School Life
School Life/Mensch Making/Leadership
Mensch-Making and Fostering Leadership
“Mensch Making” is the concept of teaching our children the value of being honorable and caring. Teachers who transform lives understand not only how to teach curriculum, but also how children develop into capable, caring, and engaged adults. They see beyond quantitative measurements of success to the core abilities that help students live healthy, productive lives. Friedel creates this culture of integrity by valuing and teaching empathy, sociability, and and the obligation to help others, all through the Jewish lens of mitzvot.
As part of a robust leadership development program and character education curriculum, Friedel incorporates our Monthly Middot program and the Boys Town Well-Managed Schools program into all of our classrooms:
Monthly Middot
From the Hebrew, middah (singular)/middot (plural) is defined as “character traits” and they are often thought of as universal values. Each month, we will explore a different middah as part of our school-wide character education program. Examples of middot we study are determination, courage, kindness, humility and integrity.
Boys Town Well-Managed Schools
Our classroom teachers have participated in extensive training in “Well-Managed Schools” by Boys Town, a positive approach to teaching classroom skills, along with strategies for teachers to effectively manage classroom dynamics while keeping joy in the classroom. This school-based strategy includes school-wide skills instruction that in peer-reviewed research shows a positive correlation to academic engagement. Step-by-step procedures for mastering skills, as taught through the Well-Managed Schools program, includes teaching students how to accept ‘no’ for an answer, follow instructions, stay on task, use appropriate voice tone, and greet others.
