Alumni

Jessica Resler

My name is Jessica Resler Doblin. I’ve been living in Los Angeles for a little over four years now. I just celebrated my first wedding anniversary in July with my longtime love. I’m working in a Jewish Day School, Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy. I teach kindergarten, my favorite grade!

My husband and I just expanded our family with a kitten named Emma. I still have great memories of the PHDS and think of my experience there often, as I come across similar experiences in my current position.

Alena Fishkin

Alena is studying psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She hopes to graduate and go to medical school to one day be a psychiatrist. She loves playing board games, coffee, and hanging out with her dog, Lilah, and her fish, Bubbles.

Raizel Small

Raizel graduated from Drake University where she earned her BA in Psychology, minor in Sociology, and concentrations in Behavior Analysis of Development Disabilities, and Leadership Education and Development.

Raizel is a pre-school teacher for Gan Shalom, the Des Moines Jewish Federation—where she also teaches Hebrew Sunday school (usually grade 5) in the Beit Sefer Shalom Des Moines community Hebrew school. She also serves as the volunteer Day Camp Director at Camp Rainbow, a camp for kids with cancer. In addition, Raizel works part-time as an autism behavioral youth therapist.

Ben Small

Ben heads up a team of computer security and software engineers working for Panorama Education in Boston—-a firm which manages academic and social progress data for many K–12 school districts (over 11 million students) across the nation including District 150 in Peoria. He graduated from Olin College of Engineering in the greater Boston area.

Rachel Katz

‘87-’93

Rachel graduated from U of I with a degree in Education, and is currently a language arts teacher for 7th grade students in Indianapolis. She lives in Indy with her husband Martin, who is an architect, and her daughter JIllian, who is turning 6 in January. Rachel left PHDS in 1993.

Ben Katz

(Graduated PHDS ‘01)

Ben is currently living in Nashville with his wife MIchelle, who is an elementary school teacher. He works for the Tennesse Dept. of Public Health as an Epidemiologist. Ben graduated from U of I with a degree in Micro and Cellular Biology, and received his Masters Degree In Public Health from UIUC. Ben graduated from PHDS in 2001. He volunteers for the Jewish Federation of Tennessee in their young leadership development programs.