By Shira Borzak ('07)

The advent of the Internet has ushered in an era where we have access to immeasurable resources, and can reach just about anyone or anything with the mere click of a mouse.

While the “Information Age” has greatly improved our lives, it has also come with inherent risks, threats and dangers.

This week, Phil Rosenthal, a world- renowned expert on Internet crime, spoke to the entire student body, faculty and parents about the dangers of the Internet. He related stories about children drawn into dangerous relationships with online “friends” who were intent upon causing horrific harm.

Particularly interesting to WYHS teenagers was Mr. Rosenthal’s discussion of the risks – destroyed relationships, resulting humiliation, and lack of privacy -- surrounding popular social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

By Rabbi Perry Tirschwell

I was privileged to spend two weeks last month studying at Columbia University’s Teachers College as a Klingenstein Visiting Fellow. It was an honor for me and our school that I was chosen for this challenging and prestigious program. It was unlike any educational or professional experience in which I have ever participated.

The twenty fellows were all heads of independent schools. They hailed from Tianjin, China; Kobe, Japan; Bergen, Norway; Nice, France; Kilimanjaro, Tanzania; Maui, Hawaii; Toronto, Canada and a number of different states. Not only was I the only Jewish day school administrator, I was the only Jew in the group. I was actually the first Jewish day school head to ever participate in this program.

Each of us chose to research a topic in which we were personally interested. The first goal of the program was to expose us to the vast world of educational research, which is too often only read by educational researchers, and not practitioners in the field. We were in the library late into the night searching for articles and doctoral dissertations that were relevant to our topics.

One of the world’s experts on private schools, Dr. Pearl Rock Kane, took us to four very different schools in Manhattan; Dalton (a famous Upper East Side private school), KIPP (a charter school with school on Saturdays), a public middle school (coincidentally run by a Jewish day school graduate), and an all girls high school in Spanish Harlem. Dr. Kane’s fascinating class focused on contemporary issues in independent school education.

On the last day of the program, we presented our findings to our colleagues, professors and graduate students. Then I thoroughly enjoyed Shabbat at David Berman’s (’02) apartment with our graduates studying at Columbia and Barnard. Sheri Adler (’02) gave a beautiful dvar Torah to the over 200 people at Kabbalat Shabbat at the Columbia Hillel, and I gave a shiur after shacharit the next morning.