Dear BWC Community,

We are excited to share with the whole BWC community about our Children’s Education Programs (Shule, TASC, and Circle Playtime) Expansion Project! See our previous email for background details. We’re excited to share some of the work this match has already enabled our Children’s Education Programs to launch as we ask you to help us raise the final $5,800 to ensure we receive the full match gift!

Recruitment: We have been investing in Circle Playtime, our free, monthly drop in children’s program for 2-5-year-olds. This year and last year, Circle Playtime was completely full by the end of the year. For the first time in many years, our Kinder class (first year of Shule) is also full this year (with 14 children). Our strategy has been to offer programming for pre-K-aged kids that draws families into our community in their children’s early years, to build community and bring people into our school for the long-term. We are thrilled to see this strategy working, and with Carly’s leadership, we hope to reinforce this approach as well as increase enrollment in the older grades through targeted recruitment.

Through Carly’s hard work, we hosted several recruitment events at our Shule in March and January. We had 17 new families register for our March event, and we are now actively working on recruiting each of these families to join our Shule community. We also have upcoming Shule Open Houses planned for April 26 and May 3.

Curriculum Update: After an in-depth community process, the Curriculum Committee is in the process of finalizing philosophies around our core issues of Israel/Palestine, Diasporism, and Antisemitism. These philosophies will guide the creation of classroom materials for the upcoming Shule school year. The process to invite feedback and participation into these materials has allowed the Shule community to define shared values and a shared orientation to these issues, which have historically been pain points within our ideologically diverse community. Due to the opportunity this process provided, we now have stronger alignment within the Shule community around these issues, resulting in clear learning objectives the curriculum update will be built around. 

The Curriculum Team is thrilled to be working with a highly skilled curriculum consultant, Rose Sadler, who has years of experience as a classroom teacher and as a curriculum designer for Facing History and Ourselves. She is currently creating scope and sequences across grade levels based on our curriculum philosophies, which will then be used to develop lesson plans as well as resources for teachers and for families. The new curriculum will be ready to move into the implementation phase by the 2026-27 school year. We are thrilled at the progress we’ve been able to make so far, and we are moved by the thoughtful and important conversations we’ve been able to have as a community.

We are endlessly grateful for the ability to bring in such a skilled consultant to help us take the big ideas that felt most important to pass on to the next generation of progressive Jews, and make them into a concrete curriculum. None of this would have been possible without this match. 

We are working with Shule families to raise $30,000 of this match from our broader Shule community. We have made huge progress towards this goal. In order to reach it, we are looking to our broader community today to help us raise $2,900 in gifts for this year, and $2,900 in pledges for next year. Here is where you can make your pledge:

Thank you so much for your incredible support and commitment to our community and our Children’s Programs! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us by replying to this email!

In gratitude,
Ali Rice, BWC Deputy Director +
Angela Markle, BWC Board Member and Shule parent

*After filling out the pledge form, when you’re ready to make your first year payment on your pledge: Donate online at this link. Under “Is your donation in honor/memory of someone? Other Comments?” write in “Shule Match.” If you prefer to give via a check, please write ‘Shule Match’ in the byline and mail to Boston Workers Circle, 6 Webster Street, Brookline MA 02446.

As an interfaith family, Shule is a comfortable and welcoming community for all of us. Our kids look forward to Shule Sundays and always leave having reflected on their values, uncovered something about themselves, and/or their history, and are generally excited.” – Eliza Parad.