Knesset

Spread Kindness

Our Junior Knesset has been working very hard with Mrs. Bennett to spread kindness around the halls of OJCS! Check out this amazing bulletin board they created!

Shabbat Newsletter

Hi everyone! Welcome to a new series of posts called the Shabbat Newsletter! Noa Aptowitzer, our Knesset’s Jewish Life Representative has created a wonderful Shabbat Newsletter with activities and information for you to enjoy!

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Comment below and let us know what you’d love to see in next week’s newsletter!

Introducing the Senior Knesset Executive

I am thrilled to introduce our Senior Knesset Executive!

Class representatives are being chosen this week and our first Knesset meeting will be on November 9th!

RUACH Week is Coming!

RUACH WEEK is coming up from March 9-13. We are so excited to see everyone’s great costumes and school spirit. At our Rosh Chodesh Adar assembly, we shared the following themes:

Monday, March 9th- Crazy Hat and/or Hair Day

Tuesday, March 10th- Purim! Your choice of costume and be ready for a great carnival.

Wednesday, March 11th- Class Theme Day (Classes to determine- Class Sports Jersey Day? Class Emoji Day?)

Thursday, March 12th- Favourite Book/Movie Character Day (How many Harry Potter’s will we see?)

Friday, March 13th- Pajama Day! This year has a little twist to it though. It’s ‘Bring a Pair, Wear a Pair’. Each student is asked to bring a new pair of pajamas to be donated to the Pajama Patrol. Pajama Patrol is a group of parents in Ottawa whose mission is to ensure every child goes to bed with a warm pair of pajamas.

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Knesset Guest Speaker- LIVE Blog

Knesset Meeting- Planning for Jewish Disability & Inclusion Month at OJCS

By Jenny, Knesset Communications Rep

Today at our Knesset meeting we have a guest speaker named Madelaine Werier joining us to teach us about the Jewish Ottawa Inclusion Network and help us celebrate the Jewish Disability and Inclusion Month (February) at OJCS. Madelaine is telling us about what The Jewish Ottawa Inclusion Network is and what they stand for. 

In February, Knesset will be giving tzedakah to The Ripple Effect. Madelaine is giving us many useful ideas to make our February Rosh Chodesh Assembly and Jewish Disability and Inclusion Month. The first way she mentioned was the welcome statement. Another idea Maddie gave us was to revisit our Knesset mission statement to include our commitment to being inclusive. Maybe we can create a mission to show the other students in our school that everyone can do something to help one another. Maybe we could do a class challenge to bring awareness to the importance of inclusivity. Donating money can be part of awareness campaigns but giving time is even more important. Even just holding the door for the person behind you can make a big difference in their day. How about a video? Making a video is a really easy was to make someone feel welcome, especially to a new environment. Maybe you don’t even have to do something special, by just asking them to do something with you could make them feel more welcome. The person you are spending time with doesn’t even have to be in your grade, branch out, talk to people from the grade above or below you. I know that if someone I didn’t know came and played with me I would feel much better. 

Madelaine did mention that a very important word is advocacy for us to learn about and think about how to incorporate it into Jewish Disability and Inclusion Month at OJCS. This Knesset meeting was very helpful and meaningful to our Knesset team. Thank you so much Madelaine- you definitely gave us some really amazing ideas.

Meet the 2019-2020 Knesset!

Meet the Knesset

By: Jenny (Knesset Communications Officer)

The elections are over and we finally have our 2019-2020 Knesset team! We have an awesome team, which includes…

Co-Presidents- Jessica and Kiera

Treasurer- Maytal

Secretary- Ben

Communications- Jenny

Jewish Life- Ruben

Grade 8 Class Rep.- Max

Grade 7 Class Rep.- Maayan

Grade 6 Class Rep.- Audrey

Grade 5 Class Rep.- Sasha

Grade 4 Class Reps.- Adam and Eliezer

Grade 3 Class Rep.- Tobey

Last Thursday we had our first meeting as a group. We discussed the goals we had to make this school year the best one yet. We had three goals that we thought were really important to us. The first goal we had was to bring more student voice to the OJCS community. The second goal was to bring new ideas forward. As a team, we would like to incorporate other students ideas. Lasty, RUACH! We all agreed that Ruach is a big part of our school. Let’s make this year full of spirit. We also discussed the charities that were important to us. The charities that we came up with were ones we thought, as a team were important. Lastly we had to plan the October Rosh Chodesh assembly. The month of October, we are supporting the Ottawa Hospital Patient Urgent Needs Fund, in memory of Dr. Elianna Saidenberg. We are also busy getting ready for our first Rosh Chodesh assembly, taking place on Tuesday, October 29th. 

(Photo: Knesset planning our Rosh Chodesh assembly and discussing monthly charities to support)

I am so excited for this year’s Knesset team. We are a great group!

Jenny

2019-2020 Knesset Elections

Our Knesset Executive elections are now on their way! We are in full campaign mode at OJCS.

Part of the Middle School experience for our students is the opportunity to run for a Knesset Executive position. Students are able to continue to build their leadership skills, ensure we have student voice in our school’s decision making process, and of course RUACH! Election Day is Friday, October 4th.

 

 

Knesset Student Voice Project

By Abby S., Knesset Communications Rep

Student Voice Project Meeting with Knesset

The Knesset team is working hard on their student voice project! Everybody had lots of fun helping start up this exciting initiative. One group is constructing a student voice survey to hear the ideas and suggestions for OJCS, while the other group is creating a suggestion box for students to write down and share their ideas.

It is a prototype that started with Mr.Kom and Brigitte and is all about students sharing how they feel their school day could be even better and openly share with other students (Knesset). We brainstormed all the different ways to hear student voice and ideas, and decided to start with the survey and suggestion box.

Everybody on Knesset is very excited to see this project in action and to see if we reached the goal of help student have their voice heard!

 

Knesset in Action!

The OJCS Knesset Executive and Grade Representatives have been busy discussing and planning the monthly Dress Down Days along with ideas for school ruach! Dr. Mitzmacher came to visit at our first meeting to say a big welcome to the new 2018-2019 Knesset.

President and Vice-President, Daniel and Ari, led a great team building activity last week and discussed with the group ways to be a positive leader in the school. Grade representatives have been collecting ideas from their classes too to bring to the next Knesset meeting.

In October our Dress Down Day funds went toward the Ottawa Kosher Food Bank. We raised a total of $208! Throughout the month student brought in non-perishable food donations as well and we filled 5 bins in our school lobby!

For the month of November our Dress Down Day funds will be donated to the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh to show our support. Students in Mr.Washerstein’s classes have been writing cards to send with our Dress Down Day funds at the end of the month to the families affected by the shooting.

 

 

Knesset Elections

We now have our newly elected Knesset for the 2018-2019 school year! We had many students run a campaign for the executive leadership positions. You can see their election videos here.

Our Knesset is the representative body for students at the Ottawa Jewish Community School. The role of the Knesset  is to represent and promote the interests of students to staff, administration, and parents. The council organizes events to promote student life and Tikkun Olam while developing and supporting student leadership.

Below is our Knesset Executive:

President- Daniel V.

Vice-President- Ari K.

Secretary- Ely S.

Treasurer- Max P.

Jewish Life- Jacob G.

Communications- Abby S.

Here are the grade reps:

Grade 3- Adam L.

Grade 4- Shylee M.

Grade 5- Leo C. & Audrey B.

Grade 6- Yamaya N.

Grade 7- Jessica A.

Grade 8- Oliver K. &  Adam R.

Congratulations to all the students who ran for a position and for taking a risk!

 

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