First Steps - Bigger and Better

January 2023 ESRA Projects

ESRA's unique program for Heftzibah kindergartners which is making a difference

Here we are with our seventh group of Heftzibah kindergartners.

We have been part of the kindergarten for several years. We work with the kids three hours a week in order to teach them practical life skills, as well as helping them prepare for school and life.

Our objectives of the program still include: strengthening language, balance, coordination, directionality, navigation skills, graphic motor skills, how to hold a pencil, number concepts, understanding the sound of each letter and much much much more.

All of this is done through games and play. All of our equipment, to remind you, is made and created by our Director, Orly. She has been with us since the beginning (2017). I am the ESRA volunteer and coordinator of the program and am a specialist in early childhood education and development. Our third staff member, this year, is a handpicked student – Lea – who is a part of the Students Build a Community project in Heftzibah. She lives near the kindergarten and strolls over every Wednesday morning to work with us.

So why am I reporting again about this project? Is it just more of the same year after year? No. Not so. There are huge differences this year. Only our dedication and enthusiasm are unchanging.

This year, we are working in a building with two kindergartens and we have full cooperation with both of the teachers. Not only do they cooperate with us; they continue our work after we are gone for the rest of the week. We leave some of our equipment for them to use. We have accumulated scores of very creative and helpful games – all homemade and from recycled items.

For the first few years we dealt solely with children from the Ethiopian community. This year the kindergarten includes many other children from the surrounding lower economic area as well.This is known as "integration". It is also true that these new children need us as much as, if not more than, the Ethiopian population.

We work with the blessing of the Netanya Education Department's Supervisor, who would like us to work in more kindergartens in these areas.

We are still working on getting to know all of the children. We will shortly become familiar with all of them, knowing each child's strong points and weak points. We truly are into fine-tuning and are able to focus with a more targeted plan for the future for each child, as we get to know him/her.

In previous years, we started after Hanukkah and worked through June or July. This year, thanks to Orly's dedication and generosity, we began on November 2 – which is six weeks earlier than in the past. These six weeks gave us an enormous headstart.

On the personal level, I must say how heartwarming it is when we arrive on Wednesday mornings and all the children stampede towards us to give us a warm hug and a morning welcome. This week there was one child who had to leave early in order to attend a family brit. She begged her mother to let her stay in kindergarten and be with us instead of going to the event. This says a lot.

We are also seeing younger siblings of children who were with us in the program in previous years and whose parents insisted they attend the kindergarten where we are working.

Many of our kindergarten graduates are now participating as school aged children with Students Build a Community. To meet up again after four years is thrilling.

I wish we could offer our program to every kindergarten in Israel but that is doubtful. So Orly and Lea and I will stay in the kindergarten, while making a huge difference in the lives of these children and their families.

We will quietly continue to make a difference.

THANK YOU ESRA

Judi Argaman is the Volunteer Coordinator of First Steps

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Education Projects Social Projects

About the author

Judi Argaman

When I was young I lived in a very cold climate Minneapolis Minnesota. At the age of 9 my family moved to Washington DC. We were schooled in the public school system one of the worst in the country. The high school was filled with drugs crime and vandals. Nevertheless I did survive. I became a cheerleader which is VERY high status for a young girl in high school. I did well academically. It was the 60s which meant everything was up for negotiation. The old rules and regulations became questionable. We were changing the world no? My family was always involved in social action movements. The war in Vietnam. Helping refuseniks - the Russian Jews. Fighting for ecology. Fighting for the right to wear pants to school. Then I went off to college - Union College in Schenectady New York. I graduated in psychology in June 1974 summa cum laude and phi beta kappa. The summer after my freshman year my folks sent me of to Israel. I fell in love with Israel. The dust. The weather. The food. The people. The cube shaped apartment buildings. Buying milk in a bag. Paying bills at the post office. Upon my return to the USA I decided that I want to live in Israel after college graduation. The following three years passed and I managed to get to Israel as a counselor on youth trips working in a kibbutz and a semester abroad. I had become a fervent Zionist. On July 4 1974 I came to live in Israel. Alone. No family. No friends. Very little Hebrew. I was sent to Arad to WUJS (World Union of Jewish Students) where I studied Hebrew six hours a day. After WUJS I moved to Jerusalem and began working at the Hebrew University writing scholarship reports to donors. And I continued studying Hebrew. In 1975 I was fixed up with a cute army officer and the rest is history. We married in 1976 and 42 years later Amnon, a Jerusalemite, and I are still together. Happily. I then completed a masters degree in early education and family at The Schwartz Program at the Hebrew University. My thesis was on Family Day Care. The Demographic Center from the Prime Ministers Office and Joint Israel funded me to implement my project in Yehud from 1977 - 1987. Eventually I became the national coordinator for day care centers with the Community Center Corporation. After that I spent two years teaching in the early childhood education department at Hebrew University and then joined the staff of a training school in Netanya for early childhood educators. During that period I completed an MS degree in Life Span Sciences at Nova Southeastern University. In addition I studied sensory integration and regulation educational facilitation and coaching and supervision. From 1995 - 2009 I was a field supervisor and teacher at the Kibbutzim College of Education in the department of early education. I took pride in insisting on including in my class immigrants, Christians and Moslems. Diversity was important to me. During those years I took parenting of my three children very seriously. Today my children are all married; all are in Israel and live near our home in Herzliya where we have been since 1977. We have three grandchildren as well as our five grand dogs. I have been involved with ESRA for four years in various areas including being a magazine distributor and working with Students Build a Community and First Steps - an enrichment program for kindergarteners. I also am in charge of translations and editing for another outstanding organization: Aharai! Youth Leading Change . I have always believed that it is our mission and responsibility to leave the world a better place than when we arrived. To leave your mark. To make a difference. In my small world at Heftizba Netanya I know I am doing just that.