I’ll admit it, I’m not that cool.
I also don’t have that many friends.
It’s pretty hard when you have kids to make and maintain friendships with other adults. From the time your kids are born, until they start doing things pseudo-independently in the third grade, there just isn’t time. Especially if you’re working.
But after a time, something changes. You get into routines with your kids’ baseball or dance schedules, you start seeing the same faces and other parents regularly, and perhaps eventually you start making new friends. This phenomenon is actually happening to me right now and it’s both surprising and quite nice.
We saw this happening the other night at Prozdor at our barbeque for new students and prospective students. When we planned the event, we were expecting to see around sixty or seventy people… but in the end we had over 170 people in the building, eating, hanging out, playing outside, and generally enjoying one another’s company. It was pretty amazing.
When students come to visit Prozdor we know what to expect. They see other kids, they see the fun things going on, they see the charismatic teachers and role models, and they want in. We find, time and time again, that if a student walks through our doors, the odds are we have them.
But parents are a different story.
Once a kid enters Prozdor, or high school, communication gets a little cursory with their parents. How was your day? Fine. Did you have fun? Whatever. What do you want for dinner? I don’t care.
From a parental perspective, this is sad. Your biggest, proudest, most lovable social connection is gone.
Enter other parents. Enter Prozdor.
Over the course of the evening, we observed something. We saw groups of parents from different schools both talking to each other and meeting new people. Schechter parents, Temple Reyim parents, JCDS parents, Temple Emanuel parents… it didn’t matter where they were from, they were just happy to be out and having a good time in the presence of other adults.
At the end of the night, the refrain we heard from the parents was clear- more parent events. They are looking to us to provide them with another way to connect with like-minded parents, ones who value Jewish life and learning, and who share a vision and excitement for the future of Prozdor.
We welcome this attitude, thank our new and prospective parents for coming, and are already excited about building not just a student community, but a parent community, at Prozdor moving forward.
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