*I think I must have edited the responses in the application system, as they look unorganized to me. I left them as is here, you can see my stream of thoughts and understand how difficult it was for me to respond to these questions.

What do you consider to be your child's academic and social/emotional strengths, as well as areas needing growth?

1. Strengths*

Kfir is a curious, enthusiastic learner. He collaborates with others while working together on a task, learning from his peers in areas where they are more knowledgeable than him or sharing his knowledge with them. On the other hand, Kfir is able to challenge himself and learn new subjects on his own, either using a designated course or by investigating and learning in self-pace.

His experience at Helios in 7th and 8th Grade (current), has changed the way he is learning. Kfir thrives when being challenged to investigate a phenomena he experimented with in his science class, deepen his knowledge in literature and poetry by his humanities teacher’s recommendations, or solve a problem in his geometry class using the AoPS methods for learning. Kfir adapts to new learning styles very easily. After spending one year at Helios, he was so engaged in learning, that he decided to learn an Algebra 2 course on his own during the summer, and he is now placed in Geometry class (Aops).

2. Areas needing growth*

Kfir is showing a high level of  independence in his studies, however he sometimes struggles with time management. As he has a tendency to perform thorough investigations on the topic he is learning, he might end up with a lot more information than he can process in time to finish the work he is assigned. During his time at Helios, he has faced such situations and started learning how to focus on the task at hand, keep track of the time he spends on the tasks, and set reasonable goals which will reflect on the effort needed for each task. He also learns to identify when he is struggling and notify his teachers so they can help him re-focus on the task, teach him how to manage his time and if needed, get an extension for his project. However, this is a process he started practicing only during his 2 years at Helios (as he never had time management issues before) and still needs to work on perfecting it.

In addition, Kfir’s sense of fairness sometimes reflects on his judgment. When he is in a situation where he feels unfairness has occurred (not necessarily to him, but also to others), he might get agitated that he will struggle to express his thoughts and emotions. Kfir is aware of the effects such situations have on him and is working on learning to calm himself down, straighten his thoughts and express his emotions in an organized manner.

3. As you are completing the high school admissions process, what values and priorities for your child's education have emerged for your family? How and why do you expect that our school will meet these values and priorities?*

The process of searching highschools allowed Kfir to take ownership of the path he would like to take on his teenage years. While reviewing the different highschools, missions, goals, curriculum, …. Kfir was able to define what is most important for him during his high-school years. As a family, we learned that each of us has a different view of what are Kfir’s needs and which high-school experience will benefit him most. As part of this process we shared our thoughts and discussed our opinions. The process stimulated us to revisit our family’s core values. If in the past, we thought our children should follow our ways of thinking and grow by following our ‘moral foot steps’, than now, following this process, we learned that as they reach a crossroad in their life, we need to let them explore the opportunities available for them, discuss the pros and cons of each opportunity and allow them make an educated decision where they want to lead their life.

In addition, we learned that as our kids grow older, we need to change the way we handle academic and social-emotional challenges facing our kids. fInstead of solving a problem arising because of academic or social emotional issues, we need help each of them find the process they can use to face and resolve these types of problems on their own. Using strategies they learn and use in class to review different aspects of a problem, they can solve a lot of their day-to-day issues.

our kids find ways to cope with this complicated and complex issue, either by using day-to-day realities or by elaborating using some ideals they have learned in school. Nueva’s teaching perspective creates a direct connection between classroom situation and real life situation is a direct connection to our ways of education.

While this might seem like an easy answer (i.e. we would like Kfir to be ready for college and real life), we can not say what we would expect for him to know.

In the last 6 months since he started the high school search process, Kfir has changed in so many ways, and has matured so quickly in front of our eyes, that we can not limit ourselves in specifying what we hope to see, as it is truly an enigma for us.

Instead, we would like to express our thoughts about the process he will go through. We would like him to be engaged, challenged, encouraged to explore, learn and thrive. But mostly, we would like him to be happy, and be able to express himself with no fear of what would happen if his opinions are different from the people surrounding him.

We love the tremendous change that Kfir went through since joining Helios. He is encouraged to express his opinions, challenge teachers on different topics, use hands-on learning, and introduced to a variety of subjects. We love that he has the opportunity to dive deeply into the learned subjects but also to investigate projects he is passionate about and find useful implementations of them.

In our continuously changing world, it is important to allow kids to experience different ways of learning. Kfir had the opportunity to advance in math course during summer. This was a new learning experience for him: pushing himself, managing time, searching for information and knowledge on his own. As there are many opportunities to be a self-learner today, students should be encouraged to be self-taught using online and other resources in designated online courses or mastering new non-academic skills.

We would ask Kfir to describe the situation, what has happened and how he feels about it. Then we would encourage him to see the situation from different perspectives, trying to see all aspects of the situation, not only his perspective. The next step would be to think of what can be done to resolve the problem, while encouraging him to talk to the people involved. All that time, we would maintain a calm environment so that Kfir is able to think about the whole process and learn from it. It is important to us that Kfir understands that while we might not agree with his ways of thinking. We will support him in his actions, as long as they are thoroughly thought out and do not offend others.

Playing strategy games as a family demonstrates the difference in our kids' ways of learning. While Kfir thoroughly reads the instructions and makes sure he fully understands the rules before playing, Barak immediately starts playing, makes mistakes and learns as he plays. Ella would learn by observation, then playing using the learned strategies and Yoav would rather watch and advise the other players.

As a side effect of the pandemic, we had made calculated decisions about our kids' learning paths in the last 2 years. Guided by their different ways of learning, demonstrated in their game learning capabilities, we chose different learning experiences for each child.

Kfir was enrolled in Helios as we knew that he would be able to quickly adapt to a new environment, and be encouraged by this new challenge. Ella was part of an independent study home-based-group while Yoav and Barak participated in our district’s virtual learning program. At the end of the school year, we reaffirmed our knowledge about their learning experiences, understanding that they would benefit from a school that would be able to see who they truly are and devise a learning process that would match their different personalities.

4. Please share any information that will help us better know your child. You might include family circumstances, health concerns, learning differences, tutoring, accelerated programs, previous assessments, educational evaluations, etc. (optional)

Kfir started attending Helios in August 2020, after 6 months of pandemic. Helios school and teachers allowed Kfir to expand his horizons and gave him the realization that it is good for him to be who he really is and not be concerned about his desire to learn and expend his horizons.

Kfir is a happy, curious and smart kid who is always open to learning new things. Teachers love having him in their classroom as he is always engaged in learning, helps his peers and helps create a collaborative and open environment.

During the 9 months since we started the process of searching for highschools that would benefit Kfir the most, Kfir has grown and developed in manners we did not expect. Kfir is leading the search process and his perspectives about what is most important to him have changed. If at the beginning of the process he was interested in schools who situate themselves as academic with rigorous curriculum, then today he is more interested in the experience of learning and finding schools that would allow him to develop different skills and would expose him to new experiences, knowing that these are the skills and attributes that would make him successful in his adulthood.

Kfir loves learning and diving into searches on his own, but he thrives when collaborating with others, mutually infusing each other while conversing, debating, and sharing ideas, knowledge and experiences. His time at Helios, both during the virtual learning and ever since the students came back to learning in person has helped him progress in both methods of learning.

5. Our school hosts community-building events throughout the school year and encourages and depends on families to participate. Parents/Guardians volunteer at school events, lend their professional expertise to enrich the academic program, donate to the annual fund and capital campaigns, and serve on committees and governing bodies. We understand that families have varying capacities to give their time, talents, and resources, our school values every person’s participation. Please describe how you have been involved in your child’s current school and how you would like to become involved in the school’s community.*

In our family, being part of a community is part of who we are. Whether it is by volunteering in our kids' classrooms on a daily basis to encourage and develop kids or non-curricular activities such as art, sport etc’, or volunteering and chairing PTA committees including serving as PTA President, to being involved as part of the local baseball league and coaching staff and organizing community events at our current school.