Value of Experiential Education Trips

As we settle into the second quarter in the Middle School, we reflect on a wonderful beginning to the 2025-26 school year. The daily lives of our students are filled with academics, athletics, arts, and Jewish studies, just to name a few. The additional opportunities provided by experiential education trips allow our students to make curricular and social connections and to extend the classroom learning to real-world scenarios.

As our 5th graders focus on becoming middle schoolers, they venture to Camp OSRUI for their overnight Shabbaton. At camp, they have the opportunity to connect their Jewish studies and tefillah curricula to real-world experiences while fostering independence, creating community, and developing responsibility. Organizing their spaces, keeping track of their gear, and collaborating with their roommates, while immersing themselves in the traditions of Shabbat, provides invaluable moments of self-management, problem-solving, connections, and enduring memories.

Our 6th graders return to Camp OSRUI, a familiar location, for a multi-night stay. With a focus on our Social Emotional Learning curriculum, strengthening a growth mindset and developing empathy and respect, our students spend several days outside in nature engaged in independent and group activities concentrating on relationship and community building, collaboration, and teamwork. From independently traversing the high ropes course to working in teams on group challenges, our students have the opportunity to spend time together outdoors, appreciating diverse perspectives, communicating effectively, and developing resilience.

Both our 7th and 8th grade trips expand our travel beyond the Midwest, with the 7th grade going to Washington, DC, and the 8th grade to Israel. This opportunity to deepen curricular and personal understanding allows our students to engage in active academic inquiry. They are encouraged to ask compelling questions, create hypotheses, and investigate the location they are in. While in Washington, DC, our 7th graders are able to connect the history lessons from their classrooms with their grade-level goals of self-advocacy and being agents of change. Our 8th graders' Tiyul, a journey to Israel, is the culmination of their Bernard Zell experience. Here, they are able to integrate their grade-level goals of thinking critically and creatively, developing leadership skills, and giving back to their community, as they explore and experience Israel through the lens of all they have learned at Bernard Zell.

The Bernard Zell experiential education curriculum allows our middle school students to take classroom concepts and apply them to real-world scenarios, moving from theory to experience. Thus, providing our students with the skills to connect and solidify knowledge and to truly make learning relevant. Through these trips, our students build independence and practice critical thinking and problem-solving skills, as they develop into “exceptional young people who put Jewish values into action.”