Rikuz
Janet Ozur Bass
Middle School Assistant Principal
Rikuz meets three days a week for one semester of the year during our Academic Flex Block. Rikuz, meaning “center”, is dedicated to engaging students in navigating interpersonal relationships, building self-awareness, and promoting health and wellness, and exploring conversations that resonate with early adolescents. Through the Council in Schools model, teachers facilitate student discussions and engage students in group activities to build trusting relationships and support systems, improve students’ peer to peer communication, and consider broader issues they might be facing. A range of topics related to fostering meaningful community, healthy relationships, making healthy choices, health and wellness, mental health, sex consent education, B’nei Mitzvah, and adolescent development are covered.
Core Skills
- How to make healthy decisions - drugs, alcohol, nicotine, and relationships
- Communication skills - both listening and speaking in order to build healthy communities
- Organization, executive functioning, and meta-cognition skills
- Digital citizenship
Themes of the Curriculum
6th Grade: Preparing Students for Experiencing Adolescence
Students will work on organization skills, using online tools appropriately, exploring identity formation, how to make and keep friends, anatomy and puberty, and consent.
7th Grade: Creating and Participating in Healthy Communities
Rikuz for 7th grade students focuses on maintaining a healthy lifestyle, using words appropriately, building and maintaining healthy relationships, perspective taking, and exploring pluralism, diversity, and unheard voices. Additionally, it will continue to build on the skills and themes of 6th grade.
8th Grade: Preparing Students for Middle to Late Adolescence
Topics for 8th grade Rikuz include health education, healthy on-line choices, understanding substance abuse, and making healthy choices. Additionally, students will continue to build on the skills and themes of 6th and 7th grade Rikuz.