At Ramaz, education spans beyond the walls of the classroom, and even beyond the borders of the United States. In February, upper school students traveled to London, England to explore its theater, history and culture, and to Guatemala for a Spanish immersion and chesed program.
Students from the Junior Literary Seminar and the senior Honors English class experienced the cultural life of England, past and present. They wandered the underground tunnels of the Churchill War Rooms, a site-specific museum comprising the spaces where Churchill and his associates strategized, ate and slept for the duration of the War; attended Shakespeare’s Richard II starring Jonathan Bailey, and a new adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus starring Rami Malek and Indira Varma; and honored the Israeli hostages by adding their own locks to the powerful Lovelock Hostage Bridge. After viewing the British Museum’s special exhibition, “Picasso: Printmaker,” they roamed galleries filled with mummies and ancient treasures. In Golders Green, they sampled British fish and chips and Israeli street food. Free time found them at Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and several phenomenal British bookshops.
Advanced Spanish class students embarked on a community service mission to Guatemala. The students used their Spanish language skills as they painted the walls of a community medical center, cleaned a beach with local school children and learned how to cook kosher Mayan cuisine. They even learned about environmental sustainability as they explored local coffee and cocoa plantations and hiked an inactive volcano. The experience of being immersed in Latin American culture, interacting with the local people, and being hosted by the Chabad, enhanced the students’ understanding of how different communities live and enhanced their appreciation of their own families, school and community.
Invaluable trips like these serve Ramaz’s educational goals to integrate what is learned in the classroom with the greater world. The students proudly displayed their Jewish values and their commitment to answering the call of “Hineni” as they were mekadesh shem Hashem everywhere they went.
