jewish middot - values.

Once in the classroom, we immediately set about getting to know each other by means of an activity called "Name Tag Matchmaker."

Each student chose a colored index card, then found his/her printed name label to attach to the center of the card.

Then each corner was filled in by answering four prompts I read out: "Two things I like to do for fun are...";"My two favorite movies are..."; "My two favorite singers or bands are..."; and "Two positive adjectives that describe me are...".

Once all the responses to the prompts were written down, we began to share to find out more about each other and our interests. Everyone shared enthusiastically.

Now that we had begun to learn each other's names and what we liked to do, etc., it was time to play "The Shekel Game." This is a group betting game which we'll be playing after each major unit of study. It's fun for the students, and gives me a chance to assess if most of the students recall important information and ideas that we discussed in class.

Each group chooses a treasurer to handle the money (we use copies of actual Israeli shekels in use there today), a reporter who is responsible for giving the answer the group decides upon, and a recorder, who records the amount of money the group bets.

For this first game, I used questions relating to subjects the students learned in the 3rd and 4th grade tracks. Once I ask the question, they have 30 seconds to decide together upon the answer. I was very impressed with how much they recalled.

Taking a quick break to pose for a "candid" shot.

We only had about 50 minutes together before it was time to go back upstairs, this time to the Sanctuary to meet the rest of the school and parents for our first tefillah (prayer) session of the school year. 

Here's to a wonderful year of getting to know and like each other even better, to learning about the diversity of our Jewish world, and to building a strong set of Jewish values that our students will always be able to fall back on in good times and bad.

The Yiddish word that summarizes what we hope to impart to our students and families at JQuest is "Menschlichkeit" (literally, "the condition of being a mensch). What is a "mensch?" That's an answer we will all search for together in our Jewish Quest!