Imagine if Judaic Studies classes became a place where students could grow their critical literacy and literary skills using sound pedagogy while simultaneously deepening their Jewish identity by learning valuable social-emotional skills through the lens of Jewish values.
Amira Soleimani and Laura Pasek of Hillel Day School in Detroit have developed the Tanach Sadna approach, which balances Jewish values, literacy skills, and academic rigor. They blend best practices from reading pedagogy with a Jewish values-based approach to social-emotional learning, embedded in the context of our shared biblical narrative.
As we journey through the story of our personal and collective redemption this year on Passover, we can also reflect on the Jewish classrooms filled with students. How are we guiding them toward their personal bests? How are we ensuring that they feel part of our grand nation?
We have an obligation to take individual action and we have an equal calling to act on behalf of the community. Director of Operating Programs for the Mayberg Foundation, Amian Kelemer, explores the balance between personalizing learning for our students that stimulates their own intrinsic motivation and creating a unique and shared process that ensures the relevance of the lived Jewish experience. Each student needs to grow in order to fulfill their own particular purpose and each student needs to participate in a communal context.
What is the difference between teaching and education? The purpose of limmud is to ensure what one knows, the purpose of chinuch is to choose what one should dedicate their life and actions to. Limmud is the imparting of information and skills for life; chinuch is providing meaning for life. What really motivates how we live and the choices we make are the moments of education we experience and not the knowledge we have acquired.
JEIC Managing Director, Sharon Freundel, uses principles from operating partners, Lifnai V’Lifnim and Pedagogy of Partnership, to explore how to create a strong next generation of engaged and educated Jews, by focusing on chinuch,rather than limmud, as the end goal.
A major new initiative from Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools and the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC) aims to take action and channel innovative ideas to address the emerging shortage of Jewish day school educators. Known as the Jewish Day School Educators Pipeline Working Group, this facilitated, year-long effort will bring together professional and lay leaders in education, community organizations, and foundations to cultivate new ideas, thinking, and proposals that can be implemented to build the pipeline of Jewish day school educators.
In Jewish day schools, the goal of facilitating students’ religious and spiritual growth adds another dimension to the paradigm of creating educational environments and facilitating learning experiences that support students in becoming expert learners. Our ultimate purpose is to help facilitate the religious and spiritual dispositions that will keep students authentically connected to Judaism, well beyond their school years. In the context of religious and spiritual growth, being an expert connector does not refer to a quantity of relationships, but to the quality of just one – the individual to their Judaism.
Dr. Debra Drang, Director of Special Education at Sulam in Rockville, MD, approaches religious and spiritual growth from this perspective, and gives examples of how schools can begin with a conversation centered around these questions
In a seminar entitled “The Aerodynamics of Exceptional Schools,” Jennifer Gonzalez (Cult of Pedagogy) likens the dynamics of culture change at a school to the dynamics of flight. She points out that staff members at schools tend to overestimate the value of what they have and are willing to tolerate. They also underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving up the safe yet less functional idea that they hold dear.
Rabbi Shmuel Feld, Founding Director of Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC), reviews Gonzalez's analogy of describing the difficulty of changing schools compared to flying an airplane and explains how it can apply to Jewish day schools.
When we speak with educators about implementing Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curricula, the common refrain we hear is that teachers have so much to cover in very little time; there simply isn’t room for more. And when schools do implement SEL curricula, it is often to be able to check the box on SEL requirements rather than effectively ensuring our kids have the basic skills they need to endure the major challenges they face. Let's truly teach SEL within a Jewish framework.
Rabbi Zalman Abraham, Director of The Wellness Institute, a division of the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) explains how the solution to “getting real” about emotional health is by “getting real” about Judaism.
Effective goals and values are more challenging to create, but seem to be one of the main reasons many educators choose Jewish education to begin with. Passion for Judaism, dedication to the Jewish people, and commitment to Jewish values are what has kept the Jewish community alive for millenia. As Rabbi Sacks stated in The Great Partnership, “We may be the dust of the earth, the debris of exploded stars, a concatenation of blindly self-replicating genes, but within us is the breath of God.”
Smadar Goldstein, Director of Partnerships at BetterLesson for Jewish Educational Institutions, delves deep into the role that passion plays in Jewish education.
Assessment is an integral part of instruction, as it determines whether or not the goals of education are being met and gives teachers a basis to direct individual student’s outcomes. Assessment affects decisions about feedback to parents and students, placement, advancement, instructional needs, curriculum, and, in some cases, funding. Assessment inspires us to ask these hard questions.
Arnee Winshall, Founding President and CEO of Hebrew at the Center, Inc. explores how assessment data encourages a systematic approach for constant improvement and pursuit of excellence.
We–the teachers and the parents–are full partners in the raising of Jewish children. Like any relationship, this one requires reflection and intentional interventions in order to develop and flourish. And, like other relationships, it needs constant care from both ends to remain positive and vibrant.
JEIC Managing Director, Sharon Freundel discusses and brings examples of how parental involvement in children’s day school education can help teachers include parents and better understand the parent-child relationships of their students.
Creating a coherent yearly vision around multiple content-based, skill-based, and belief-based units is a daunting mission. The answer may be to reshape the problem from how to teach an extensive piece of content to how the content can be used to create a series of meaningful units guided by learning targets.
Rabbi Feld, Founding Director of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge, explains how reshaping problems with the tactics of backwards mapping and learning tactics, can help result in clearly defined curriculum goals.
We are in schools–hopefully–not to hear the sounds of our own voices or to promote our personal worldview or to develop a cadre of sycophants. We are in schools to make a difference in a child’s life, helping them figure out their unique strengths and forge their own Jewish path in their lifetimes.
JEIC Managing Director, Sharon Freundel compares how the difference between blowing and hearing the shofar can teach a lesson in how we make a difference in a child’s life, as educators.
Teaching and administration work are hard, and often, educators are inclined to go straight to the frustration and discouragement of what’s NOT working. While our coaching conversations certainly get there, insisting on starting with “What’s working,” reminds teachers and administrators that even though everything might feel hard, some things are actually going well.
Nina Bruder, Executive Director of the Jewish New Teacher Project, New Teacher Center explores how starting with a focus on the positive can help to build confidence in teachers and administrators.
When students are supported by their teachers to critically engage with the conflicts, themes, and personal narratives in complex Judaic texts, they have the opportunity to relate their own choices to those made by individuals outside of their lived experiences. By utilizing specific strategies and educational approaches, some traditional to the study of Jewish text, students also gain the skills needed to make their own voices heard while ensuring that they are open to the voices of others.
Rabbi Yehudah Potok, Sara Bellin, and Staci Rosenthal from the Jewish education team at Facing History and Ourselves, bring up some ways to support students as they develop a strong ethical compass and a critical lens by which to engage what they see, hear, and encounter.
After several years of the COVID shadow, the amplified effect of the usual stressors has caused many teachers to leave the field. For those who have toughed it out, the year starts anew in a couple of weeks. As they go once again into the fray, how can a teacher know whether the regular end of year fatigue is business as usual or indicates something more dire, like burnout?
Rabbi Shmuel Feld, Founding Director of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge explores the difference between good exhaustion and burnout, specifically relating to those in the education field.
The “On the Move” Fellowship was developed by the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration, in partnership with JEIC,and funded by the Mayberg Foundation. The goal was to harness the familiarity and access of Zoom and use the platform to provide opportunities to visit other schools, and learn about new innovations.
Dr. Deena Rabinovich, Director of Legacy Heritage Jewish Educators Project at Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University gives a glimpse of the program, process, and the lessons learned from fellowship participants.
"If our students understand Jewish history, they can understand the Jewish present, both personal and communal".
Director of the CESJDS Center for Excellence and Engagement in Jewish History, Rachel Bergstein, explores the impact and importance of Jewish history in the classroom as part of the big picture of Jewish identity.
