Sixth Graders Reflect on Graduating from JPDS-NC
June 25, 2014 by
This week, we are graduating from the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital. Over the course of our final year at JPDS-NC, our teachers prepared us for middle school. Even though our workload expanded from fifth grade to sixth grade, our teachers made it possible for us to adapt to this change easily. Through long-term projects, such as the Ancient World Research Project, essays about topics from gun control to healthcare, hands-on work where we get a chance to experience what we are learning about, reading books like The Giver, and examining primary sources like real artifacts from ancient Egypt, our teachers helped us grow as people and academic learners – all the while teaching us to deal with our workloads.
Our teachers also taught us about leadership. In Social Studies, we took a critical look at the leaders of the past. We evaluated people like Ramesses II, Pericles, Herod the Great, Vespasian, Agrippina the Younger, and Trajan. All our teachers showed us that a leader is a person who not only cares about the people close to them, but about their whole community. They taught us that a leader leads with both words and actions. As sixth graders at JPDS-NC, we were the leaders of the school, and we got opportunities to be leaders. For example, we got a chance to run for a higher position for student council. This will help us in seventh grade and the years to come because leadership is a virtue and a skill that will greatly impact the rest of our lives, and the lives of those we will meet.
