This week Alysa and I had a meeting with the administrators at Pardes Day School, a Jewish school in Scottsdale. As part of our outreach attempts we are trying to implement our program in a variety of environments. I worked earlier in the semester to reach out to home schooled children and their parents and attempt to provide our services to them. Now we are trying to implement our curriculum into schools with a variety of religious backgrounds as well as nonreligious private schools and charter schools.
The meeting went very well. We have a few board and staff connections with the administrators so the initial conversation was very casual and they were incredibly receptive to the idea of hosting their own naturalization ceremony in the spring. They even had ideas about how they could tailor the program to activities they are already doing with the children on a daily basis. They currently have a Jewish immigration section of study for eighth graders and they show a film by MacArthur Grant recipient Meredith Monk. They promised to speak to the teachers within the next few weeks about implementations and the initial scheduling of dates.
One of the most exciting aspects is their interest in using our online curriculum, which should be up and running within a couple months. We knew this would be popular with many schools that have ample access to technology, but this is the first time someone has actually expressed direct interest since I’ve been with the organization.
They also asked us to look into possible partnerships with an organization called “People to People” which currently runs similar programs to one of our current partners. If the interests seem to align themselves this might serve as another opportunity to team together to receive additional grants and funding.
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