I just recently started working at a Jewish Preschool in the outer sunset district. I already love it and haven't even worked one day with the kids. We've been organizing for days and I'm just so excited. We have truly made the classroom our own.
It was a huge project cleaning and organizing. They were still renovating while we where getting set up. As if setting up a classroom isn't crazy enough. We were confined to the storage room for 2 days and just at the end of last week were able to start setting up the actual classroom. This entailed moving everything back to where we wanted it interspersed with a major cleaning operations. The class room is gorgeous, it's freshly painted with several new gates. But this meant that there was a film of dust on everything, as well as things being thrown into the middle of each room to be out of the way. It took a full day just to get the now empty furniture into their proper places, now the putting things away is yet to come. It is nice in a weird way, because the classroom will truly be ours. We are not inheriting someone elses process, but making our own. I am new this year along with both teachers. So this should be interesting.
I'm surprised at myself actually. Both teachers are Israeli so they slip into talking Hebrew quite often. It's been years since I've had a full conversation with anyone in Hebrew, besides the standard "Do you speak Hebrew?" or "Where are you from?".I'm remembering so much more than I thought I would. It's especially helpful when they are trying to find a word in English and say the Hebrew equivalent first. They will have to be careful though because I will sooner rather than later be in on all their side conversations.
I love being able to bring all my skills, including my graphic design training, to work. I designed an stencil for myself of Hebrew letters. I made them backwards intentionally so when I cut them out I can hide the ugly black line by sticking that to the wall. I also mocked up a flower stencil, they are all perfect for printing and I can quickly print any banner I want in any color. I hope to find a script font I can do the same thing to, but that will come later. For now I wanted to make these public so they can be used by any Hebrew school teacher.
Unfortunately I was not able to upload all the letters at the size I have made them in this one post. So instead of making 27 different posts I put them up on google docs. Here's the link to the Hebrew Alphabet stencils: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-Dv1ZEYXbtdNGFkMWZlOTYtMzkzMS00ODYzLTllZmYtYzVlMzQ5YjI5MmRm&hl=en
