Model Student's Note to the Hebrew Academy's Office Staff

(To see full-size images of the above and of all other JPGs on this site, simply click on the pictures.)

(I revised this entry from an earlier one posted March 7.)

Susie visited the administrators and secretaries at the Sigel Hebrew Academy office a week or so ago to return abook. The people there showed her a bulletin board with all sorts of notes, including one sent last year by Avi, which they are keeping posted in his memory.

In his notes and emails to the faculty and staff, Avi frequenty - if not always - wrote "(Model Student)" underneath his signature. That apparently was his running, inside joke with his teachers, who loved having him in class, his intelligence, his quick sense of humor, and his personality, but who were challenged by Avi's not doing his homework, at least not in the subjects that disinterested him - all the secular subjects except for math.

Although his Hebrew Academy classmates last year were amused by his notorious accumulation of "missing homework" slips, his teachers evidently were not, so Avi became a regular in the school office, where he enjoyed chatting with the people while making up his work. His use of schooltime evidently was part of Avi's plan to free up time at home to pursue his computer programming education...among other pursuits.

If you have read my March entries, click here and click here, then you already know just how advanced he was, in the eyes of the pros.

In a successful (eventually) effort to encourage him to complete his assignments at home and maintain his grades, I would ban Avi from the computer. My belated apologies :-) to the folks at Digital Pandemic, LUE2, GameFAQs, et al. who had to wait for Avi's online assistance. The delay would have been longer had he not discovered my passwords and outsmarted me...for a while.

Had I appreciated at the time his advanced Internet coding skills, I still would have insisted that Avi complete his assignments, but my approach would have been different.

I wish that I had the need now to figure out that approach.