Yavneh Day School - What's New

	Yavneh's First Annual "Art Walk" Showcased Students Art Students transformed Yavneh's MPR into an art gallery with a huge display of their creations. Included were acrylic paintings on cavas, still life drawings with pastels, mixed media abstracts and so much more. Several students became "Living Presentations", dressing up as a painter or the subject of a painting. (Posted: June 3, 2013)

Students Helped to Take Care of the Earth

Yavneh celebrated TuBishvat with a day of service called Yom Shomrei Adamah (Guardians of the Earth Day).

(Posted: January 29, 2013)

Yavneh Collects 1441 Pairs of Socks for Sock Drive!

The fourth annual Yavneh Kitah Gimel sock drive collected 1,441 pair of socks

(Posted: December 21, 2012)

	Chanukah Celebration at Santana Row (Posted: December 17, 2012)
Yavneh students took the stage at the community Chanukah celebration at Santana Row

Middle Schoolers Learn About Poverty

(Posted: December 17, 2012)

Pay the utility bill or pay for school clothes for a growing child? Stay home from work with a sick child or leave the child alone so you don't lose a day's wages? Use precious change for bus fare or buy one more loaf of bread? These are the critical choices many families are faced with as they negotiate the challenges of poverty.

On Thursday December 6th, Yavneh Day School’s middle school students, teachers, and parents participated in a "Poverty Simulation" exercise in order to understand more fully the experience of millions of Americans who live in poverty.

Step Up Silicon Valley (a consortium of local nonprofits and faith based groups committed to decreasing poverty in our community by 50% by 2020) has partnered with Sacred Heart Community Service to facilitate the Poverty Simulation at Yavneh. Volunteers from Sacred Heart came to Yavneh to take our middle school students through the simulation experience.

Skilled facilitators created an experiential learning environment in which students took on prescribed identities. Within small groups (with at least one adult), everyone was assigned an identity and challenged to make it through a month of poverty. In two hours, the groups moved through a "month" in the lives of their "characters" - go to school, go to work, go to the bank, get paid, pay bills, handle crises, take public transportation, encounter law enforcement and social service agencies. Within this time, they developed strategies on how to get through a month with very little money and limited resources. Students encountered long lines, unexpected burglaries, illness and even incarceration. During the simulation, students learned about the experience of living in poverty, where much of one's day is spent in parsing out limited dollars. The group is debriefed together after the experience to share insights and concerns.

The goal of the exercise, according to Carol Stevenson, Sacred Heart Community Service’s community involvement coordinator, is to encourage students to “understand and have empathy for the struggles of people that are poor.” Through the simulation, students learned about the challenges faced by the most vulnerable among us - daily challenges to take care of and feed their families, educate their children, earn a livin, and come home to a safe place every night . The simulation also helped students to discover or renew a commitment to working toward alleviating this social injustice. There are many ways to support people who find themselves trapped in a cycle of poverty and many organizations working to address and then eliminate the root causes of poverty in our valley.

Robert Gomez acted the part of one of the community workers, but last year, he was homeless, living in a shelter in Sunnyvale. Now he is employed at Downtown Streets Team in Palo Alto which helps the homeless. According to Gomez, things like poverty simulation help make things change for the better.

The Poverty Simulation is part of Yavneh’s Middle School Social Justice program taught by Susan Ellenberg. “We want to heighten the students’ awareness of local, national, and global social injustices, and engage them in philanthropic giving, community service, and political advocacy,” said Mrs. Ellenberg.

	Yavneh Family Concert Series Journey into the magical world of Classical Music! (Posted: September 21, 2012)
Classical music comes to children and adults alike at Yavneh. Yavneh is set to host a Family Classical Music Concert Series, kicking off with the first concert on October 21st. This concert will feature Carnival of the Animals, performed by Caroline Menipaz (Yavneh parent and talented musician). For more information

Hebrew PJ Library Program - New Event!

Hebrew PJ Library Comes to Yavneh!

(Posted: April 24, 2012)

Yavneh Students Celebrate School's 30th

(Posted: March 26, 2012)

Successful Sock Drive for the Homeless!

(Posted: December 16, 2011)

Congratulations Math Olympiads!

(Posted: December 6, 2011)

Stanford Leads Students in Science Lab

(Posted: December 6, 2011)

For Prospective Parents - December 11th, 2012

8:30 - 10:30am, Please RSVP to diana@yavnehdayschool.org

(Posted: November 2, 2011)

Hunger Banquet Raises Awareness

(Posted: October 27, 2011)

Yavneh Middle School students experienced the injustice of hunger first-hand during a Hunger Banquet, a program created by Oxfam international and adapted for Yavneh middle school students as part of their Social Justice curriculum. The Hunger Banquet was one component of a larger focus on food justice at Yavneh this year, and was designed to deepen awareness on campus of hunger and poverty issues.

Middle school students were randomly assigned to one of three groups, each congregating in a different area of Yavneh's Multi Purpose Room. Approximately one-quarter of the students were seated at beautifully appointed tables and were served a multi-course meal with an appetizing array of foods by attentive parent volunteers. This group of lucky students represented the 27% of Bay Area residents who live in affluence. Another group of students sat at a long table from which they could access a buffet lunch. These students had fewer choices, but freely helped themselves to a filling, nutritious meal. This group represented the 50% of Bay Area residents living in the middle income range. The final quarter of students were seated in the middle of the room, on the floor, without plates or utensils, and with only a meager allowance of food: white bread, peanut butter, and mayonnaise. This group represented the 23% of Bay Area residents who struggle to meet their family's basic needs -- living in poverty or under the self sufficiency level.

As students began to adjust to their assigned group and circumstance, strong reactions emerged. Students seated on the floor allotted a meager lunch had a variety of reactions. Some members of this group were unhappy with the white bread and peanut butter and refused to eat it, though they had no other option. One of the facilitators, APJCC Teen Director Jason Goldstein, facilitated a discussion about what real hunger might feel like, and how it would feel to have minimal food options, and even fewer healthier food choices. Others got up and asked participants at other tables to share their food with them. Jason pointed out that they felt comfortable asking for donations because they were asking their friends. Would they be comfortable asking for food handouts from people they didn't know?

Elsewhere in the room, "affluent" and "middle income" students were faced with several dilemmas: enjoy their meal or offer to donate all or a portion of their meal to a student in the lower income group. Many students took action. Seventh grade student, Daniel, got up from his seat at the affluent table, and offered parts of his lunch to students seated on the floor. "I'm donating to the poor because I'm rich and I want to help the poor get through this difficult time." Many others from the middle income and affluent groups didn't hesitate to share their food with their hungrier peers. "The visual component was a lot of it," reflected Eighth grade student, Itay. "If you don't see it, you can't really think about it, even when it's in the news."

Organizer of the event, Parent Volunteer and Social Justice Teacher Susan Ellenberg explained to students, "When families have limited budgets to buy food, or live in a neighborhood where food options are limited, they are often forced to choose cheap unhealthy foods. Lack of access to healthy, affordable food options contributes to both malnutrition and obesity, a leading cause of death in the United States. You may think that hunger is about too many people and too little food. This is not the case. Our rich and bountiful planet produces enough food to feed every woman, man, and child. We have to ensure that everyone can afford to buy the food and that they have access to healthy options."

Discussions and debates around campus continued long after the banquet concluded. Some students reflected about the amount of waste the upper income groups created in comparison to the lower income group. Others compared notes about the choices they made when presented with both junk food options and healthy food options. Students also debated such questions as: "What obligation as individuals do we have to address the inequity?" "How might we enable people living in impoverished areas access to healthier foods?" "How much or little should the government be involved?"

"We want to sow the seeds for lifelong commitment to looking at life through a social justice lens. What is the situation in front of me and who is helping and who is hurting and what I can I do to increase the former and decrease the latter," says Mrs. Ellenberg.

Concluded one middle school student, "I often think that I would like to be rich. The Hunger Banquet made me realize that I already am rich."

2011 Teshuvah Carnival

(Posted: October 1, 2011)

Yavneh's 2011 Teshuvah Carnival was a huge hit with the lower school, thanks to the thought and effort our middle schoolers put into their Teshuvah Carnival booths!

The beginning of the month of Elul through Yom Kippur is the time in the Jewish calendar set aside for serious self-reflection, repairing relationships and working to create a better world. This work is intensified during the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These 10 days are known by two names:

1. Aseret Yamei Teshuvah (Ten days of Turning Toward a Better Self)

2. Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe)

This year our all-school celebration of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and this 10 day time period took the form of a Teshuvah Carnival. The goal was for the students to understand their individual potential to change themselves and to change the lives of others for the better, as well as for them to experience the power of what we can accomplish when we work together as one community.

A central prayer in the liturgy for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is the prayer called Unetanah Tokef. It is said during the Amidah. The prayer emphasizes the importance of the holiday as a day of judgment and focuses on the importance of taking responsibility for our actions and our lives. Specifically, the prayer outlines three actions we should take to change the direction of our lives for the better. It exhorts us to participate in acts of Teffillah, Tzedakah and Teshuvah.

Tefillah - acts of prayer.

Tzedakah - acts of justice or giving money to the poor

Teshuvah - literally means to turn toward, but is often translated as repentance and means to become a better person and to fix our relationships with others, God and ourselves.

The more than 10 carnival booths were designed by the middle school to engage lower school students in different activities related to tefillah, tzedakah or teshuvah. When they entered the carnival, each student received a chart on which they kept track of the different activities they accomplished. The lower school students excitedly moved from booth to booth. Many teachers observed how our middle schoolers so naturally assumed the roles of educators and mentors to the lower school students.

	Congratulations to the Class of 2012! (Posted: September 8, 2011)

Yavneh Composts!

(Posted: September 2, 2011)

Smooshy banana in your lunch box? Spent coffee grinds in the staff lounge coffee maker? Take them (with the coffee filter) to the Yavneh Middle School compost bucket and help reduce waste in our landfills!

This morning, volunteers from the Santa Clara County's Master Composter Program taught Yavneh 6th graders how to create and nurture their very own compost bin. The Middle School will use the compost they create to enrich the Gesher and Gan gardens tended to by Yavneh's youngest students. They also hope to reduce the amount of waste from student lunch boxes that end up in the landfill. Yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 23 percent of the U.S. waste stream, as documented by EPA. Yavneh composter, Jeremy, is determined to reverse this trend. "It feels good to start something together as a class that helps the environment. It's also fun to lead the school, and help other students understand why it's important to compost."

The impetus behind the compost bin is Yavneh's Social Justice teacher and parent volunteer, Susan Ellenberg. Yavneh Middle School's three-year social justice curriculum is designed to heighten student awareness of local, national and global social injustices, help students develop an understanding of philanthropic giving, and nurture a lifetime commitment to volunteer service. Projects like creating and caring for a compost bin provide the critical link between learning and practice; advocacy and action.

The newly-created compost bin is tucked away in the shade of two playground Redwood trees. Middle schoolers will take turns emptying the scraps from the playground compost bucket into the compost bin a few times each week. Worms blanketed by shredded newspaper will convert lunch box scraps into healthy garden fertilizer...and we hope, Yavneh students and their parents into avid home composters.

May 1st - 7th is Compost Awareness Week. Learn more about composting at the Santa Clara County Home Composting page.

Yavneh Students Make a Difference!

(Posted: August 29, 2011)