Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Where is the Spanish Course?


It has been a week that we are discussing a point that should be obvious: any high school, public or private, must have a real foreign language course. Not an online course, but a serious instructor course with live interaction, feedback, exams, and peer learning. Online courses are not what private schools are all about. They can be taken at home, without paying a school tuition, or even going to school.

The mark of a good school is not how much money in scholarships it collects or gives, but in the quality and the achievements of its students. In the 24 years of being parents of Beren Academy students, the question of having or not having a foreign language course never came up, and we never needed to discuss the merit and importance of it with the previous administrations. To deprive the students of this important part of curriculum is to diminish their chances of getting into good universities, and excelling in their future careers.

Our four older children excelled in foreign languages in high school. It was a powerful factor in their receiving scholarships at Brandeis, Yale, and other universities. Our older daughters teach Jewish children from many countries and talk to them in their native tongues. On many occasions they expressed deep gratitude to us and the school for their multi-language education. They touched lives of many Jews from around the world and continue to do so.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Let's make this a private blog.

I've done alot of thinking about this blog, and I think it has the potential to do great good for and great harm to the school. Things like this can engender great constructive debate, but even the best-intentioned debate about any problems at our school can give the wrong impression to outsiders who are trying to evaluate our school. I would strongly suggest that we make the READING of this blog as invitation-only, as well as posting. In addition, I would suggest restricting invitations to present & past parents and current staff & teachers, and possible carefully-selected others.

I would also suggest disabling all sharing of posts, to minimize the likelihood of people's comments being spread farther than they intend.

I think the use of a forum like this is a terrific idea, but they can, if we are not careful, degenerate into very destructive tools.

Comments?

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Welcome to the blog!

Dear parents and friends, welcome to the blog!

This is the place for all of us to share our thoughts, concerns, ideas and suggestions regarding the school matters - academic, social, etc. Everyone can write and comment openly and freely.

Please bookmark this page or add this blog to your RSS reader (for example, Google Reader).

Sincerely, Mark and Helena Kerzner (parents of Ester and Rebecca)