RAMZOO

The end of summer means the end of lazy days at the beach, Fortnite around the clock, and letting the time pass by doing just about anything other than thinking about homework, tests and starting the day at 8 AM. To ease the transition back to school, the Ramaz GO created a back to school welcome called “RamZoo.” The event on Wednesday, September 5th was the perfect opportunity to reconnect with old friends and get ready for the year ahead in a more casual setting, which meant serving food that we won’t be seeing on the lunch menu anytime soon, watching a faculty skit, and a viewing a video message from the administration.

After a BBQ lunch on the third floor terrace, sophomores, juniors, and seniors gathered in the auditorium for an opening assembly. After a brief introduction by Rabbi Slomnicki, Ms. Bernfeld and Rabbi Albo performed a short skit that took place in a psychologist’s office. Rabbi Albo, who played the psychologist, repeatedly told the patient, Ms. Bernfeld, to stop being worried about everything.  This skit was the third annual psychology-themed production performed on the first day of school. Aside from inciting laughter, the skit was meant to ensure students that their mental health is more important than anything else, which was and is a good message to come back to, of course. The teachers did an outstanding job acting out their parts, but overall, the skit did not pique the students’ interests. Many students were itching to hear about their friends’ summers and did not have the attention span to sit through the production. After the skit, a video was played featuring the new head of school, Mr. JOnathan Cannon. The video was a press conference with featuring Mr. Cannon fielding questions from administrators in the Ramaz Lower, Middle, and Upper School Divisions. Overall, this portion did not really address anything that would be interesting to students and seemed more like it was made for parents.

The aftermath of the assembly was filled with disappointment from students. After all, it was the first year in recent history that the opening assembly did not feature a video made by the G.O., which was a major let down especially after the release of their well-received pre-summer video.  Many did not even realize that the theme of the day way “RamZoo,” a play on the Labor Day music festival E-Zoo, which many upperclassmen attend. The signage or direct mentions to the special themed day were minimal, and above all, there was no music theme to connect it all together.

All in all, next year, the faculty and students should work together on orientation programming to make sure that the welcome back students receive is more “tuned in” to the post-summer frame-of-mind that students usually possess on their first day back to school.