The Shuvu Network of schools was recently priviliged to have the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Harav Shlomo Moshe Amar participate in its exclusive dinner in the UK.

The unique event took place at the beautiful Pillar Hotel in Hendon. Major long time UK Shuvu supporters participated as did new supporters. Shuvu Co-Chairman Dr. Joseph Hoch came in specially from New York to particpate as well.

An 11th grade student from the Shuvu Petach Tikva High School, Shiran Shumianov, participated in the event as well, and told her story of having been born to Bucharian parents unaware of their Jewish heritage, but thanks to Shuvu now enjoys a rich knowledge and sense of her Jewish identity.

The Chief Rabbi and other UK Rabbis who participated praised the work of Shuvu, including Dayan Yonasan Abraham who commented that in his opinion, Shuvu is, without exaggeration, the most important educational project in Israel today.

During his short stay in the UK, Chief Rabbi Amar also particpated in a Shuvu breakfast reception in the Nancy Ruben School and visited the Od Yosef Chai Synagogue and leading Jewish schools including Hasmonean and Yavneh College.

The visit of the Chief Rabbi left a deep impression on the Shuvu activists in the UK and displayed the great appreciation that exists for the network.

 

 

 

Shuvu is very proud to share the letter Dr. Tzvi Tzameret, Director of Pedagogic Affairs at the Ministry of Education, sent to Shuvu’s pricipal of our Netanya school:

 The State of Israel

Ministry of Education

Director of Pedagogic Affairs

                                                                                                              29/5/2011

Mrs. Anna Shilkrot

Principal, Shuvu Netanya

4 Hashomer St.

Netanya

Shalom Rav,

I was most impressed during my visit on 16 Iyar (20/5/2011) in your Shuvu Netanya School:

I was impressed with the dedicated and caring educational staff.

I was impressed with the conversations with the parents, who told of their pride in the school.

I was impressed with the conversations with the students in all of the classes.

More and more I sense that the Shuvu network, which I merited to become familiar with this year, is a most important educational network.

The combination of educating towards tradition and educating towards modernity – is wonderful.

Your ability to integrate the children of immigrants with the children of natives, children of religious families with children of non-religious families – is essential to the future of the State.

Most importantly: The direction of your education, that one on hand does not give in at all on becoming closer to the Torah of our Forefathers, while on the other hand cares to cultivate basic subjects which will assist in integrating within the future workplace such as computers and English beginning in 1^st and 2^nd grades – is correct in my opinion.

My dear Anna, I was very moved by your statement:

“When I was in the USSR I dreamed of Am Yisroel, Eretz Yisroel and the State of Israel. I strive to educate for these here as well”.

May your/their method succeed!

I very much hope that both the Ministry of Education and the Netanya Municipality will assist you in this.

With Blessings,

Dr. Tzvi Tzameret

Director of Pedagogic Affairs

Cc: Mrs. Miriam Fierberg, Mayor of Netanya

Mrs. Tova Dolev, Head of Educational Dept., Netanya Municipality

Rabbi Chaim Michoel Gutterman, Director, Shuvu Network

Rabbi Nissan Kaplan, National Supervisor, Shuvu Network

Mr. Menachem Kaplan, External Consultant for Shuvu Network

Mr. Yehuda Pinsky, Director of Division A, Recognized Unofficial Schools

Mrs. Ruth Almaliach, Supervisor for Recognized Unofficial Schools

Click here to donate to Shuvu and enable us to continue providing outstanding education to children in Israel

The Szold Institute performed a study testing the effectiveness of the Waterford English Language software used in Shuvu schools. They evaluated  children who used the software to study English, and children who studied English with traditional classroom instruction.

Shuvu’s students adore the Waterford program.  It is engaging and exciting.  They never want to bell to ring while in the Waterford computer lab.  Each Waterford lab has 25 computers.  Each class is allotted 45 minutes in the Waterford lab 2-3 times a week.  The brilliant design of the software makes learning so much fun.  These are some of the creative programs:

In one ABC program a tractor has to collect milk bottles on a farm.  The children are prompted to collect only the bottles marked with a specific letter.

There are puzzles that students assemble with pieces marked with a specific letter.

There are science activities that cover astronomy, experiments, animals and much more.

The reading fluency program allows students to record themselves so that they and their teachers can listen to the recordings and monitor their progress.

There are direct instruction sessions, practice and assessment for each program. If a student does not follow the instructions successfully he gets new instructions with a different approach so the children never get bored.  As soon as a student masters the material, the program presents him/her with new challenges.  There are 750 hours of instruction, play and practice.   It is truly an amazing and loved program.

The results of the Szold study were amazing. The children who studied English in the Waterford lab scored 30% percent higher on the standardized tests than those who studied English for the SAME number of hours by classroom instruction.

We all want to be outliers.  If you don’t it’s probably because you don’t know what an outlier is.  Bill Gates is an outlier and so is Steve Jobs.  Outliers are individuals who realize such incredible accomplishments and they radically deviate from the normal achievements of their peers. They are so extraordinary that they are as perplexing as a cold day in the summer.

People mistakenly think that outliers are successful because they are smart or talented.  But IQ level and skills alone do not produce outliers.  It is the extraordinary events (or people) that an individual was privileged to experience that enables him or her to become an outlier.  Bill Gates had a computer in his classroom in 1969.  Steve Jobs grew up in the center of Silicon Valley.  As a child he frequented the local flea markets which sold computer parts when the computer was just becoming popular.  If he had a question while assembling an electronic gadget he was able to call Hewlett or Packard who lived down the block.  These were not insignificant occurrences.  They were some of the experiences that enabled these two men to become outliers.  They simply had opportunities that others did not.

The question we must ask ourselves as parents, educators, or employers is what are we doing that can help our charges develop and become outliers.  It’s worth thinking about.

Shuvu’s School Network focuses on providing an extraordinary educational experience.  Our holistic approach includes supreme education as the base supplemented with lunches, transportation, welfare services, emotional support, parent classes, after school activities, chess competitions and an environment that cultivates excellence.  Environment matters.  Success is grounded in environments.

We  want our students to be the outliers of the next generation and are doing everything we can to insure that they will be.  Some of our alumni already are!

(source:  Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers and a Q&A interview)

Click here to donate and enable Shuvu to continue to provide holistic educational programs

 

 

Some of life’s dreams materialize in their real form, like a dream vacation or car. But those are never the ones that bring us the most joy. They delight us for a day or a month.  Perhaps it is the dreams that we don’t  fulfill that we benefit from most.  We might have dreamed of securing a position of leadership, honor or stature and it didn’t work out.  What we got instead was humility and experience.  Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.  Other achievements might have taken a whole generation to achieve when our child becomes what we always wanted to be.

One thing that is even more rewarding than fulfilling your own childhood dreams is enabling the dreams of others.

At Shuvu we are focused on fulfilling childhood dreams.  Not our own, not those of our children, but the dreams of someone else’s  child.  We educate thousands of children each year but we remain focused on every individual.

Svetlana came to our Rishon Le’tzion school two weeks after she celebrated her baby brother’s birth.  Unfortunately, it was a bittersweet celebration since her mother died shortly after childbirth.  Svetlana always thought her mother would bring her to school the day she began first grade and continue to attend her school performances like she did during her pre-school years.  We cannot bring her mother back but we can insure that Svetlana continues to have her father and grandparents by her side at every school event and doesn’t feel different then her classmates by inviting everyone’s grandparents to all events.

Our dream for Svetlana is that we enable her to fulfill all the dreams her mother had for her!

Click here to learn how you can enable a child’s dream this summer.

(post inspired by Professor R. Pausch’s book “The Last Lecture”)

 

 

Although you don’t know me, I would like you to be my hero this summer.  I am sure you are wondering why so I will tell you my story:

 

Natasha, Misha and I lived in Lod- the city in central Israel notorious for crime.   Each family does the best they can to stay out of  trouble.  We also tried but weren’t able to avoid tragedy.  One day my father was killed in front of us, his three children.

After the trauma of my father’s murder we had to relocate to Hadera.  We are grateful to live in a peaceful city and are very fortunate that we transferred to a Shuvu School. Shuvu is our family and provides us with the emotional support we need to focus on our education and acclimate to our new environment.

We are beginning our summer vacation this week and we are praying very hard for you to step forward and become our HERO by sponsoring summer camp for us!  My mom is raising us on her own and must also take care of her elderly mother.  She can’t work.  We manage without basic necessities.  We don’t even have a refrigerator. Sometimes I wonder what we would put in it if we had one.

Please sponsor summer camp for one of my siblings.  They desperately need to be in a safe, educational and  constructive environment during our vacation and if we don’t go to camp we can’t afford to go swimming or on any trips this summer.  Since we are still haunted by our father’s death, it is crucial for us to  have a refreshing summer break before the new school year begins.

Click here to donate $140 to sponsor two weeks of summer camp for one of these orphans.

 

To my dear principal who is always listening,

I  am praying that you choose me to be a junior counselor in your summer camp because  I need something constructive to do and don’t want to fall in with bad friends again.

I am praying that  you will choose me to be a junior counselor in your summer camp because my mom can’t give me any pocket money this summer.

I am praying that you will choose me to be a junior counselor in your summer camp because I need a tutor to prepare me for my new high school in September.

I am praying that you will choose me to be a junior counselor in your summer camp because I am not ready to leave Shuvu.  Not now and not ever.

Alexandra

p.s. I already know you will choose me.  You have never turned me down.  Thank you for your compassion!

Click here to donate $65 to cover  transportation to and from summer camp for one impoverished Shuvu student.

 

 

 

 

I’m actually done with those two years so now I’m mature enough to introduce myself and tell you how I spent my time in middle.  My name is Alexandra, I’m 14  and I just graduated 8th grade at Shuvu.   Until 6th grade I was in a State School.  My mom is a single parent and has to work 12 hour shifts to put bread on the table.  She was grateful for the 5 hours I was at school and for the rest of the day she prayed I would stay out of trouble.  Little did she know that I was so desperate for friends to spend the day with that anyone and everyone was considered suitable company.   I skipped school often, never did my homework and hung out with delinquents.

And then she heard about Shuvu.  Shuvu and the compassion at Shuvu.  I doubt the founders at Shuvu knew how Googler Chade-Meng Tan defines compassion, but they built their schools with an infrastructure of compassion just as Chen defined it*.  Compassion, Chen explains, is made up of three components:   “Affective -  I feel for you, cognitive – I care about you, and motivational -  I want to help you.”

My mom and I walked into the principal’s office to enroll me.  You know how most principals are stern and grim.  Well this one wasn’t.  I felt like I met a new aunt.  I am very grateful to Shuvu for the two years I spent there.  But I still need a few more favors.  I might not have earned them but I am certain I will get them because at Shuvu it’s all about compassion.  (see Part II)

(*source: ted.com)

Click here to donate $70 for one week of summer camp so Shuvu can provide a safe environment for girls like Alexandra.

This is the city where Shuvu’s school is located adjacent to the prison.  The mayor, Meir Nitzan, has declared that it is programs like Shuvu’s summer camp that prevent people in his town from going to jail.  Diospolis, known by its Jewish name, Lod, has been singled out by the Israeli government as a social disaster.  Substance abuse and  crime rates are very high and 10% of the population are on welfare.  Shuvu is keenly aware that we are in this city because G-d wants us to bring hope, happiness and Jewish heritage to children like Avital.

Avital is growing up without her mother or father.  Her mother was tragically killed in a car accident when she was 6 years old.  She lives with her grandmother and needed a special school that would help  her experience a normal childhood.  Avital came to Shuvu in tears.  The tears flowed for weeks.  She was a young orphan completely alone and needed her teachers to fulfill the role her parents never would.  She needed to know that there was someone other than her grandmother that loved her and cared about her.

Avital was lucky.  At Shuvu everyone had a smile and kind word for her.  Avital has been with Shuvu for 5 years throughout winter, fall, spring and summer.

Living in the  slums of Lod is never much fun, but in the summer when scores of children have no constructive activity the danger is grave.  It is for girls and boys like Avital that Shuvu must continue providing a safe, educational and  fun summer camp program.

Click here to donate $36 and sponsor lunch for one child at our summer camp in Lod.

 

 

“Yuuuuri, I gotta leave this minute!  I can’t deal with how you’ll entertain yourself today.  You are already 8 years old and should be self-sufficient.  I’m going to miss my bus. My boss will be furious if I’m late. I’ll have to listen to his abusive lecture and at the end of the month will have to deal with a cut in my paycheck.  I simply cannot help you.”

Yuri was sick of hearing it again.  This was the daily conversation, more like a monolog, that he heard from his mother at 7:30 am since July 1.  She left him a few sandwiches in the fridge, the remote control for the television and was gone.  He was alone again just like last summer.  And this year it was for 10 hours every day.  It was lonely, he felt unloved, deserted and sad.

Yuri decided that this summer he MUST find something to do.  Otherwise he would go out of his mind.  He began to think of all the people in his life that cared about him.  His father hadn’t spoken to him in 5 years, not too helpful.  His grandparents all lived in another country, they were too far away.  Then he remembered Mrs. Perkoff, his first grade teacher at Shuvu.  She was the right person to talk to.  She was always attentive, kind and treated him as if he was her own child.

This happened 18 years ago.   It was Yuri, Misha, Alexandra, Ilya, and their Shuvu classmates.  They were all home alone, left to their own devices and to the company the street would offer.  As soon as Shuvu’s administration got wind of the fact that their students were unattended during the summer months they established the desperately needed summer camp program for boys and girls like Yuri.

Summer camps are a luxury in Israel.  Shuvu’s typical parent cannot afford to pay for day camp so Shuvu fundraises from private individuals to cover this crucial program.  Instead of dry sandwiches, sweltering apartments and undesirable company, our students now spend the summer months HAVING THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES!  Delightful lunches, swimming, trips, sports, barbeques, and more have replaced the devastating summers of the past.

You can make a difference for a Yuri this year.

Click here to donate $70 to sponsor summer camp for an impoverished child for one week.