1) Why do you want to enroll your child at our school?*
Kfir is a curious, enthusiastic learner. He is able to collaborate while learning or dive deep into a subject and learn on his own. During his two years at Helios we have seen him thrive when being challenged to reach his potential and we have seen new aspects of his personality and capabilities emerging while he is engaged in his learning.
As opposed to the past, when he followed directions to complete his assignments, today Kfir is focusing on why he is learning these subjects and how he can be a better learner, the way that different teaching methods affect his process of understanding and what methods benefit him the most.
Kfir will enjoy and benefit from learning in a school that will allow him to continue growing as a young adult, in an innovative, encouraging, stimulating environment while giving him opportunities to explore different his horizons, through hands-on experiences, exposing him to knowledges, information, new ways to investigate and pushing him to explore with no boundaries.
2) How do you think your child and your family will contribute to the our school's community?*
In our family, being part of a community is part of who we are. Whether it is by volunteering in our kids' classrooms on a daily basis to encourage and develop kids, or volunteering and chairing PTA committees including serving as PTA President, to being involved as part of the local baseball league and coaching staff and organizing community events at our current school.
Our kids learn by example. Kfir chose to run for Student Council representative of his class this year, in his efforts to change the school's rules to benefit the students. But even at a younger age, he was always dedicated to helping students in need, making sure they are feeling part of the class’s social fabric. Mostly helping students arriving from Israel to have an easier integration into the class.
3) Describe what you hope your child knows, shows, and is able to do by the time they turn eighteen.
While this might seem like an easy answer (i.e. we would like Kfir to be ready for college and real life), we can not say what we would expect for him to know.
In the last 6 months since he started the high school search process, Kfir has changed in so many ways, and has matured so quickly in front of our eyes, that we can not limit ourselves in specifying what we hope to see, as it is truly an enigma for us.
Instead, we would like to express our thoughts about the process he will go through. We would like him to be engaged, challenged, encouraged to explore, learn and thrive. But mostly, we would like him to be happy, and be able to express himself with no fear of what would happen if his opinions are different from the people surrounding him.
4) What have you liked about your child’s education so far and what would you like to see done differently?*
We love the tremendous change that Kfir went through since joining Helios. He is encouraged to express his opinions, challenge teachers on different topics, use hands-on learning, and introduced to a variety of subjects. We love that he has the opportunity to dive deeply into the learned subjects but also to investigate projects he is passionate about and find useful implementations of them.
In our continuously changing world, it is important to allow kids to experience different ways of learning. Kfir had the opportunity to advance in math course during summer. This was a new learning experience for him: pushing himself, managing time, searching for information and knowledge on his own. As there are many opportunities to be a self-learner today, students should be encouraged to be self-taught using online and other resources in designated online courses or mastering new non-academic skills.
5) Describe a learning experience that the whole family engaged in, and the takeaways from that experience.*
Playing strategy games as a family demonstrates the difference in our kids' ways of learning. While Kfir thoroughly reads the instructions and makes sure he fully understands the rules before playing, Barak immediately starts playing, makes mistakes and learns as he plays. Ella would learn by observation, then playing using the learned strategies and Yoav would rather watch and advise the other players.
As a side effect of the pandemic, we had made calculated decisions about our kids' learning paths in the last 2 years. Guided by their different ways of learning, demonstrated in their game learning capabilities, we chose different learning experiences for each child.
Kfir was enrolled in Helios as we knew that he would be able to quickly adapt to a new environment, and be encouraged by this new challenge. Ella was part of an independent study home-based-group while Yoav and Barak participated in our district’s virtual learning program. At the end of the school year, we reaffirmed our knowledge about their learning experiences, understanding that they would benefit from a school that would be able to see who they truly are and devise a learning process that would match their different personalities.
6) What would you do if your child came home and said they had a problem at school? This problem can be either social or academic.*
We would ask Kfir to describe the situation, what has happened and how he feels about it. Then we would encourage him to see the situation from different perspectives, trying to see all aspects of the situation, not only his perspective. The next step would be to think of what can be done to resolve the problem, while encouraging him to talk to the people involved. All that time, we would maintain a calm environment so that Kfir is able to think about the whole process and learn from it. It is important to us that Kfir understands that while we might not agree with his ways of thinking. We will support him in his actions, as long as they are thoroughly thought out and do not offend others.
7) Is there anything else you would like us to know about your child that has not been mentioned earlier?
Kfir is a happy, curious and smart kid who is always open to learning new things. Teachers love having him in their classroom as he is always engaged in learning, helps his peers and helps create a collaborative and open environment.
During the 9 months since we started the process of searching for highschools that would benefit Kfir the most, Kfir has grown and developed in manners we did not expect. Kfir is leading the search process and his perspectives about what is most important to him have changed. If at the beginning of the process he was interested in schools who situate themselves as academic with rigorous curriculum, then today he is more interested in the experience of learning and finding schools that would allow him to develop different skills and would expose him to new experiences, knowing that these are the skills and attributes that would make him successful in his adulthood.
Kfir loves learning and diving into searches on his own, but he thrives when collaborating with others, mutually infusing each other while conversing, debating, and sharing ideas, knowledge and experiences. His time at Helios, both during the virtual learning and ever since the students came back to learning in person has helped him progress in both methods of learning.
