Some things aren't taught in a classroom

Who needs grown-ups when you have Grade 5?

Thousands of Lego pieces, one room, and a group of children who decided to turn an idea into reality.

The students of 5A planned, organised and built a new Lego room at the school themselves. They thought about the space, sorted the pieces and prepared a place where children can build, create, play and take on challenges.

But the room has another purpose too. It is meant to be somewhere you can go when you need a little quiet, time to yourself, or a break from the noise.

Sometimes the best way to teach children responsibility is simply to give them responsibility.

Democracy doesn't stay inside the textbook

What do elections look like when children run them?

At Geulim the answer is simple: a ballot committee made up of 6A students, an orderly vote, a count of the ballots and an announcement of the results.

Students in grades 4 to 6 chose their representatives to the student council, with the entire process led by children. The elected representatives meet every week with Aviv, who leads the council, and begin to learn what it means to represent others.

Because democracy is not only the right to vote. It is also the ability to listen, to make decisions and to carry responsibility.

Small bottles. Big idea.

What connects an empty bottle, sustainability, and helping families in the community?

This year Geulim students began collecting bottles for recycling. A collection bin was placed next to the school, and the children bring the bottles, sort them and gather them. The money from the deposits will go to families in need of support.

There is a whole lesson here that needs no blackboard and no notebook. About consumption, the environment, giving, and the fact that even a small action can do something good for someone else.

Thank you to Sima Cohen, mother of Michael in Grade 4, who arranged the collection bin for us.

Flour, water and a little independence

Some lessons end in a notebook. Others end in a loaf of challah.

Geulim's new kitchen opened in October, and on the very first day the younger children baked a cake and the older ones made challah. But the story is not what came out of the oven.

In a kitchen you have to plan, read instructions, measure, divide tasks, work together, deal with mistakes and clean up after yourself. These are skills that show up in almost every area of life.

That is why the new kitchen isn't reserved for special occasions. Baking and cooking lessons will be part of the school routine. And sometimes, at the end of the lesson, you also get to eat what you learned.

A classroom without walls

In October, students in grades 3 and 4 went out to Lifshitz Park, near the school, for an olive harvest. The trees, the olives, the season and the open space all became part of the learning.

This year two of the school's homeroom teachers are taking part in professional training on outdoor learning, as part of expanding the ways to learn outside the classroom.

Because sometimes you have to step outside the school to discover how much there is to learn right next to it.

And you can learn in completely different ways

Not every child is interested in the same things, and not everyone discovers their strengths in the same place.

At Geulim you can find children exploring robotics and high tech, children finding their voice in the choir or the school band, and others who connect through sport, languages, thinking and creating.

This variety matters, because sometimes a child needs to encounter one new field in order to discover something new about themselves.

This is how you welcome a new family

On the first day of school, parents stood and held a canopy of prayer shawls above the Grade 1 students. The children walked in beneath it, and the senior citizens' choir of the community centre sang with us at the opening ceremony.

It was a small, lovely moment that says something big about Geulim. On their very first day at school, the children did not only meet a new classroom and a new teacher. They met a whole circle of people who came for them.

Welcome to the new families of Geulim.

A school for a whole neighbourhood

What does it take to create a good afternoon in a schoolyard?

A few craft tables, krembo, children, families, a winter show, and plenty of parents willing to take part.

On 22 October we said goodbye to summer at the Geulim community winter clock party. There were crafts, surprises and a winter show by the actress and creator Shani Weisman. But the loveliest thing of all was the people who came: not only families from the school, but also families from Baka, from Arnona and from the surrounding area.

Because a neighbourhood school can be far more than the place you send your children in the morning. It can be a place where neighbours meet, where families get to know one another, and where a community begins to form.

A growing and influential parents' council

At the start of the year we asked Geulim parents to tell us what they are good at, what they know how to do and in which areas they could contribute. Not because the school lacks professionals, but because there is so much knowledge, experience and ability already present among us. At the first parents' meeting, on 8 September, we began mapping those strengths.

The parents' council also expanded this year, with additional parents from every grade and from special education. Avia Cohen Kosher was elected for a second year as chair of the parents' council.

At the same time we are promoting an approach built on action groups, so that parental involvement does not rest on a small number of parents but allows anyone who wishes to take part, even in something small.

And at the beginning of the year a surprise was waiting for the teaching staff: personal thank you letters prepared by the parents and left in the staff room. Because partnership also begins with knowing how to say thank you.

What can a marshmallow teach us about the new year?

At the school Rosh Hashanah seder, all of Geulim's students sat around one long table, dressed in white. But this year the symbols of the holiday were not only apples, honey and pomegranate. The children were asked to bring objects from their own world and turn them into a blessing for the new year.

And so a few ideas were born that we might not have thought of ourselves:

• A marshmallow · that we have a flexible and sweet year
• A magnet · that we draw good things towards us
• A plate · that we have success (a play on the Hebrew words)
• A rope · that we know how to tie good bonds of friendship
• A mirror · that we know how to look at ourselves and recognise our strengths

It was an original way to talk about wishes, values and new beginnings, and above all to let the children bring their own thoughts to the holiday table.

Memory that grows

How do you speak with children of different ages about difficult events, about loss and about remembrance?

On 5 October the school devoted a day to age appropriate discussion and activity, led by the homeroom teachers who know the children closely. Each grade worked on a different theme:

• Grades 1 and 2 · mutual responsibility, the ability to help others and the option of asking for help
• Grade 3 · a grade wide box of hugs filled with encouraging words
• Grade 4 · appreciation and thanks to the security forces
• Grade 5 · the anemone as a symbol of growth and renewal
• Grade 6 · the strengths of Israeli society

Students in grades 3 to 6 gathered at the end of the day for a shared assembly, for singing and for a prayer for the wellbeing of the country.

The choice was to let the children meet the subject in different ways, with sensitivity to their age and to their needs.

Not everyone in the classroom feels seen

At Geulim the week opens with a school wide gathering and a shared viewing of a short film, which leads into a conversation. During the month of Cheshvan we addressed, among other things, two subjects that touch the lives of children and adults alike.

Invisible people: do we notice the person next to us? The one nobody always talks to, the one who isn't always seen?

Peer pressure: what happens when everyone is doing something we are not comfortable with? How do we choose differently?

These are not questions with a single correct answer. But it matters that they have a place in the conversation. Social education does not only happen when there is a problem to solve. It also happens when time is set aside to talk about life itself.

Tradition meeting place

Ahead of the High Holy Days, students in grades 1 and 2, together with the teaching staff and parents, went on a Slichot tour in Jerusalem. They encountered the city during a special time of year, through walking together and getting to know both the place and the traditions of the season.

And ahead of the new month of Cheshvan, shared meals were held in the classrooms, with the children in some of them preparing the food themselves, including baking bread. Another way of connecting tradition, learning and shared life.

The genuinely good things are built over time

The first two months were full of beginnings, but what is interesting is what happens after them.

The Lego room is becoming part of school life. The kitchen is entering the learning routine. The student council meets every week. Outdoor learning continues to develop, the parent action groups are starting to operate, and the various programmes let more children find a place to express themselves.

Not everything has to be a big event. Sometimes the change is found precisely in the things that happen every day.

And that is what we want to keep building at Geulim: a school with room for initiative, for responsibility, for curiosity, for meeting one another and for different ways to learn and to grow.