Friday, April 30, 2010

Spelunking

When I was a young child, my parents made caves for me, and I played in them.

They moved chairs and couches, and covered them with blankets and old sheets. I enjoyed these cozy, private, and individual spaces they had created for me.

Because of my parent’s example, as I grew older, I was able to build my own caves.

Even before these make shift caves, my parents held me in their arms, making a cave around me.

This coming Sunday is the holiday of Lag B’omer.

We remember our sages who hid in caves from Roman soldiers in order to study Torah.

Today, we are fortunate to live in America, where we don’t have to hide to express our Judaism. We are blessed with beautiful synagogues and Jewish Day Schools like Cardin.

I am thinking about caves, the caves where our ancestors had to study and those of our future.

Caves give us protection and shelter.

Some caves are challenging.

Other caves provide opportunities for exploration and discovery.

Caves are fun.

We thank our parents and teachers for building the caves where we learn to play, to study, and to explore.

And there is nothing quite as satisfying as building our own caves and living in them.

Happy Lag B’omer,
Rabbi Stuart Seltzer

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Zeno's Paradox

This month, BC Calculus students are studying infinite series. I like to open this topic with one of my favorite mathematical paradoxes. It’s called Zeno’s paradox and it goes like this:

Suppose one day you wake up and decide to run a mile. To do so, first you must run half a mile. But to run a half a mile, first you’ve got to run a quarter mile. And to run a quarter mile, you’ve first got to run an eighth of a mile. To run an eighth of a mile, you must run a sixteenth of a mile, and on and on.

Those fractions can always be divided in half again, yet each of those segments takes some finite time to run. But we’re humans, and we don’t have an infinite amount of time, so we can never run an infinite number of tiny little mile parts. Therefore, if you ever tried to run a mile, you would die before finishing. Maybe you should try the elliptical machine.

Of course there’s something wrong with Zeno’s argument—after all, it is possible to run a mile—but his logic is so convincing. How do we deal with it?

It turns out that any finite quantity, like a mile or a minute, can be expressed as an infinite sum of ever smaller parts. We can see why with a little algebraic trick.

Consider the series created by adding up all the half-steps in our mile run. We’ll give it a convenient one-letter name—x.

Now look what happens when we multiply both sides of the equation by 2:


Notice that we have almost identical expressions for 2x and x. In fact, the only difference between the two infinite sums is that 2x contains a 1. Otherwise, every fraction that appears in our expression for 2x shows up in our expression for x. So when we subtract one from the other, our infinite series of fractions completely cancels out:



And suddenly it turns out that our infinite progression of half-steps is precisely the same as the whole mile! Now we all have one less excuse not to exercise.

(Note: For those interested, there are two things we left out here. We did not formally define what it means for an infinite series to equal some sum, and we assumed that x exists. We do both with a little bit of calculus.)

~Todd Bryant
Math Instructor

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Spirit Week

Dress Like a Teacher Day/Clash Day

        
       Ally and Dennis (aka Dr. Prentiss) 


Dora, Asher (aka Ms. Sims), Jesse (aka Srta. Frumin), and Beverly






Alli and Adina

Shachar and Kayla

and some teachers dress as students:

Morah Czopnik

 Rabbi Seltzer

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

The Energy of the Young and Philanthropy

My former Head of School, a man with a sincere love for his job, often remarked that when an educator is not excited about innovative initiatives or is reluctant at the start of a new academic year, it is time to resign. Fortunately for his school community he is still there. After forty years, I am amazed daily at the energy of youth - their yearning for information, their zeal to make the world a better place. At Cardin, I smile every day listening (eavesdropping?) to conversations and observing students in their classes.


It is not unusual for high school students to attempt to raise money for causes, be it athletics, a school trip or something about which they are passionate. So too, at Cardin, you can find coffee, juice, bagels and donuts for sale most mornings. In this case, however the cause is unique. Families may be aware of our involvement in ROPE (Roots of Philanthropic Education) a project of RAVSAK, The Jewish Community Day School Network. One of six schools selected nationally,our group has spent the year learning how and why Jewish tradition has mandated philanthropic giving for thousands of years. They have come to know the impact of this tradition for them in today’s world and have gradually begun to develop knowledge of effective methods of fundraising. They are working collaboratively (via conference calls and the Internet) with Jewish teens in other states to identify and support causes of their own choosing. Visits by a number of local philanthropists who have shared their own experiences, helped them learn to approach donors independently. Our group is truly devoted to this project.

This year the theme for Project ROPE is Disadvantaged Youth. In the coming weeks, our students will make visits to a number of foundations and individuals, asking for further support. Having raised funds from the breakfast sales and a few other smaller outreach efforts, they will be confident asking for contributions, knowing their roots and having had the experience of trying to solicit funds from their peers.

You ask, I am sure, what this has to do with loving life in a school after so many years. To me, it is the simple joy of seeing a new generation learning important life lessons, knowing that their experience at Cardin is impacting the world beyond our walls. If you are in the neighborhood, drop in for breakfast!

~Marjorie R. Hoffman
Director of Development and Marketing

Monday, April 26, 2010

Spirit Week Begins

What a week!! As spirit week starts off with a fun pajama day and a large number of participants within the school, the sports teams are looking forward to this excitement to flow over to the athletics field. All teams have games this week, with the softball team getting two games in, the baseball team getting two games in, and the tennis team having a match. Let's just hope that the weather gives us an opportunity to actually play. Please come out and support our students as they do their best to represent Cardin in a positive light to the greater Baltimore community.


Foye Minton, CAA
Dean of Students and Director of Athletics

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Juniors Go College Shopping and Take New York

Shira & Jeremiah show their NY spirit.

The Cardin 11th graders recently returned from a whirlwind 4-day college tour and Shabbaton. The purpose of this trip was to expose students to a variety of college campuses and get a glimpse into being Jewish in college. Accompanied by Ms. Schein, Rabbi Seltzer, Coach Minton, and Mr. Neft, the students went on college tours throughout Pennsylvania and New York and spent a meaningful Shabbat together in New York City’s Upper West Side. The group visited West Chester University, Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania, List College, Columbia University, Barnard College, Binghamton University, Muhlenberg College, and Franklin & Marshall College. Although this trip was exhausting, the students were able to connect with current college students at each campus, shul hop on Shabbat, and bond as a group. By far, the most popular part of the trip was a visit to the Chicago City Limits improv comedy show. The actors had the group laughing so hard at their dead-on impersonations of Coach and Ms. Schein. This was a wonderful weekend together and a great way to kick off the exciting college search process.

~Hallie Schein
Director of College Counseling

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Tourist Photographs

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit England for 10 days—a trip partly to attend a convention related to my part-time job as a writer/editor of horror stories, but also serving as a long-overdue tourist-style vacation.

During our first day in London, my traveling companion and I decided to take an expensive double-decker tourist bus. This would be a good way to orient ourselves to the city. Plus, it was the coldest and rainiest day of our vacation, so it was nice to let the city roll past us.
The bus ride included a tour guide who gave us historical background and directed our gaze throughout the trip. Several times he pointed to a Starbucks, and said that was America’s revenge for the Tea Tax (apparently that joke never gets old). At one point, he alerted us that a “perfect picture opportunity” was just around the corner: the iconic Big Ben, framed inside the giant London Eye ferris wheel. I aimed my digital camera and dutifully took a picture. It’s a pretty cool shot, even for such a cold, rainy day. No doubt 60 other people on the bus took exactly the same picture:

So, that’s a pretty decent tourist photo. But here’s one of my favorite photographs from the trip. It’s from the convention I attended, which took place in Brighton—a seaside resort kind of like our Ocean City, with its own boardwalk/pier of carnival attractions. The hotel, The Royal Albion, was built in 1826. Its public areas were lovely, but the rooms weren’t necessarily in the best or most luxurious shape. Our room included one of the ugliest chairs I have ever seen:


I really love this chair. The shape. The color. Have you ever seen anything like it? Oh, and can you imagine: it’s actually a rocking chair—one of those coiled-spring rocking chairs that never seems to wobble the right way. Every time you sit down, the back of the chair bangs into the wall!
I doubt a tour guide would ever demand a bus load of people should point all their cameras at this chair (“Coming up, around the corner, one of the strangest ugliest chairs you’ll ever see!”), but I’m really glad to have the photo. I set the picture to my computer wallpaper, and laugh every time the screen boots up. For me, this is the best kind of tourist photography.
***

My other bit of news from the trip: One evening of the convention I attended was devoted to a banquet/ceremony that announced that year’s winners of Bram Stoker Award in different categories of writing (novel, first novel, long fiction, short fiction, anthology, collection, non-fiction, poetry). This is a peer-nominated award, voted on by members of the Horror Writers Association. My story “In the Porches of My Ears” was nominated in the short fiction category, and I was surprised to learn that night (after a dinner of fish and chips and “mushy peas”) that I won the award. Here’s a picture of me and the other winners, all of us holding a little haunted house trophy. If you open the little front door, there’s a plaque with the category and title and author name. This was an incredible honor for me—and I’m glad that someone took a photo to commemorate the evening!

Winners from left to right:  Norman Prentiss, Michael Knost, Brian Lumley, Tanith Lee,
Hank Schwaeble, Lisa Morton, Ray Russell, and James Herbert.

~Dr. Norman Prentiss
English Department Chair

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Gratitude and Giving

I spent the weekend with three of my very young granddaughters. Their parents are working diligently to instill in them the value of polite conversation and gracious manners, so when I hear the tiny voices saying, "Thank you Bubby," I am warmed that they are succeeding not only in developing manners, but also in creating a sense of gratitude. I like to think that people generally feel gratitude, but it often goes unexpressed. In those cases, the point seems to be missed. If good fortune comes your way and you forget to note it, an opportunity is lost. The positive things in our lives are not to be taken for granted.


In terms of Cardin, this might be a fortuitous time to express gratitude to the many leaders, both lay and professional, whose vision created this institution. Last week, members of our Rabbinic Advisory Council, a group of 6 senior and 2 emeritus rabbis , took time from their very busy schedules to meet with us and share their wisdom about a number of important topics. At the same meeting, four members of the Class of 2011 gave up their lunch period to talk to the rabbis about their Cardin experience. They expressed gratitude for their education here at Cardin and we, in turn, were appreciative of their honest, mature and sincere insights.

In the development office, we are grateful each day for the community-wide support that we have received over the years. We continue to marvel at the generosity of our donors. As we move toward the closing months of the Annual Fund Drive for The Shoshana S. Cardin School, I want to let you know that it is never too late to make your annual contribution. Your gift is essential in helping to continue the excellent programs that make our school the unique place that it is. If you are a parent , alumni parent or family member, you are keenly aware of the benefits that children receive when they attend Cardin. By giving a gift of any size, you are showing your gratitude. We, in turn, will be grateful to you and our students will continue to thrive. As a result, in time, the entire community will be grateful for a new generation of Jewish leaders.


As we pass along to our children and grandchildren the values we hold dear, it is essential that the example we set is strong.


Margi Hoffman
Director of Development and Marketing

Monday, April 19, 2010

Yom HaZikaron



On this day, we honor the memory of the
men and women who gave their lives
for the creation and security of
The State of Israel.



Monday, April 12, 2010

Be Well with Athletics!

Baseball and Softball travel to Queen Anne School today. Tennis will travel to Rockburn Branch Park on Thursday to take on Norbel.

Coming off Friday's amazing day of wellness, we start a beautiful week to get outside and get active. This is also a good time to start getting sponsors for Race for Cardin Athletics. Throughout the next month students should be getting sponsors for their walk/jog/run which will take place on June 6.

Foye Minton, CAA
Dean of Students and Director of Athletics