Month: October 2011

“We left as a school and came back as a family.”

Wow.

That’s all I can say.  We got back yesterday from our four-day Middle School Retreat and it was everything you could hope for in a Jewish informal educational experience. We had learning, games, athletics, prayer, social bonding, community building, hiking, zip lines, a campfire, and a friendship circle to boot.  It felt like we squeezed a summer’s session of camp into just four days…and we are all tired enough to prove it!

After having spent a good chunk of time, in between catching up with the rest of the school, putting together a video of our experience, I will let the video to the talking – for this week.  I will likely have more to say next week when I’ve had a chance to properly process and reflect.

The flip camera was held by lots of hands and so I apologize to parents and students that not everyone made it in – it is not a reflection of anything other than happenstance.  We will more than make up for it with the photos to be published on our website soon.  It is, I hope, a taste of why this retreat is such an important part of our middle school.  Our relationships are forever changed – for the good.  We will be able to do things within the walls of the classrooms that we never would have without having spent time together outside of them.

I am now going to go home and rest.

Jewish Holiday-Palooza!

How many Jewish holidays can we pack into a two and a half day school week?

Lots!

We are doing our best to pack both the authentic celebrations of holidays we are in school for (as you will see below) and foretastes of holidays to come like the mini-Simchat Torah celebration we will have later today (of which I will not have time to make a mini-movie of due to the half-day schedule).

If a picture is worth a 1000 words…hopefully, a couple of short movies of our students living the Judaism we teach in the classrooms outside their walls will a blog post make!  Here’s a brief look at our week.  Enjoy!

And the fun doesn’t end today!  We hope to see many families celebrating the holidays that are to come this week – especially Simchat Torah!  Don’t miss this opportunity to celebrate the gift of Torah – and to let your children see you enjoy the love of Judaism.

Monday?  Off on our Middle School Retreat!  I’ll blog all about it when I get back.

Chag sameach!

Marching with Fruits & Vegetables (5772 Remix)

We are deep into the holidays!  We have come out of Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur and headed straight into Sukkot.  It is amongst my favorite times of the year.

Not because we have a half-day and I have to sprint out of here to buy ingredients for cholent, finish my sukkah, and get ready for the holiday am I going to revise and update a blog post that I originally wrote last year here.  I am going to revise and update that blog post because I don’t know how to say what I want to say during this time of year any differently…and because I don’t imagine the issues it raises will markedly be different this year (but I am open to being wrong!).

So…without further adieu…

I love Sukkot!  Talk about “A Floor, But No Ceiling”!

This is absolutely my favorite holiday of the entire year.  There is nothing else like it on the Jewish Calendar – sitting outside in a sukkah you built yourself (which I actually did this year!), 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 school will be closed on Thursday and Friday for Sukkot, it is reasonable to assume that the majority of our students will not be found in synagogue enjoying what is known as “The Season of our Rejoicing”.  But many or 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?

I’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.  Pick up your fruit and vegetables and march with us in a circle.

Chag sameach.

It isn’t just good education; it’s good business.

I feel similarly to how many synagogue presidents must feel heading into Kol Nidre this evening as I prepare to write my first business blog nearing the eve of Yom Kippur!  The rationale is hardly the same.  Synagogues reserve Yom Kippur for their annual “High Holiday appeals” because this is the time they have the most people in the seats, not necessarily because the message of fundraising fits with the theme of atonement.  I do not presume that as families are preparing for the holiday that I will have a similarly huge burst in blog readership!

A personal note…

…apropos of the time of year.  Let me take this opportunity to offer my sincerest apologies to anyone whom I may have hurt or offended over the past year.  Let us forgive each other (and ourselves) for our all-too-human foibles and pledge to make this new (Jewish) year one of growth and community-building.

And now to the topic at hand…

I have been asked by our good friends at the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE) to become a guest blogger on the topic off  “How 21st century Jewish education is an issue of financial sustainability?”  First off, thanks to my new, good (and for now virtual) friend Ken Gordon, PEJE’s fantastic Social Media Manager for the opportunity!  I’m excited to wrestle with that question and share my thoughts with colleagues in the field.  [My posts with PEJE will appear here on their home page for blogs impacting the Jewish day school field.  I recommend the page for regular viewing or subscription if you are interested in the field.  I am cross-posting this first one in my own blog as a trial run.]

From PEJE’s 2009 strategic plan, they define “financial sustainability” as “increasing the resources available to schools and professionalizing the development capacity”.  This is part of PEJE’s overall shift in mission from an organization dedicated to growing the number of Jewish day schools to an organization dedicated to sustaining Jewish day schools.  (I’m oversimplifying a bit.)  So…how can being a 21st century Jewish day school increase resources and professionalize development capacity?

As I have been thinking about this question, my initial reaction is to try to avoid providing obvious answers.  If this is, however, to be my introductory blog post on this topic, I do want to share my initial thoughts on the subject because they may be crossing your minds as well.  This was my off-the-top-of-my-head response when Ken first asked me to blog on the topic:

…to me it fits very much with why we feel 21st century learning is so vital – 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 21st century 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 21st century education should be more concerned with “Jewish enough?”

Now the truth is that I could not be more passionate about this idea.  Over the last year and change of my current headship, I have seen firsthand the power of 21st century learning in action and have been convinced that this is the only viable path forward for Jewish (particularly non-Orthodox) day schools.  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.  So if embracing 21st century learning values increases the quality of your product, being such a school should drive enrollment and, thus, tuition revenue up.

And I absolutely believe this to be the case.  But as a philosophical concept, it doesn’t really answer the question.  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.  The more interesting question, to me, is how being a 21st century Jewish learning institution impacts the business of schooling?  What I am interested in exploring through these occasional blog posts is how we can apply the pedagogies of 21st century learning to the managerial and business aspects of running a Jewish day school to ensure they maximize financial sustainability as defined above.

[Disclosure: I have been the head of two Jewish day schools owned and operated by synagogues.  Neither school has a dedicated “Development Director” or a “Business Manager” or a “Department of Institutional Advancement.”  Both schools outsource a fair amount of their business functions.  I do have an MBA from the American Jewish University, which has come in extraordinarily handy in light of those two prior sentences.  So the good and the bad is that I have, as a head of school, had a fair amount of experience doing development and business operations without a lot of the training.  I am particularly interested in seeing how development directors, business managers, fundraisers, etc., respond to the ideas I am proposing.]

What are the 21st century pedagogies I am suggesting be applied to the business of schooling?

Transparency, collaboration, technology, reflection, global connectedness, authenticity, and prosumerism (which I will define as the paradigm shift wherein the learner is the producer, not the consumer, of content.)

How can these ideas increase the sustainability of Jewish day schools?

Please lend your voice to the conversation – comment freely and often or email me directly ([email protected]) if you are still a bitsocial media shy.  With your feedback, I look forward to exploring these and other ideas at the nexus of 21st century learning and financial stewardship that will be focus of this yet-to-be-named blog to be published however-often!