The Rachel Chronicles

Exploration Week

In my attempt to catch up on the past few weeks, here's what I might have written, had I had the time, a few weeks ago. 

Exploration Week at Gann was quite the experience! It came close to what kishroniyah at Camp Ramah is like, but it was way better, way more extensive, and way bigger. I even got to learn a new quilting technique!

There are three tracks of Exploration Week - overnight trips, day trips, and Exploration University. Overnight trips and day trips are fairly self-explanatory. Exploration University, or EU as we call it, is a mini-university. Students pick two courses to take, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They learn a subject in depth each day. I taught a course on t-shirt quilts - students each brought in a pile of t-shirts and created quilts out of them. Other courses were a class on making hovercrafts, clock making, psychology, water purification, a capella, indoor soccer, and many many more!

Here are some pictures:

This was Naomi (class of '09)'s t-shirt quilt. She is going to college for fashion design, so she already knew how to sew in straight lines! It was quite the impressive quilt. Other students decided not to put batting (ie. the stuffing) inside the quilt, but Naomi wanted to - and her's looks and feels like a warm, cuddly comforter. 

This is a quilt, using the new quilting technique that we all learned from Anita R.G., make by Yael. The theme was based on the Hebrew line "Mashiv haruach, u'marid ha'gashem", which praises God for making the wind blow and the rain fall". What is particularly amazing to me about this piece of artwork is that it was designed in many layers. She created the back layer out of dark, grayish fabrics. Then on top of that, she pieced the rain and the grass. Finally, she drew the wind in. 

Here's another example of a quilt using the same technique. I also posted this picture here, on the Birkat HaChamah blog. 

This is the Grandfather Clock that some of our kids built. 

One of our classes learned about water purification, made WAPIs to send to third world countries, and built this oven, in which they cooked corn bread!

These are just a few of the amazing paintings that were produced by our Artist Studio class. I would love to hang the lily pad painting in my apartment!

This is one of the pinatas that were made - and behind it are a number of ceramic pots made in a pottery class. 

Lastly, these are some of the very impressive glasses made by our class on glass blowing. I wish I were able to staff that course! 

New Blog for you to read

The way my job at Gann seems to work is that before a current project is even over, the next one has begun. And thus, I am introducing you to something new that I am working on, without finishing telling you about Purim, Exploration week, or prom (which is coming up this weekend). Confusing, I know. But welcome to my life.

On April 8, the Jewish community will say Birkat Hachamah - a blessing we say only once every 28 years. Because school won't be in session for it, we wanted to find other ways to educate and excite the school community. So a friend and I put together a blog about the sun. Its highly entertaining. And informative. Well, for me, anyway. Did you know that They Might Be Giants wrote a second sun song, recanting their view that the sun is a mass of incandescent gas? See? There are things to be learned on this blog.

You may notice that I am the less funny, less entertaining author. I'm comfortable with that role. In fact, I embrace it. I enjoy other people's funniness. You should too. Check out our new blog, Say Birkat HaChamah.

Crawling out of my hole

My thesis is DONE and HANDED IN!
I am quite proud of my finished product and am excited to get feedback on it.

I have so much to share with you about the past few weeks. I've known for a while now that the month of March would be crazy, and its not over yet. Gann's Prom will be next Sunday night, and then life should be a bit less crazy.

In the past month I've:
* run a Purim program (6 hours for 350 people)
* facilitated Exploration Week for Gann and taught a T-shirt quilt making course
* finished a thesis (yay!)
* learned a new quilting technique
* broke my sewing machine
* was tempted to buy a new one
* planned a prom that will run next week
* gone to a cousin's bar mitzvah and next week, I'll officiate at another one

Pictures and more information should come soon. In the meantime, head over to iTunes and look up the Anderson Cooper (AC 360) podcast from March 16. Gann students are featured during their week of volunteering in New Orleans. It was a pretty special week.

Civic Pride and Responsibility

At Gann, the theme for the year is Civic Pride and Responsibility, which goes nicely with the fact that it is an election year.

Last Thursday, I was lucky enough to join the 11th grade on a trip up to New Hampshire to visit the two candidates' campaign sites.

The two sites were drastically different, and I wonder if connections could be made between how the campaigns are run (and what the offices look like) and the candidates themselves.

[For full disclosure, this was a group of kids who are mostly democratic, although certainly not all. They have been broken up into different groups for the mock election that the school will be having - so we traveled with a few Nader and Bard "supporters" as well!]

We went to McCain's headquarters first. And it truly was the headquarters for all of New Hampshire, if not also all of New England (I don't really remember). It was in a converted old factory building - really quite beautiful. The entrance to the offices had flags and signs, and looked very presidential. They also had plenty of gigantic signs to give out, and upon promising to display it at school, the students got to take one home.  Below they are posing with the sign and with our tour guide (second from the left).

Excited as they were for the free campaign signs, no one raised their hands when Megan, our tour guide, asked if anyone was interested in volunteering for the campaign.

Obama's site looked much different. It was far less polished, and all the signs were hand-painted. That said, it was only one of many campaign sites in New Hampshire (let alone the rest of New England). I do believe that it was the head quarters of the Obama campaign in New Hampshire, but it certainly was not serving the entire state on its own.

Rather than being talked to outside in the parking lot (which actually had been quite an interesting and enlightening experience, so I'm not complaining), we went into an unfinished room upstairs in the Obama campaign. We got to see a few role plays (and even do one of our own) for the phone calls that the campaign makes. We got to learn what a campaign managers does day-in-and-day-out. And ultimately, we were given the opportunity to do our own volunteering.

Not every student chose to volunteer, but most did. Some made phone calls, some stuffed packets, and some wrote postcards. I joined the post card group and wrote to about 15 Manchester families - as well as one Merrimack family (my aunt and uncle) and one Easton, MA family (my parents).

I think a fun time was had by all - but at the same time, it was an educational experience where we all learned something. Many thanks to both campaigns for sharing their time with us, and showing us what it takes to get a president elected.

An Experiential Education Weekend - Part 1

My entire weekend was over-flowing with experiential education. It was a bit of EE overload! But since I love experiential education, I loved this weekend! It was lots of fun, and I want to share a few moments of it with you.

Since I have so much to share, I'll do this in two-parts.

Here's part 1:

Last Thursday, the Gann freshmen and seniors headed up to Camp Young Judea (CYJ), for the first day of a weekend retreat. The sophomores and juniors joined them on Friday. I headed up early, both to help the rest of the EE team set up, and also because it became clear days earlier that we would need to rebuild the eruv, so I picked up 150 2''x4''s from a local Home Depot.

It was quite the undertaking to build the eruv (and aside from buying the supplies, I had little to do with it). The 9th graders helped out by systematically screwing eye-hooks into the top of each plank, so there was something to weave the wire through. It was quite a help, and I'm sure it lessened the burden on the people building the eruv. It was a beautiful educational moment, to see an entire grade help build something that is deemed necessary by only a small fraction of the people at the Shabbaton.

That night, I went into all the girls bunks to say good-night. I figured that since we were at camp, we could have a bed-time ritual. After going into all but one bunk, having had mostly successful moments of saying the Shema together (a beautiful tradition that happens at Camp Ramah), I walked back into a bunk that hadn't been ready for me the first time I went in. They still weren't quite ready for me, but since I was sort of done waiting, I suggested that we pause what we were doing, and say the Shema anyway. I wasn't expecting full participation, because, well, these were 16 year old girls in the middle of brushing their teeth, rifling through their backpacks, and chatting. But for one brief moment, everything stopped. They stopped brushing their teeth, talking, looking through their bags, etc. They stopped, stood up, and said the Shema with me. It was really a beautiful moment. Of course as soon as we were done, they went back to what they had been doing -but it was really special that they all joined in together.

My last moment, from the Gann retreat, that I want to share happened on Saturday. In the morning, a teacher taught a beautiful song to one of the prayer groups. It went over so well, that in the afternoon, he taught it to the entire school. The words are "Ilu Finu Ma'leh Shira K'yam". It is a three part melody, and truly, I can't stop singing it. The words translate to 'Even if our mouths were filled with song like the sea', and the rest of the prayer goes on to say, 'still, we would not be able to thank you, God'.

When we had 350 people singing, whole-heartedly, this song, I couldn't help but wonder what could be higher praise of God. It was like our mouths were oceans of song, praising and thanking God. It has been a long long time since I've had a moment as powerfully spiritual as that one.

You can listen to and Download 11 Ilu Finu (Were Our Mouths Oceans of Song) by clicking on the link . I plan to teach it at Rosh Hashanah services, and I hope that my congregation can attain even a little bit of the spirituality that was so evident and possible at Gann's retreat.

The Coolness Factor

Last week, I bought a headband (as seen in the picture, but mine is white). I thought it was funky, kind of different, and at the same time, I thought it would liven up an outfit a bit. When I showed it to my mom, she said, "its very experiential!"  And thus I proceeded to look for other accessories that would go with my new job, in the EE (experiential education) office of Gann Academy.

After that purchase, I had an interesting conversation about how there was a hope (at least in my supervisor's head!) that my presence at Gann's trad/egal (traditional egalitarian) minyan would up its popularity, seeing as I'm pretending to  be cool and young. And really, that got me thinking...

Who the heck hired me to be cool?!?! I mean, I know that there is more to this job than being cool, but it sure seems that being able to relate to the kids and to get them into currently non-cool things (like prayer), is my main job...and those things require some degree of cool-ness.

Would now be a good time to mention that I wasn't cool in high school? And by "wasn't cool", I mean, seriously, I'm not sure I even knew who the cool kids were. In college, after being elected president of Hillel, my father dubbed me "queen of the dorks". Surely that doesn't qualify me as cool....

That all said, I'm excited for my new cool job! I've been working for five days now, and am really excited for all the things that this year holds.

So far, the job hasn't been quite what I thought it would be - but I'm assuming that is because the kids aren't here yet, and also because I'm walking into the middle/end of the planning for the freshmen retreat, and while I'd love to get my hands on it, everything seems to have already been taken care of. So...instead of working on that, I've been doing some other, incredibly important things....like photocopying flyers, collating them, and then stuffing them into envelopes. Like calling the parents/kids of everyone who hasn't sent in their signed permission slips.  And decorating this pretty wall calendar:

Here's a close up, of one of my favorite months. As it happens, I love the fall - but I picked this month to show off, because I was particularly creative in my decorating for the holidays. Note the sukkah, lulav, torah, etc. (sorry for the fuzziness):

 Aren't you jealous that your job doesn't include wall calendar making?

The freshmen come on Tuesday, and then I'm anticipating the real job to kick into gear.
What?! Calendar decorating isn't my real job?! Who knew?