At Golda Och Academy, students have the opportunity to participate in numerous extra-curricular clubs and activities. Students are also involved in a variety of tikkun olam (social action) programs.
Extracurricular Clubs & Activities
- Israel Club: Members of the Israel Club help to make Israel more relevant in the school community. Participants teach about the land, people and customs of Israel through fun, interactive and informative programs.
- Middle School Choir: Members of the Middle School Choir learn how to read sheet music, sing a variety of secular and Jewish songs and perform at school and community events. Every other year the choir produces a CD, which is available for purchase.
- Middle School Play: Our Middle School students put on an musical each year.
- Middle School Knesset (Government): Student Council members promote the values of Golda Och Academy’s mission and voice the ideas of the student body. They also organize many school activities. Positions are elected each fall.
Annual Programs & Events
- Café Europa: Our 8th graders participate in this powerful program through which they interact with Holocaust survivors. Thanks to the Jewish Family Services of MetroWest, Holocaust survivors visit our school and are interviewed by 8th graders. Our students then put together a collection of stories and pictures so that these amazing stories are preserved.
- Choir Benefit Concert: Every year, the Upper School hosts a choir concert in which the Middle School and High School choirs, along with a special guest choir, perform for our community. Choir CDs are sold during the concert as well.
- Middle School Knesset Elections: Knesset elections are open to all Middle School students. All candidates give speeches to the student body, who then vote for their favorite candidates. The students elect two representatives from each grade.
- National Poetry Month: During the month of April, the Upper School celebrates and learns about the poetry that has and is continuing to affect our modern world. Some of the programs include decorating the hallways with quotes from poems, workshops with visiting poets, as well as an assembly with a special poet of the year invited by the English department.
- Sixth Grade Teva Trip: Every year our sixth graders participate in an annual Teva trip — a four-day camping excursion, which allows students to learn about ecological matters in a Jewish values context. In addition to being a great learning opportunity, the trip also is a wonderful bonding experience for sixth graders.
- Walk for Life: Each year Upper and Lower School students obtain sponsors for this walk to raise money for the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation. This organization was founded by Jay Feinberg, who was a direct recipient of the fundraising efforts of our school several years ago when he was ill. A student in the Upper School at that time knew the Feinberg family and their desperate search for a cure for Jay’s cancer. This student, Miriam Heller, took it upon herself to engage the school to raise money for cancer research. The tradition at the school has continued ever since and has been spearheaded and sponsored by L’Mad, the school’s local chapter of the National Honor Society. Each year the school raises several thousand dollars for the organization.
- Yom Ha-Shoah/ Sala Elbaum Memorial Lecture: The annual lecture on a Holocaust-related topic is made possible by a gift to the school from Steven and Judy Elbaum, in memory of their parents, Sala Elbaum and David Urman, who were Holocaust survivors. The program is for Upper School students only.
