Why is Mensch Academy different from all other academies?

Social Emotional Learning Social emotional learning is the foundation for everything we do, and the way we do it. We open and close the day as a community, greeting each other, praying together, and celebrating our successes. We use learning modalities that allow kids to work on listening to each other, collaborating, asking and answering each other’s questions

Staff and students welcome each other and pray together

Kids Choose While everyone has the same learning goals, kids reach those goals in different ways Some kids might interpret text through drawing, others through acting, and others through writing Low staff:student ratio makes this possible

Kids choose how they will learn

Intensive Learning Around a Theme There are 1-2 big idea themes that we dive into each year Each theme takes us through the idea as it is represented in the Torah, in rabbinic literature, modern commentaries, and in our own lives

Learning Through a Theme Above: Students plan how they would act out Exodus chapter 1, and think about how each character might feel. Left: Students try to understand the meaning of the word ger, by investigating 10 different Biblical verses with that word

Real World Connections + Problem Solving Each theme is connected to a real problem that we are trying to solve. Since January, we have been studying the “stranger” and thinking about our responsibilities as Jews toward them. We will end the year with a project devoted to how we can best care for the stranger as a Mensch Academy community.

Stats Students: 15 kids, 11 families Staff: 3rd: 7 4th: 2 5th: 2 Ilana + Lauren 3 Part-Time Teachers Now, 2 Part-Time Teachers

Challenges Space We have a beautiful space, and kids have made it their own. It’s small--we can only have one cohort in it per session, so we need to meet multiple nights per week. We cannot have more than 20 kids/night Working with part-time staff Scheduling issues Not enough time to train them fully in our work

Successes Families are happy! Some Parent Quotes: “I’m learning to celebrate more and enjoy being Jewish and life in general in a new way because of the work that you do” “My children now generalize and extend their Jewish learning to experiences in their daily lives; they are also deeply engaged in the process of discovering their individual “passion” as Jews (e.g. Hebrew language, text interpretation, artistic expression).” “My daughters actually come home and talk about what they learned, ask questions, ask us our opinions, and our experience there has opened the opportunity to have conversations I know we would not otherwise have had.”

Looking Ahead: 2017-18 NEW: Pre-K + Kindergarten Monthly Cohort (Sunday Mornings with Parents) NEW: 1st-3rd graders Tuesdays after school 4th-6th graders Wednesdays after school 7th graders Wednesdays after school

Recruitment Plan 2017-18 Goal: 36 Mensch Academy Students in 2017-18. 21 new students 7th: 2 (no new) 4th-6th: 14 (1 new) (16-18 max) 1st-3rd: 12 (16 max) PreK-K: 8 (16 max)