Parents touring a school always ask some version of the same question: what does a day actually look like here? At Tamim Academy of Howard County, the school day runs from 9:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon. What fills those hours is not two schools stacked on top of each other, but one integrated day. Here is a walk through it.
One Day, Woven Together
In many schools, a child moves between separate worlds. At Tamim, Judaic studies and general studies form a single program. The same teachers who guide a child through reading and math also guide them through Jewish learning, and the two inform each other all day long. A story from the Torah can spark a discussion about fairness that follows children into everything else they do. Academics are not paused for Jewish life, and Jewish life is not paused for academics. That weave is the defining feature of a Jewish day school, and it is the rhythm our students know.
Hebrew, All Around
Walk into our Columbia classrooms and you will hear Hebrew — not only during a Hebrew lesson, but woven through the day. Tamim’s Hebrew program is immersive: children hear the language in songs, in conversation, and in the ordinary life of the classroom. This is how language truly takes root. A word learned from a book is information; a word used all day, every day, becomes part of a child. Over time, Hebrew stops being a subject our students study and becomes a language they live in.
Learning Shaped to the Child
No two children move through the day in quite the same way, and our teaching is built around that fact. Education at Tamim is individualized: teachers know where each child stands, what each child is ready for next, and how each child learns best. It is also whole-child education. A successful day is measured in more than completed pages — in curiosity sparked, confidence built, kindness shown, and character growing. When you watch a classroom, you can see it: children at different points in their learning, each one known, each one expected to grow.
Beyond the Desk
A child’s day should not be spent entirely sitting still, and ours is not. Gardening, art, and nature exploration are part of the Tamim program. Children learn with their hands, spend time outdoors, and discover that the natural world is a classroom of its own. These are not decorations on the “real” learning; they are some of the ways young children learn best — by touching, making, planting, watching, and wondering.
A Day Inside a Larger Rhythm
A school day at Tamim also sits inside the rhythm of the Jewish year. As holidays approach, they enter the life of the classrooms — in learning, in song, in preparation and celebration — so that by the time a holiday arrives, children have already been living with its ideas. The week and the seasons have a shape that students come to know from the inside. This, too, is something only an integrated day school can offer: Jewish time is not visited occasionally; it is the calendar the whole community keeps together, day after ordinary, extraordinary day.
The Feel of the Place
Underneath everything is the character of a Chabad-inspired school: warmth, joy, and a genuine welcome. Children are greeted as individuals with something unique to give. Jewish life in the building is happy and unforced, the kind of atmosphere children absorb without ever being lectured about it.
By the time the day ends at 4:00, our students have spent their hours in a place where learning and Jewish identity were never separate things. Evenings are then free for family, rest, and everything else childhood holds.
Words can only take you so far. If you would like to see a Tamim school day with your own eyes, we invite you to visit us at 770 Howes Lane in Columbia, Maryland, and spend time inside our classrooms.