Fifth grade graduation

I already posted Aaron's speech from the fifth grade Night of Reflection, but there was so much more awesomeness to enjoy, both that night and at the all-school graduation ceremony (which was the week after). We were very moved for Aaron to receive the "Spirit of Shoshana Stombaugh" award, for his musicianship and his dedication to Jewish learning. (Shoshana is a founding teacher at SJCS who is retiring this year, and who influenced our family greatly in the past through her joyful leadership of kid services at Temple Beth Am.) Aaron was also specially recognized by one of his teachers for having "grown in his dedication to justice -- especially in his knowledge of politics." Every kid was recognized for something, and justly so: they are an amazing group. They love to argue about Torah, they are outraged by injustice, they creatively re-enact history, and they loooove to perform. They sang all these amazing songs together, and I am so grateful that one of the other parents shared these videos with me. Here they are singing a terrific Israeli pop song: the first group to sing is just Aaron and a couple friends.

Here they are singing "Remember Me," from Coco, but in Hebrew:

And here is Aaron with just a couple of buddies singing their own rendition of the contemporary song "7 years": 

Aren't they something? Maybe you can tell from the videos how beautifully connected they all are to each other. There are no factions in this class; they are all interlinked, and it's gorgeous. After all the ceremonies, they received these fun Jewish bears, and signed each others' with sharpies as a keepsake.

And here is Aaron with two of his wonderful teachers from this year. (Yes, one of his teachers is rather short.)

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Eighth grade graduation

Thank goodness for all of the beautiful end-of-year events. With both kids graduating from schools that are precious to us, separating from cohorts of kids (and families) that we have loved for years – whatever the kids may need, * I * need support for these transitions!

The Billings graduation is a wonderful event. Every kid makes a speech or some other kind of presentation ­– some kids collaborated on a retrospective slide show, some built symbolic objects and displayed them, some played musical pieces. Jordan and his two friends Nat and Jack did a funny skit in which they first played a very dorky little bit of music, pretended they were done, and then (when mock-reprimanded by the Dean of Student Life) went back and played a terrific jazzy little number. It was amusing and impressive.

Here he is receiving his diploma from our fabulous Head of School, and consenting to be photographed in the lobby afterwards.

The Search for Life on Other Planets

[Research paper by Jordan H. Scherr]

Why search for life on other planets? Why not keep to ourselves? The human being's interest in the question “is there other life out there” has been universal and groundbreaking. People are driven to explore the unknown, discover new worlds, push the boundaries of science and what we believe is possible, and then, push even further. The motto for JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories) is “Dare Mighty Things.” The everlasting desire to explore and challenge the boundaries of what we know and where we’ve been has benefited our world for centuries. Perhaps we will end up providing benefits for other worlds as well.

There several different ways to search for extraterrestrial life. It wasn’t until after the 1950s that anyone found an effective way to begin this search. The Pioneer 5 space probe was first launched in 1960 toward Venus. Now we have rovers to explore the surfaces of other planets and moons. We have orbiters that will explore planets and moons from above, and we have spacecrafts that explored the deepest corners of our galaxy and beyond. In this paper I will show you some of the ways we search other planets for signs of life.

Rovers are medium sized machines that are used for the sole purpose of studying a planet up close. Rovers are like cars in a way because they don't fly. They spend their time rolling around on the surfaces of planets. Rovers have been crucial to our exploration of other planets because of their ability to take an up close look at the planet. Because Rovers are on the surface of our planets, they can take samples and can touch objects. They can also take readings of the radiation air qualities, atmosphere, etc. But being on the surface of planets can pose some problems. Rovers have to navigate the surfaces of plants and make it through many obstacles including boulders, cliffs, storms, etc. A Rover’s up close look at the surface of any planet could very well be the way we end up finding life.

Viking was the first rover to be sent to Mars. It was about the size of a small dog and used instruments from the 19 century, but it to discovered many things relevant to the search for life on other planets.

Viking had a complicated landing sequence that ran into problems with Mars's atmosphere. Mars has an atmosphere thick enough to burn up the spacecraft if NASA doesn't use a heat shield, but the atmosphere is too thin to slow the spacecraft down to a point where NASA only needs to use a parachute to land. The spacecraft had to enter the atmosphere with a heat shield, deploy the parachute, drop the heat shield, take readings of the ground below, detach from the parachute, use rockets to evade the falling parachute, descend to about 20 or so feet from the ground, lower the spacecraft onto the ground, detach the rockets from the rover, and fly the rockets far away. Viking was the mission that originally came up with the landing sequence that Curiosity used. Many other groups tried to find a way to land on Mars before Viking did but no one was successful before Viking. Because of vikings landing sequence we were able to land many rovers on Mars and find out about Mars’s traces of life.

Viking’s main mission was to take readings of Mars, And find evidence of life. It did this using a series of instruments. It had Instruments for looking at the soil, dust measures for dust in the air, and, of course, cameras. Colour cameras had just came out when Viking was being built.

Because of our many rovers, we have been able to gather immense amounts of vital information of planets that could be hosts to life. To conclude, Viking has benefited our search for life in many ways.

One of the most successful and well known rovers is the Curiosity rover. It launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011. It spent 8 months 10 days in space until it landed, on August 6, 2012. Curiosity was about the size of a small car, it had so many instruments. Curiosity was a very accomplished rover in our search for life on Mars.

One of the rovers challenges is that is has to land safely so it can explore the planet. Curiosity's landing system was one of the most complicated landings in history. In fact, it was so complicated that 500,000 lines of code were needed. The main problem about landing on mars is it’s atmosphere. For the rover to enter the atmosphere and for the rover to land on the surface is 7 min. It takes 14 min for the spacecraft to send and receive messages to and from earth. As a result the spacecraft can't be manually controlled, the landing procedure has to be coded.

Curiosity spent the rest of its life studying as much as it can of Mars. It gathered crucial info on Mars's surface. Scientists found much clues of life through Curiosity. While taking samples of the surface rock Curiosity found many abundances of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon, which are all considered the "building blocks" or fundamental elements that could support life. While this is not directly evidence of life itself, It hinted at the possibility of life on Mars, past or future.

Another piece of great info that Curiosity found was that there is almost a survivable amount of radiation for one human lifetime on Mars. This means that it is a possibility to send people to Mars, like we did the moon. To investigate, or possibly, to inhabit the planet. Inhabiting the planet would mean we would have to find a way around this problem. It might be a survivable amount of radiation for other species. This increases to the suspicion of there being (past tense or present tense) life on mars.

To conclude, Curiosity was a very successful mission, and most would say that it was worth the tons of work put into it. Curiosity gathered a ton (not a literal ton) of information.

Orbiters were inspired by the our first trip to the moon. The word orbiter was originally used to refer to a space shuttle that orbits earth. The word orbiter can also refer to the price of a spacecraft that orbits a planet. For example, when Curiosity landed on Mars, a part of it stayed behind and took pictures and readings from up above. That part was the “Reconnaissance orbiter”. Orbiters search for clues of life by taking pictures and readings on the planet and its atmosphere from above.

Curiosity's orbiter spent pretty much all of its time taking pictures. One of these pictures is a picture of Curiosity. From this distance it looks as if Curiosity is a blue beetle (blue because of the glare of of its reflective panels) on a massive reddish broken up worn down rocky surface. The Curiosity’s orbiter or Reconnaissance orbiter was a helpful hand in our search for possible life on Mars.

Space probes are spacecrafts whose purpose is to travel long distances and take measurements all the way. Space probes are spacecrafts with no humans sent into the space with the general purpose of exploring other far away planets. These probes do countless flybys of other planets. They sometimes end up orbiting planets and they sometimes don't.

Cassini was a space probe who studied saturn in depth. Cassini took many pictures, readings, and such, and gathered a immense amount of information. Over the 7,285 days that Cassini was traveling it accomplished a series of things. Cassini completed first detailed findings of Saturn and its family of moons and rings. Cassini delivered a probe (The Huygens Probe) to Titan for the first landing on another planet's moon! Using extensive equipment Cassini discovered geysers and a global subsurface ocean on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. Cassini also found very clear evidence of present-day hydrothermal activity on Enceladus - the first detection of hydrothermal activity beyond Earth. The space probe revealed Titan as a world with rain, rivers, lakes and seas. Cassini revealed Saturn's many rings as active and dynamic, a lab for how planets form.

Cassini was a very successful spacecraft. Cassini had 294 orbits overall, 127 flybys of one of Saturn's moons: Titan, and 23 flybys of another of Saturn’s moons: Enceladus. Enceladus and Titan are two very cool moons. Enceladus looks like a giant ball if ice from above, but it actually has a massive ocean under the ice. This is the closest anyone has come to finding life on another planet. But, there are a couple of problems when we think of life on Enceladus. There is almost no light below the surface of the ice, the planet is young, so life might not have developed yet, and there is no easy way to get into the water to have a look around.

To conclude, Cassini was incredibly successful in our search for life on saturn and its many moons. Cassini gathered information on Titan and Enceladus that no spacecraft has ever done before. Cassini took many pictures and lasted a very long time in its search for life on saturn and its moons.

The different kinds of spacecrafts have accomplished a lot of things and provided a lot of data. We have gathered immense amounts of info on our neighboring planets, but... we're not done. We will continue to search out into the stars in our quest for other life.

Eighth grade project

At Billings, the eighth graders do a year-long project on a topic of their choice. They write a research paper, interview a professional, create something physical like an artwork or a model, do a service project related to their topic, and present a poster at a showcase attended by the rest of the school (and whatever parents and friends want to come). It’s a great exercise in going deeply into a subject you care about, not to mention managing a long-term project.

Jordan’s project was on planetary exploration, focusing especially the different kinds of spacecraft and rovers that we have sent to look for life on other planets. I helped hook him up with a grad student who works on the “eyes” of the Mars rover (the cameras), who answered Jordan’s interview questions. His service project was to teach a short lesson to the Billings sixth graders, as part of their science unit on space. But surely the part he enjoyed the most was building and programming his own model rover, out of a Lego Mindstorms set. The tricky part was the steering: at first he designed it with a loose front wheel, intending to move two other motors in different directions to rotate the rover, but later he decided to add a third motor that rotates a different set of wheels to change which way the rover is heading. It also has a touch sensor with a large bumper, so that it knows when it hits a wall, and a color sensor pointed at the ground, so that it can stay within an area marked with tape. By the time he presented it, it was programmed to follow a line, and turn after bumping into things.



At the project showcase, Jordan had in-depth interactions with other students and with visiting adults. Another kid’s dad told me later that he was very impressed by Jordan: unlike some teenagers he knows, Jordan looked him in the eye and spoke to him as if he was a real person. I appreciate this about Jordan. I like to think it means he has had warm and respectful relationships with adults in his life.

Other students had some pretty fabulous projects too. Ciona researched sports medicine, and she was demonstrating how best to wrap a sprained ankle; this was really lucky for me, as I literally had a sprained ankle on that day, and her wrapping method is much better than mine.

Audrey, meanwhile, did a project on marine pollution, and made this astonishing artwork out of beach trash. 

Busker

Aaron's buddy Diego invited him to busk with him at Folklife, and they had a great time! Diego plays clarinet, Aaron was on the ukulele, and both of them sang.

They played four songs, which they had gotten together to practice in advance. (At Folklife the crowd goes by quickly, so you can just play the same few tunes over and over.) “Accentuate the Positive” was a real crowd-pleaser, as was “Let It Be” – I think these were especially popular because they sang. They also played the pop song “Havana” (without singing), and a klezmer tune whose name I forget.

They played together for about 40 minutes and just enjoyed the heck out of themselves. During that time they pulled $60 in tips, which is a lot of cash for ten-year-olds. Diego busks all day, every day of Folklife, and has done so for several years now, so he’s used to it; but for Aaron this was a totally new experience. If he ever needs a few bucks I bet he could take himself down to one of the farmer’s markets and do just fine.

Dale busked with a couple of his friends, too. They had fun, but they didn’t make nearly as much money as Aaron.
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Night of Reflection

For the end of fifth grade, Seattle Jewish Community School holds a "Night of Reflection," in which the fifth graders look back on their years in the school. Each of them gives a speech about the values (Hebrew middot, singular middah) they see embodied in their education, which is amazing. They also get awards and sing together, in Hebrew and English, which I hope to blog about in a separate post. Mostly here I want to share Aaron's speech: text below (exactly as he wrote it), video below that. Sadly I missed the first few seconds of his delivery but let me tell you, the whole thing was amazing. He was lively, funny, and fun to listen to.

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Reflection

By Aaron

(SLOW.)

I remember my first thought when entered SJCS in second grade was “oh well. this‘ll take a while to get used to”. Now luckily, even though I entered in second grade, I still had a lot of time. That brings me to my first middah. Patience. This is one that not everyone masters. I think that one of the first times that I had to figure out how to use patience is when I first started learning Hebrew. What was really annoying about learning Hebrew was that everyone else seemed to know Hebrew, and I didn’t. I remember thinking, “why can’t everyone be as confused as me?”

As I went on in SJCS I noticed that everyone else was as confused as me, about different things. So and so doesn't understand a problem in math while so and so is confused about a concept in social studies. And in time, I began to see my own little chink in my armor. I didn’t like to sing alone, which, I’ll admit is a kinda wimpy phobia. When I did, everyone told me I sounded like an angel, but I didn't do it that often. So it put me halfway to a heart attack when I was called upon to do a solo in fourth grade.

(STOP FIDGETING HANDS)
That was my first experience of perseverance, hatmadah. I had to learn something I didn’t want to learn on my own: singing in public. I remember thinking I’m going to die, but I persevered and chugged through it. Of course I got constant compliments and had a blast. But while I was up there, singing on stage, something sparked in me, Curiosity, wanting to go higher. It was an act, in a way, of rather wimpy bravery. And so I wanted to do more “brave” things. I got a chance at that at IslandWood at the canopy tower.

The canopy tower is one of the highest places I have ever been to. I sprinted up the stairs as fast as I possibly could. If I got a penny for each time Nate, the counselor for our group, called me down, I’d be a millionaire. At the top there was nothing I wished more to do than sit outside and look at the amazing view. It was awesome. But my favorite part was walking up the canopy tower, watching the world disappearing below me. Right there was where I thought about SJCS. what had happened to me over my years here, and realizing this was my final year. And here I am, announcing that I am leaving.

Before I finish this report I would like to show one last middah, gratitude. The way I will show this is by thanking all the people that helped me make this electrifying journey. The people I will thank first are, surprisingly, my friends parents, for encouraging my amazing parents to put me in this amazing school. I would also like to thank my parents, teachers and friends for encouraging me this entire time.

Back to the point. Someone once said, “All great things must come to an end”. Even though SJCS must end, there is still a part that will stay with me. Because SJCS helped me. It made me climb that tower, the tower of success.
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I love his notes to himself (like "SLOW" and "STOP FIDGETING WITH HANDS") -- that is great public speaking technique right there.  He also told me later that when you say something funny and people laugh, you have to look out for your timing, because there is a kind of a "hill" of laughter: first people are not laughing because they're still processing what you said, then people laugh loudly, and then their laughter gradually dies out. You can't start talking when they're at the top of the hill, because people won't be able to hear you, but you don't want to wait too long either; you want to start talking when people are about halfway down the hill. I love this analysis.