Our children need space to think
► LIFE IN the 21st century seems to have become more pressurised and busy despite the technological advances that are supposed to make things simpler.
How many of us take time daily or weekly to stop and reflect on where we are and where we are going in life? Those of us who are religiously observant may utilise Shabbat or daily prayer for this self-assessment; indeed, the Hebrew word to pray,
lehitpallel, means to judge oneself. At JFS over this past year we have introduced a collective moment of daily reflection. At 8.30 am every day, we “Pause for Thought”. Unashamedly mirrored from similar radio broadcasts, in classrooms and offices across the school everyone takes a moment to listen to a podcast delivered by a member of staff or student.
The weekly theme is linked to something happening at school, in the Jewish calendar or wider world. This is a whole school community project that brings us together to listen and learn one idea that is the same for everyone, whether in year seven or the sixth form.
The Pause for Thought project has gathered momentum with an increasing number of student voices over the year and we are well under way into our second year of this initiative. We ask our students to sit, listen quietly and think about the message we are hearing together. How do they connect to that message and what can they learn from it?
The podcasts introduce students to teachers and their lives in a way that a regular classroom may not be able to achieve and similarly our students teach us about how they have bettered themselves through or their views on important issues of the day. Pause for Thought builds and strengthens relationships.
It is a very powerful idea to stop and reflect for a few moments every day, to become more mindful of the world around you. At JFS, Pause for thought helps us to think about our day ahead; what do we want to achieve today? How will today be even better than yesterday? This moment of quiet reflection helps our students to think about why they are learning, not just what or how they are learning.
We live in a very busy world. We rush around from place to place, taking in information, doing “stuff” that needs to be done and this can become overwhelming.
Before we know it, several weeks or even months may have passed us by. Taking time to Pause for Thought is very good for our wellbeing. It puts our lives into perspective — helping us to work out what is important and what can wait.
At JFS, we collectively and daily stop, breathe and plan each morning. We create that moment of calm by Pausing for Thought.
How many of us take time to reflect on where we are going in life?’
The Koren NCSY Siddur —Tribe Edition £24.99
► AT JFS there has been a big change in the approach to prayer. For the last generation of JFS students there was no compulsory act of daily worship; those who wanted to daven could join the daily school minyan. But this year, we have introduced regular weekly tefillah for all children in year 7. Each week, half the year group — 150 children at a time — come together to pray.
Far from mandating worship for worship’s sake, we want every child who comes through our doors to develop Jewish literacy and skills. We believe passionately that the religion belongs to every Jewish person, irrespective of their individual level of observance.
A key consideration of this change was which siddur to choose. It was therefore more than fortuitous that at the same time as the start of our new programme, Tribe, the United Synagogue’s youth division, were launching the new Koren NCSY Tribe
Edition of the siddur for teens.
The siddur was created by Debbie Stone (a former senior Jewish studies teacher at JFS before moving to New York) and Daniel Rose (who taught Jewish studies at Immanuel College before making aliyah). Authored by experienced and internationally renowned educators, it is designed with modern teens in mind.
It has four different approaches to commentary, which are multidisciplinary and work for different learning styles. It is particularly good for visual learners with vibrant and colourful content. There are many open-ended questions, which allow personal reflection and interpretation without providing predetermined answers; as well as stories designed to get readers thinking about prayer in a way they may never have done before.
The siddur is all about finding a suitable access point for each person. The colour coding for the commentary focuses on specific words and phrases which enables the reader to concentrate on a given section of text. The whole idea is to help learners find their own voice in davening. Not to tell them what to think, but to start to develop a relationship with prayer.