Wellness in a Stressful World

I talk to a lot of heads of school.

That’s a big part of my job.  I have things to share and things to learn.  I have advice to offer and advice to take.  I spend a significant amount of time each day talking with leaders of Jewish schools.  And the one thing I can say with great confidence, is that regardless of whether they head a large school or small; a successful school or one which struggles; whether they have been in the position for five months or fifty years…they are not bored!

is-it-friday-yet-704781-mI think we associate “stress” with negative situations, but I am not so sure that is always the case.  I think there are some settings, some professions, some situations that even when functioning at or near their best are inherently stressful and, thus, create significant wellness concerns for those entrusted with leadership.  I am confident that Jewish schools are one such address.

Let’s skip an enumeration of why leading Jewish schools is stressful.  Let’s assume there be some connection between stress and burnout.  Let’s take as a given that one cannot take care of others when one cannot take care of oneself.  Let’s hope you can make changes to improve wellness.  Let’s be honest and admit that despite having attending two different conferences on this topic that you haven’t yet made those changes.  (OK, that one was just for me.)

We’ve all seen this, yes?

And yet I still get to work by 7:00 AM, am still checking email at 10:00 PM, still not going to the gym, still grabbing a donut from the faculty room, etc., etc.

How can we better understand what is going on?

In their book, “SWITCH – How to Change Things When Change is Hard”, Chip Heath and Dan Heath talk about “immunity to change”.  Essentially the behaviors we say want to change are serving some purpose and until we can figure out what that is, we will struggle to replace them.  I say I want to make healthy eating choices…I say I want to get more sleep…I say I want to exercise more…I say I want to achieve greater school-home balance.

How do I dream the new dream?

 

What do you think?

I would love to hear from those who have thought about this topic.  I would love to hear even more from those who have done something about it.  What are you doing to address wellness either for yourself or your school (or your organization)?  What has worked that you can share and what are you struggling with that we can learn from?

There are 525,600 minutes in one year.  However, when you consider that approximately 175,200 minutes of that time will be spent sleeping, 16,425 minutes spent eating, and if you’re in education, 72,000 minutes spent in school…well, you have less than half that total to spend on the rest of your life.

It is essential to do the important things first—if you leave them until last, you might run out of time.

December Dilemma? December Opportunity!

Christmas on the BeachChanukah in Jacksonville, Florida gives “Festival of Lights” a whole new meaning!

This is the time of year when many rabbis and Jewish educators dust off their “Christmas Dilemma” sermons or lessons.  It isn’t difficult to understand why.  Advertising for Christmas begins before Thanksgiving these days and in communities like Jacksonville, Florida, where the Jewish presence is (relatively) small, Chanukah rates barely a mention.  But to me, this is not the time to lament that Chanukah, a minor rabbinic holiday, has been elevated into a major holiday in order to protect the North American Jewish psyche against the annual Christmas bombardment.  What I’m more interested in is to take a moment to see what light this so-called “dilemma” sheds on how one deals with the dissonance between our shared cultural heritages.  Because like it or not, Christmas, is not (only) a religious holiday, but an American holiday, and as such it helps us refine our understanding of what it means to have an “integrated” curriculum.

Christmas is almost an unfair example to take because regardless of which attitudeShopping Bag towards “integration” a Jewish day school takes, it almost surely isn’t going to integrate the ideas and values of Christmas into its curriculum.  However, if you take one aspect of Christmas in America (or Canada)—consumerism—you can see how complicated integration can be. Consumerism with its focus on individual material attainment is not consonant with Jewish values.  So what is a Jewish day school to do with Chanukah in today’s world?

Being “Jewish” and being “American” (or “Canadian” or wherever you may live) is not the same thing.  However proud we legitimately ought to be of our dual identities, we are not being intellectually honest if we claim they are identical and never in conflict.  [Please keep in mind that the choice not to choose between is itself a choice.]  Celebrating the consumerist aspects of Chanukah without acknowledging their conflict with Jewish values is to claim that such a conflict does not exist.  Although I am generalizing, Schechter schools adopt neither rejectionist nor assimilationist attitudes towards the secular societies of which they are a part.  Nor do we feel so threatened by general society that we have to make everything Jewish.  No, we strive to be interactionist—our philosophy which can be seen in everything from our curricula to our websites to our field trips—seeking to allow the Jewish and the general to interact naturally as it does in the real world.

kids-behind-chanukah-menorah-updated-4-1126835-m
Photographed by Chayim B. Alevsky

So please, celebrate the historical and religious significance of Chanukah with joy, festivity, and yes, presents.  But this Chanukah, let’s not forget our Jewish values of tzedakah (charity) and kehillah (community).  Along with your normal gift-giving, consider donating a night or two of your family’s celebration to those less fortunate than ourselves.  By doing so we send a powerful message that there are times when our Jewish values command us to reject the values of secular culture and that not only is that okay, but sometimes it is both necessary and appropriate.

Chag urim sameach from my family to yours!

The Jewish Education Olde Thyme Radio Hour

As part of my ongoing attempt to practice what I preach, I recently participated in what I (we) hope will be just the first in a regular podcast.  You will see quietly clearly that it was a first!  🙂  As part of our debrief, we would love feedback, which you can provide here on my blog or on the ELI on Air YouTube channel itself.

We have great plans for future podcasts that include guests and more voices from the field…stay tuned for more information.

Enjoy!

When God’s “Breath of Life” is Snuffed Out

God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul – Genesis 2:7

I was already contemplating how and whether to step into the emotional minefield of the breath-of-lifeMichael Brown case when news of the grand jury’s decision not to indict in the Eric Garner case broke this week.  And now…

I am not an expert in anything related to this and so I wonder what, if anything, I have to contribute to the conversation.  I am a Jewish educator.  I work with Jewish day schools and do my best to help them they be the best schools they can be.  Is there something I can say or offer that will help them be the best they can be in how they choose to address what is going on in our country right now?  Our schools are led by talented and bright professionals and lay leaders who in this day and age have access to a myriad of resources. Sure, I might be aware of one or two they are not and could help by making them available, but it would be hubris to think that I have an answer to address this that they don’t or that they couldn’t easily find.  And yet…

The Spirit of God has made me and the breath of the Almighty has given me life – Job 33:4

Saying nothing at all doesn’t feel right either.  To say nothing would suggest that I have no stake in this issue, that it neither impacts me nor is incumbent upon me to participate in. Even, if I am unclear as to what “participation” ought to be.  As a citizen and as an educator, I do have a stake, I am impacted and I believe it is incumbent upon me to participate.  And I will, like many others, have to struggle to figure out what participation looks like because I am unwilling to remain forever a bystander.  Are we our brother’s keeper?  What does that keeping look like today?  And so…

All the while my breath is in me, the Spirit of God in my nostrils – Job 27:3

Typically when I prepare to write a blog post, I do a little bit of research. I am very rarely, if ever, writing about something that someone else smarter or more experienced hasn’t already discussed elsewhere. But in light of the onslaught of columns and opinions, I wanted to inoculate myself from outside information and speak purely from the heart about what role I believe all schools, and Jewish day schools in particular, should play in educating our students to appreciate and exercise their civic responsibility as members of a democratic society.

I have lived and worked in so-called “red” and “blue” states and I recognize how passionate people are.  I appreciate how emotionally-laden the conversation can become. It is no surprise with the stakes so high that people can become extremely sensitive. Politics can also be personal and defenses automatically are raised.  Watching the discourse fly back and forth on Facebook or Twitter, even with people I know well, can sometimes be disconcerting.  It doesn’t take much for a conversation to veer off course into unkind territory.  And, thus…

Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live. – Ezekiel 37:5

Our responsibility as schools seem simple, straightforward and entirely non-controversial. We should inform our students as to the facts.  We should educate our students as to how our political system works to effect meaningful change. We should teach them the history of American politics. We should instill in them the desire to participate fully in the political process and to proudly exercise their right to vote. We should encourage them to seek truth so that their beliefs and attitudes about how government should work (one of the definitions of “politics”) are rooted in objective reality.  They should learn to be respectful of differing opinions and to always keep an open mind.  I do not believe that we are here to promote a political ideology.  Our students should be largely, if not entirely, unaware of a teacher’s personal political leanings.  We respect that our families represent the full spectrum of political viewpoints.

For me, as an educator, the most difficult trend in political discourse, which impacts our ability to help students “seek truth” is the seeming inability to agree on an objective truth – about just about anything.  This is particularly challenging in schools – like ours – where the ability to develop critical thinking skills is amongst our highest responsibilities.  Facts are facts and opinions are opinions.  Or at least they used to be…

As facts themselves have been called into question, politicized, and debated, it makes it more challenging for schools to play their proper roles.  We want to provide students with the tools and skills they need to discern truth from fiction, fact from opinion.  Armed with facts, they can then form informed opinions.  When we cannot collectively point to a fact and call it “fact”, any hope for intelligent debate fades away.  When we cannot collectively watch a video and agree about what we are seeing, confidence in the system is undermined.  What is a school (or society) to do?

For North American Jewish day schools, current events provide a powerful opportunity to demonstrate how to have complicated and important conversations in accord with our highest values.  We are all made in God’s image, regardless of political affiliation.  At our schools, we will remind our students of that fact while encouraging their informed opinions.

To stay on the sidelines for fear of political correctness would be an abnegation of our responsibility.  So all we can do is our best.  We try to live up to our ideals.  We teach facts. We provide respectful space for opinions.  We encourage civic participation.  We acknowledge that when one of us cannot speak, then none of us can speak.  When one of us cannot vote, then none of us can vote.  And as we learned this week…when one of us cannot breathe, the none of us can easily draw a breath.

For we are all made in the image of “the God in whose hand thy breath is in” (Daniel 5:23).

Reflections on the Census: Size Matters

1871-schoolhouse-626265-mSmallness is embedded in the Jewish day school world, the inevitable consequence of geographic and denominational diversity.  For each of the four censuses, approximately 40% of day schools have less than 100 students.  Smallness is self-perpetuating because a small school has a limited curriculum and limited facilities, and this feeds the perception in homes of marginal religiosity that it is preferable to send their children to public school that are tuition-free and have a substantially wider range of educational offerings and extracurricular activities.

– Marvin Schick, A Census of Jewish Day Schools in the United States – 2013-14 (The Avi Chai Foundation, 2014)

There were very few surprises (in my opinion) to what came out this week in the census of Jewish day schools.  That doesn’t render the situation any less sober, however.  The data from the census matches with our (Schechter’s) data with regard to small schools.  We can spend hours and hours debating the merits of varying affiliations for small, non-Orthodox Jewish day schools.  (In fact, we have!)  But in some ways the truth is both more simple and more challenging: Large schools in large Jewish communities are doing well.  Small schools in small Jewish communities are struggling.

That’s the story.

I know this firsthand having been a head of two small (let’s redefine “small” here to being less than 150 students, in which case, the percentage climbs well over 50%) Jewish day schools.  I know the challenges, the frustrations, and – sometimes – the successes.  In small schools, you sometimes feel like Sisyphus, but now with two conjoined boulders of “enrollment” and “fundraising” that you keep trying push up that hill – with a razor-thin margin of error that larger schools just can’t understand.

I remember my first or second summer in Jacksonville when, due to the economy, we had three families move out of town.  Three families.  Not a big deal right?  Well, those three families paid full tuition on their 11 children.  Do you know how big a hit to enrollment and budget 11 full-pay students is in a school of 130?  To live and die on each child, on each donation, on each Federation campaign, on each Federation allocation meeting, that’s life in a small school.  To be doing well by percentage (of Jewish families from the community enrolled, of parents contributing to the annual campaign, etc.), but being on the brink by reality (it costs a lot of money to run a good school), that’s life in a small community.

I know this firsthand, now, as the head of a network with a preponderance of smaller schools.  I receive the requests for support.  I see the impact on the dedicated professionals and committed parents.  I hear the stories of triumph and despair.  I feel the joy of intimate Kabbalat Shabbat and the power of community small schools provide.  I meet the families whose lives have forever changed through their participation in the Jewish life of small schools.  I meet the families whose lives have forever changed by the closure of their small school.

The economics of the ecosystem in the Jewish day school world at present create a situation where the resources available to help schools are too cost prohibitive to make available to the exact schools who need them the most.  And so schools who are doing well are provided with a path towards doing even better…and schools who are struggling are kept on a path towards a destination unknown.

It isn’t for lack of effort, by the way.  In the same way that it just costs a lot of money to run a “good” school…it costs a lot of money to provide schools with “good” resources.  I see this every day.  We do not lack the knowhow (or more accurately, we do possess some knowhow) or the desire.  We do lack the means.  The foundations can only fund so much, the networks can only fund so much, the program providers can only charge so little, and the schools only have what they have to contribute.

It can feel at times like we are chasing our tails while our schools sit by and struggle to make do with less and less.

We can do better.

We have to do better because the future of our schools and with them, our people, depends on it.

What will it take?

A vision based by research and funding unlike that which we have ever produced would be a good beginning.

We don’t lack for vision.  Or visions.  And there has been some (a little) research.  But in many ways we continue to operate on faith.  Here is how I expressed it as the head of small school back in 2011:

With increased competition from Hebrew charter schools, independent schools, and suburban public schools AND a perilous economy – we have to brand Jewish day schools as being the kind of school most likely to provide a high-quality learning experience – that we are the future of SECULAR education because we are JEWISH.

Totally flips the script on prospective parents. “Too Jewish?”  No such thing.  Parents looking for excellence in secular education should be more concerned with “Jewish enough?”

To be financially sustainable really only requires two consistent streams of revenue: tuition and fundraising.  You can only increase tuition revenue by adding students. You can only add students if you have a great product.  And I absolutely believe this to be the case.  But as a philosophical concept, it doesn’t really help.  Because all I’ve done is suggest that if you want your school to be really successful it should be a really good school.

You don’t need me to point that out.

No you don’t.

If you don’t believe there is an answer it is hard to keep going.  Fear comes often from a place where you feel you have no control.  If I can just do the right thing, the right result will follow.  If I just make my school good enough, people will come and donors will give.

Won’t they?

How do you know?

What if they don’t?

What if we have great schools and people still don’t want to come?  What if the permanent costs for sustaining excellent small Jewish day schools cannot be supported by the communities who need them most?

This is an issue beyond network and beyond politics.  This will require all the collective wisdom and capital that can be mustered.  This is why Schechter is working so hard to specifically meet the needs of small schools.  This is why I am so pleased to see this year’s North American Jewish Day School Conference theme of “Systems Intelligence” and why I am thrilled that the NAJDSC will have sessions that explicitly focus on meeting the needs of small schools.  This is why I am so pleased to work with such great colleagues at other networks, foundations, agencies and organizations who are equally committed to getting it right.  This is why I have optimism despite the data.

We are committed to working together with our colleagues at other networks and with funders to address the needs of our small schools.  In order to be a system not of “have’s” and “have-not’s”, but of “have’s” and “soon-to-have’s”, we are going to need all the intelligence that’s available.

Let’s get to work.

The Transparency Files: What does a network head do all day?

Ssdsa_org_-_Calendar

We have a saying here at Schechter: “If you really want to know what we value most, you only have to look in two places – the calendar and the budget.”

And it is true; there are no more valuable resources than our time and our money. How we decide to allocate them is, therefore, the truest test of our values.  All the rest is commentary, as they say…

Or, to get at it another way, my younger daughter, Maytal (6), asked me the other day, “Do you just sit at your desk all day looking at your computer?”

 

Now that I am at about the 1/4-year mark of my first year as Executive Director of the Schechter Day School Network, I think it is a reasonable and useful question to ask: What exactly does the head of a network of schools do and are those things the best and most useful allocation of time for those schools or the field?

The first part of the question is pretty easy to answer, and I will attempt to transparently quantify and qualify how I’ve been spending my time.  The second question is somewhat a matter of opinion, and although I will share mine, yours might be of even greater value.

That pixellated calendar above is actually a screenshot of my calendar for this week – the first full week of work those of us in the Jewish world have had in a while.  I don’t know (yet) if this is a typical (non-travel) week for me, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume that it is.  Let’s also base the the percentages on a 40-hour work week, knowing that no one actually works that amount of time.  Better a straw man to poke at than a pile of straw.

So, let’s see how the numbers stack up for this week:

20141022085135Let’s start with how I define my terms:

  • Staff Meetings: These are any meetings that take place with different constellations of Schechter professional staff.  It could be a full staff meeting (weekly) or scheduled meetings with members of the professional staff to discuss and work on projects (EduPlanet21, edJEWcon, etc.).
  • School Consults: This includes conversations with either the head and/or board chair of a member school.
  • Thought Leadership: This includes activities that further the cause of participating in thought leadership for the field, such as writing articles, blogging or engaging in social media for the sake of providing resources or facilitating conversations.
  • New Business Development: This includes all activities that could lead to “new business” for the network – projects, initiatives, pilots, opportunities, etc. – that could result in new activities for the network and/or the schools.
  • Placement: Working with both schools and heads engaged in the search process.
  • Foundations: This includes reporting on current projects, grant writing for new projects and all the stewardship thereof.
  • Intra-Network Meetings: This includes all meetings and conversations that take place between the networks and agencies who service the field on current or potential collaborations.  This year, of course, it includes work on the upcoming North American Jewish Day School Conference.
  • Correspondance: Keeping up with email and phone calls!
  • Board Development: All communication and planning for the development of our lay board.
  • Fundraising: Raising money for the network and its schools.
  • Professional Development: Making sure I continue to grow as a leader.
  • Supervision: Making sure I facilitate the growth of others.
  • Miscellaneous: Whatever didn’t make a category.

So.  That’s what the week of October 20th, 2014 looks like for me.

Again, leaving aside what weeks of travel look like (it will be a busy November!) and whether this one week is truly representative of the rest…is this a good use of my time?

You would have to fold in the rest of the professional team, compare and contrast to our strategic plan, etc., to really give a scientific answer, but my read of it includes the following observations:

  • These feel like the correct categories of activity for the head of a network of schools.
  • Considering where Schechter is in its rebirth, I am torn between a variety of activities that all feel critically important  – helping to build a board, helping to execute a development plan for long-term sustainability, responding directly to the needs of schools, developing and shepherding new projects and initiatives for the schools and the field, and learning a lot more about the schools and the field.  I could and should spend all my time on all of those…
  • This is a great time to be Schechter!  I am extremely proud of our team, our schools and our stakeholders…what we have managed to do in only four months of operating at full strength is extraordinary and hopefully a harbinger of what is to come.
  • Helping to plan a conference with “systems intelligence” at the heart comes at the right time for us!  It creates lots of good energy when the different oars of your work manage to steer you in the same direction.  That is definitely the case for Schechter.

Why share this publicly?

Transparency.  Accountability.  Reflective Practice.

You have a right to know how I spend my time.  I want you to know.  And I want to learn from you…

…so feel free to comment or contact me directly.  Upcoming “Transparency Files” will examine our budget (and budgeting process), what it means when we visit a community and seasonal self-evaluations.

In the meanwhile, my schedule is calling me to next activity!

Marching With Fruits & Vegetables (5775 Remix)

We are deep into the holidays!  We have come out of Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur and headed straight into Sukkot.  I just finished putting up my sukkah (talk about a “floor, but no ceiling”!) and look forward to picking up my children from their half-day and finishing the decorations together as a family.

This is absolutely my favorite holiday of the entire year.  There is nothing else like it on the2012-09-30 18.02.28 copy Jewish Calendar – sitting outside in a sukkah you built yourself (which is pretty much the one and only thing I actually can and do build), with handmade decorations from your children, enjoying good food with friends and family in the night air, the citrusy smell of etrog lingering and mixing with verdant lulav – this is experiential Judaism at its finest.

But here is a complicated truth: Even though our Jewish day schools will be closed on Thursday and Friday for Sukkot, it is reasonable to assume that the majority of our Jewish day school students will not be found in synagogue enjoying what is known as “The Season of our Rejoicing”.  But I’d wager that many, if not most, were in synagogue last weekend for Yom Kippur.  So when it comes to “atoning” we have a full house, but for “rejoicing” we have empty seats?

If our children – if we – only experience the Judaism of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and not the Judaism of Sukkot, the simple truth is that we are not exposing them to the full range of beauty and joy our tradition has to offer.  So why, in fact, is this what typically happens?

lulavI’m not entirely sure, but I think it has to do with the exotic nature of the holiday.  As someone who did not grow up celebrating this holiday, upon coming to synagogue as an adult and watching a congregation march in circles waving fruits and vegetables – well this was not the Judaism I knew!  Truth be told, there are surely pagan accretions to the way that we honor the harvest roots of this holiday which may seem alien to the typical prayerbook service.  But for me, that is precisely what makes it so unique, special and not-to-be-missed!

No one likes to feel uncomfortable and adults especially are wary of feeling uneducated or unprepared.  I know how I felt encountering Jewish ritual for the first time as an adult – it was scary.  I, however, was lucky.  I was pursuing a degree in Jewish education and, therefore, had all the support and resources I needed to learn and grow.  I realize that most adults coming at Jewish practice for the first time (or the first time in a while) are not so lucky.  The amount of “stuff” Judaism asks of us to do – building the sukkah with precise specifications, shaking the lulav and etrog in the proscribed way, chanting less-familiar prayers, coming to synagogue on unfamiliar days – can be overwhelming.

But don’t lose the forest through the trees…I’d simply ask you to consider this: When building your child’s library of Jewish memories, which memory feels more compelling and likely to resonate over time – sitting in starched clothes in sanctuary seats or relaxing with friends and family in an outdoor sukkah built with love and care?

You don’t have to choose just one, of course, that is the beauty of living a life of sacred time – there is a rhythm to the Jewish calendar, evocative and varied.  Come to synagogue for the High Holidays, to be sure.  But don’t miss out on Sukkot (or Simchat Torah or Shavuot or “Add Jewish Holiday Here”).  Let this Sukkot truly be the season of our great rejoicing. I hope to see many students in synagogue this Sukkot.  I hope to see many parents push themselves out of their comfort zones and join the parade.  Go ahead…pick up your fruit and vegetables and march with us.

Chag sameach.

Shofar so good!

[Cross-posted to the Schechter website and our last Constant Contact.]

unnamedThe Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah begins tonight and is the most well-known of the Jewish “New Year’s” (we actually have four different ones, including Tu B’Shevat). Additionally, since most of us also follow the secular calendar, we have an extra one each year on the eve of December 31st.  And finally, if you are in the field of education, well, the start of school provides yet another “new year”.  Putting it all together, suffice it to say, we have ample opportunities each year to pause and reflect on the year that was and to hope and dream about the year that is yet to be.

This is the time of year that schools engage in all sorts of creative ways to perform tashlikh – a ceremony in which we cast off the sins of the past with an eye towards improving our behavior for the future.  A common activity for our youngest students has them draw a picture and/or write about a behavior they want to avoid doing again – mistreating a sibling, being disobedient to a parent, not being a good friend. etc.  After they make their project, they crumble it into a ball and throw it into the trash. Bye-bye bad behaviors!

Were it only that easy!

All schools count “character education” as part of their mission.  All educators consider it part of their already challenging jobs to help children grow and develop as human beings. Part of what I enjoy about working with Jewish day schools is that we get to make that part of our curriculum explicit.  We are in the business of making menschen and during the High Holiday season, business is good!

This season, hundreds upon thousands of Schechter students will make lunches for those who are hungry and bake honey cakes for the holiday and deliver them to the elderly. Programs like this – call it “service learning” or call it a “Mitzvah Program” – are opportunities for our students to get outside the walls of the building and put into practice what they learn inside.  It is not academic time lost, but rather life-changing experiences gained.  Through programs like this, our students are reminded that there needs to be a proper balance between “study” and “action”, and we can see the “Schechter Difference” in action.

So who will we become this year?  Beyond all our academic hopes and dreams, will this be the year we become who we were meant to be?  Will we live up to our own lofty expectations?  Will we be better children, better students, better teachers, better siblings, better partners, better spouses, better colleagues, better friends – will we be a better “us”?

As the eve of a new Jewish Year approaches, it is my most sincerest hope that this is the year we’ve been waiting for.  To all the teachers, staff, parents, students, donors, supporters, and friends in this special network of schools – thank you for your enthusiasm and your hard work.  5775 is shaping up to be a quite an amazing year!  From our family to yours, “Shanah tovah!”

A Wordle to the Wise

Readers of this blog know a few things…

…I will make bad puns.

…I will take 200 words to say something better said in 20.

…I will use any opportunity to include a gratuitous picture of my children.2014-08-18 07.47.16

…I will worry aloud that only my mother and the people she shares with on Facebook read my blog.

…and

…I love Wordle.

If you are unfamiliar with it, in a nutshell, Wordle (through an algorithm only it knows) takes any piece of written text and represents it graphically in a way which highlights frequently-used words.  It is a fantastic device for visually summarizing the essence of a written text.  Another great feature is that, not only can you cut-and-paste in any written document, you can type in blogs, websites, etc., and it will go back and search them for content, add it all up, and spit out a Wordle representing the sum of all its written content.

For the last three years, I have used Wordle to visually summarize the content of this blog and compare it to years past in order to reflect on whether I am living up to its goals.

Since I have to wait another year to see if this repurposed blog becomes the adjacent possible I hope that it will, I thought it might be a useful exercise in comparison to take a Wordle of our largely not-yet-reimagined website:

SDSN Website WordleAnd the text from our new case statement:

SDSN Case Statement Wordle

The thinking being that the website pretty much reflects Schechter as it was and the case statement pretty much reflects Schechter as it is becoming.

Is it a perfect reflection of either?

Probably not (I don’t think there has been any de-emphasis  in “Hebrew” for example), but it hits many of the high notes.  It may help us realize what we’ve been emphasizing (or over-emphasizing) or what is missing that perhaps we thought was there.  Either way it really gets you thinking…

If you see something interesting in Schechter’s Wordles…let us know in the comments!

 

Quick Pedagogy Epilogue:

Who is using Wordle in their schools, classrooms or organizations?  You can check classroom blogs, school websites, the Torah, your mission statement, a behavioral code of conduct and so on.

How fun!

So…let’s Wordle Up!  Find a text that is meaningful to you, create a Wordle, and find a way to share it.  The wordle is waiting!

[More bad puns!  I am who I am…but I did manage to write a post under 450 words.]