As you will all be aware, the staff and students have been working together to establish what we feel is “The King David Way” – This is, in short, a set of principles and core values which underpin all we do as a school community and center around the school’s Jewish ethos.
In the first term we established what our aims are as a school. They are:
Staff, in consultation with our pupils, have been working hard over the past two terms to ensure that these core principles underpin our practices as a school. We have carried out a comprehensive evaluation of key areas of the high school: Assessment, Teaching and Learning, Sixth Form, Pastoral and Communication and looked at ways the core principles can be explicitly subsumed within them.
As part of that process we have established a document of core values which we are calling “The King David Way”. These will be shared with pupils over the next two weeks and the expectation is that all members of the school community embody these principles. We are delighted to be working with the primary school on this initiative and you will be able to see the fruits of this collaboration in our foyer as you walk in on “The King David Way” board. Each week staff have the opportunity to nominate pupils who most embody “The King David Way” and their names and reason for nomination will be displayed on the board as a representation of all that is special about our school community.
We are extremely proud of “The King David Way” and feel it strengthens us as a school community as Rabbi Lord Sacks states “If you remember where you come from, where you are going to, and why, you can handle change because you have a map of values that don’t change”.
King David High School attracts almost all of the potential Jewish pupils in the area. Most pupils in King David are of other faiths but it is critical to the future of the School that the Jewish ethos of the School is maintained and indeed strengthened.
Important days in the Jewish year are marked across the Campus and there are many visitors to the School who are involved with the Jewish world generally, or with Israel in particular. The School charities, Jewish and non-Jewish, are a reflection of the dual nature of King David High - a unique school - a Jewish school - with the majority of the pupils from other faiths.
Within the community, King David High School is regarded as vital in the Jewish education of the future generations.
It is not simply the formal education process in general Judaism, Bar and Bat Mitzvah Studies, Jewish History or GCSE and A-level courses, but also the sympathetic transmission of the "golden chain" of Jewish tradition. Thus, subjects covered in School are often important in the longer time span, e.g. the significance of Shabbat, Kashrut, festival observance, identification positively as being part of the Jewish family, Israel etc.
Prayer within Judaism is formalised as the morning (Shacharit), afternoon (Mincha) and evening (Ma'ariv) services. It is vital that students gain "hands on" experience of prayer - there is a compulsory Shacharit service each week. There is also a complement of services held on a voluntary basis. Collective worship is a feature for all pupils with assemblies and reflection in Ready to Learn.
Jewish Services are held on Wednesdays and Fridays at 8:30.
The balance of the School Curriculum is obviously heavily influenced by the fact that both Jewish Studies and Modern Hebrew are essential and compulsory components of a Jewish pupil's programme, the former to the end of KS4, and the latter to the end of KS3.
Where possible other departments are encouraged to included aspects of Jewish life or culture to their SoWs such as Holocaust studies in History, Judaism in RE or Israel in Geography.
Each year, a number of Year 9 pupils go to Kibbutz Lavi, which is in the heart of the Lower Galillee Region, for an extended residential “Keshet Scheme run by the Centre for Educational Tourism in Israel”.
There are also a series of visits planned for pupils across all year groups in association with various agencies in order to extend and deepen the students’ understanding of their Jewish roots. Informal activities are also offered at lunchtime such as Israel club.
Twitter
Studied or Worked here? Share Your Review
Please do not post:
Thank you once again for doing your part to keep Edarabia the most trusted education source.