Dear Friends,
When I took the role of head of school I told our staff that our motto will be “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade”. I had no idea at the time just how many lemons life would be handing us all and just how hard it would be to make this much lemonade.
At AHA we have been fortunate to have had our board and donors previously fund much of our technology infrastructure so it was already somewhat in place with iPads for each student with Google Virtual Classrooms when the order came to change our program location from school to home.
This combined with our more easily managed size school and flexible educational staff allowed us to be nimble and pivot quickly to delivering a quality distance learning education program seamlessly.
Of course, our students’ familiarity with technology helped immensely as digital natives like them helped digital immigrants such as myself navigate platforms like Google Classroom and Zoom with a few bumps along the way.
Thankfully, for the most part, our students are engaged in daily learning and more importantly safe. Based on feedback from many of our families we have helped provide a structured schedule for students on a daily basis that helps parents juggle the new normal at home and at work.
I want to give special thanks to staff members who are also parents of students who have had to juggle the needs of family and school sometimes simultaneously.
There are too many people to mention, but the Jewish day school community has much to be proud of around the world and in Charleston for rising to the occasion to meet these unprecedented challenges.
Please let me take this opportunity to wish you and your family a safe, healthy and happy month of Nissan. Hopefully, the Spring month of redemption and rebirth that began yesterday will herald what Rav Kook called “Aviv HaOlam – Springtime of the World.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Elisha Paul
PS – For anyone looking for a fun clip on how kids can deal with Carona isolation, please click here.
