Hadar Bet Yaakov integrates extra-curricular classes into the week with public speaking, debate, drama, and even Nashim B’Tanach every Wednesday. Classes are academically rigorous and presented as interactive workshops to maximize student learning. Mrs. Sandy Gros has developed an interactive Nashim B’Tanach class where girls not only learn about our Imahos and tzidkaniyos in Tanach, but have activities, journaling, group work, and discussions to concretize concepts and make Jewish foundational ideas real for them.
Hadar Bet Yaakov is proud to have Rabbi YY Rubinstein, world-renowned author and public speaker, as their public speaking teacher. Rabbi Rubinstein gives girls both instruction in the “how-to” of public speaking, ample presentation opportunities, as well as video reviews to help them improve. Girls also enjoy weekly art classes with Mrs. Elizeh Hakimi, noted art teacher in both art schools and tri-state area yeshivos, where they learn about perspective, shading, texture, and facial proportions. Mrs. Leora Nadtouchy has been doing drama workshops with women for years and builds up Hadar Bet Yaakov students with an array of improvisational techniques and skills.
Hadar Bet Yaakov believes that honing in on individual interests and talent is key to personal development, growth, and fulfillment. “We need to capitalize on what they’re already interested in and then continue that flow,” remarked principal Mrs. Friedman. “It’s amazing to see how their eyes actually ‘see’ the roundness and depth in objects that they didn’t see before. They’re really able to create an object’s roundness now – it’s amazing.”
The girls have almost completed their first round of speeches with Rabbi Rubinstein, are emmeshed in their third art study of vanishing points, and are absorbed with text reading and learning activities on the Torah’s role models for b’nos Yisrael. Hadar Bet Yaakov’s enhanced curriculum promotes actualization of student potential by embracing the aesthetic and emotional needs inherent in everyone.
By Shoshanna Friedman