Julia Ullman - 1:1

 Week 1, Post 1

Hello everyone! For my Hawken Project, I am working at my synagogue, Temple Emanu El, assisting with end-of-year tasks for the Religious School.  I am supposed to be here in place of our Education Director, Kate Milgrom, who is supposed to be on maternity leave, but Baby Milgrom hasn’t decided to come into the world yet.  Even so, this week, I have been working with our Youth and Family Programs Director, Beth Mann, to prepare for the big last day program coming up on Sunday for Kindergarten through 6^th graders and their families. 

My hours have been a little uneven each day because of AP prep and testing, but it has been quite a long and tiring week of work.  I actually started going in on Monday because of the day off from school.  Beth and I worked together to organize supplies for each project station, write lists of supplies needed, and organized room layout plans for the custodians.  In addition to the preparation for Sunday’s program, we worked on some final tasks for Youth Group elections that evening.  That first day was quite busy, a sign of the week to come. 

Over the week, I have been quickly introduced to the rules of the lunchroom and the dynamics of the office.  I have known everyone in the office for years at my temple, but it is quite a different perspective working with them all day, every day. 

In addition to the preparation for the Sunday program, I was responsible for leading a brief service for the 3^rd through 6^th graders on Tuesday and Thursday during their Midweek Hebrew School classes.  On Tuesday, it was pretty hectic and unorganized because I was new to that format of services (I am not usually there on Tuesdays/Thursdays), but on Thursday there was a much smaller group of kids and it went much more smoothly.  Yesterday, Beth and I drove down to MedWish to pick up a bunch of huge boxes of supplies for the program (the entire program is a bunch of different service projects) which students will be sorting and labeling.  My little car was packed to the brim with those supplies, and ingredients for food-related project that we picked up on the way back to the temple.  I didn’t know so much could fit into my car!