Every year, two JDS juniors are selected to attend the Parents Council of Washington (PCW) student leader breakfast. The breakfast provides time for high school students from independent schools across the Greater Washington area to discuss what it means to be a high school student today. The PCW is made up of more than 50 independent schools of varying sizes, including a mix of secular, religious, coeducational and single-sex schools. This year, it took place on Feb. 19 at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart.
At this year’s breakfast, topics included AI usage, the college process, heavy workloads, students’ influence on their school’s administration and how schools maintain civility during difficult political discussions.
“It was really cool seeing all these different schools that we thought were different because they were Christian or they just weren’t the same religion as us, and how we had so many similarities,” junior Brielle Bassin said.
Bassin was one of the students chosen to represent JDS at the breakfast this year. She felt that going to the breakfast was a great way to connect with other students from the area and learn about their experiences.
Dean of Students Roz Landy has attended the PCW student leader breakfast for over a decade. After student discussion, the deans from each school receive information on the topics discussed in order to bring it back to their respective schools in hopes of learning how others are addressing shared issues. The notes they receive from PCW are completely anonymous, so the deans of each school don’t know which school’s representatives shared any given piece of information.
Landy said that she shares the information she brings back each year with the JDS leadership team. JDS values the information they receive because it enables them to tailor more to the students’ needs and concerns within the school, according to Landy.
“We want to hear what is happening in the area, what teenagers are experiencing, worrying about and what they want their schools to hear,” Landy said. “Once we know that, we can work to address some of those issues.”
The other student chosen to represent JDS was junior Shia Messler. Messler enjoyed representing his school at the breakfast and learning about prominent issues that other high school students are facing.
“It showed me that I’m not alone, that there are other people who are experiencing very similar things to me, and I know that I’m not the only person in the world who’s dealing with a lot of work,” Messler said.
Bassin and Messler both felt that some of the issues discussed were similar to those many students at JDS face, such as stress around college applications and heavy workloads.
However, Bassin said that although most students face similar problems, some issues, such as heavy use of AI, are not so present at JDS. Landy has also noticed that many times, the students from JDS come back and share with her that the problems most apparent at other schools are not as relevant at JDS.
“It was all very similar, which I was a little shocked about, but it was also cool to hear about the differences, because some schools had different outlooks on certain things,” Messler said.
Something that both Bassin and Messler were also interested in was learning that a number of schools have student-led taskforces which address various issues within the school.
When it came to the topic of how different schools handle complex political discussions, Bassin felt uncomfortable at first when a student from another school brought up the Hamas-Israel conflict as an example, describing the conflict as a “genocide.”
Bassin said she was scared to engage in this type of conversation at first, but she was prepared and glad to have the ability to speak out. She shared how JDS provides an environment where students are taught to understand all sides of the conflict and engage in discussion despite differences.
“It was definitely scary to say something like that, because I said it as a representative of a Jewish day school,” Bassin said. “I definitely felt like everyone’s eyes were on me because I was pretty much the odd one out.”
The breakfast was a great leadership opportunity, according to both Bassin and Messler, and provided JDS with valuable information and insights to help the school continue to make necessary adjustments.
“One thing about JDS is that we are always trying to do better, to move forward and support the kids as best as we can,” Landy said.
