News & Impact

San Francisco Chronicle By Filipa A. Ioannou At Francisco Middle School in San Francisco’s North Beach, more than 80 percent of the students speak a language other than English at home — and they were quick to pick up on the talk about immigration during the recent presidential debates. “There’s a total undercurrent of fear here for our particular students,” says Marna Blanchard, a social studies teacher at Francisco, where students’ other languages include Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin and Korean. The complicated emotions students feel as they observe current events — from President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to build a border wall… Read More

J Weekly By Dan Pine High school teacher Jessica Vaughn’s students have no trouble relating to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler in the 1930s. Whether from Latin America, Southeast Asia or the Middle East, the teens know what it means to flee one’s homeland for safety. Most have refugees in their own families. That explains why teaching the Holocaust through the book “The Children of Willesden Lane” resonated with her English Language Development class at San Lorenzo’s Arroyo High School. Written by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen, the book recounts the story of Golabek’s mother, Lisa Jura, a Jewish piano prodigy… Read More

KCBS reporter Scott Lettieri interviewed students at City Arts and Technology High School in San Francisco where teacher, Allison McManis, is engaging her classroom in the JFCS Holocaust Center’s The Children of Willesden Lane BAY AREA BIG READ. Click Play to Listen:… Read More

J Weekly By Dan Pines When Bay Area public school students return to class in August, their education on the Holocaust will take a new and decidedly musical turn. The S.F.-based JFCS Holocaust Center has launched “The Children of Willesden Lane Bay Area Big Read,” a course for middle- and high school students. Read more at the J Weekly >… Read More

J Weekly By Patricia Corrigan …S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services provides respite care four hours a week and Graham visits her parents in San Francisco every weekend. “My father was my heart and soul. He was supposed to teach my kids to play tennis and to play music. And he can’t,” she says. “Because my mom has been bound to her home for three years now, she has lost her youth, her ability to work and all her friends.” Read more at the J Weekly >… Read More

J Weekly Excerpt: A Bay Area woman struggling with mid-stage Alzheimer’s was obsessed with getting the mail. Her husband, serving as her caregiver at their home, let her bring in the mail each day, but later she would forget and want to do it again. And again. When her husband repeatedly told her the mail had already come, the woman would become agitated. “She couldn’t hold on to the fact that she had already brought in the mail, and her husband felt that he had failed her,” said Andrea Korsunsky, director of Jewish Family and Children’s Services’ Center for Dementia… Read More