Author: Jon Mitzmacher

Dr. Jon Mitzmacher is the Head of the Ottawa Jewish Community School. Jon is studying to be a rabbi at the Academy for Jewish Religion and is on the faculty of the Day School Leadership Training Institute (DSLTI) as a mentor. He was most recently the VP of Innovation for Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools.  He is the former Executive Director of the Schechter Day School Network.  He is also the former head of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School, a K-8 Solomon Schechter, located in Jacksonville, FL, and part of the Jacksonville Jewish Center.  He was the founding head of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Las Vegas.  Jon has worked in all aspects of Jewish Education from camping to congregations and everything in between.

A Pre-Passover Prezi Premiere – Jews in Film!

In my role as head of Galinsky Academy, I had an opportunity to teach an evening of our MAKOM Hebrew High a few weeks back.  I was given free range on topic and format and so I decided to use my 90 minutes to learn a new skill to teach about a personal passion.

The new skill was to learn how to use Prezi.  As it says on their home page,

Prezi is a presentation tool that helps you organize and share your ideas.

It is somewhat like PowerPoint, but has added features and components.  I’ve watched other teachers use it, but never learned how.  So subbing for MAKOM gave me a great opportunity to try to figure it out.  I have a lot more to learn, but I LOVED it!

My personal passion?  Movies.  I love movies.  And although I haven’t had as much occasion to watch them like I did before having children, I do love them so.  I have an eclectic taste and a particular sense of humor…which you will see below.

So, I took my passion for film and my experiment with Prezi and created a Prezi entitled “Jews in Film” – a totally biased survey of great Jewish films from 1927 to 2007.  It is completely arbitrary based on my own tastes.  Almost all the clips are PG and below…and the ones that are not have been edited.  It should be safe watching for high school and up.

Most of the embedded videos are from YouTube and, therefore, don’t always play as intended.  I watched it last this afternoon, so hopefully all the links are still intact.

 

Every now and again I think it is healthy to be a little more revealing and a little less pedantic.  I have plenty of opportunity to share deep thoughts about important issues of the day…sometimes I just want to play!  Especially on the Friday before Passover Break!

See you at the movies!

Setting Limits: Jewish Approaches to Parental Discipline

As far back as the time of the Mishnah, we have been faced with the challenge of setting limits for our teens and children.  Archeologists have unearthed clay tablets, dating back more than six thousand years, that describe how the adults of the ancient Babylonian community were completely confounded by the behavior of their children.

Clearly, this is an old and familiar problem!

Great teachers remind us that our children’s behavior often may reflect more about us than about them.  Children raised in a household permeated with tension, manipulation, dishonesty, distrust, or depression may act high-strung, deceitful, morose, uncaring, rebellious, unsure, listless, inattentive, or angry.  A classic rabbinic parable tells of a man who opened a perfumery in a marketplace frequented by prostitutes and unsavory businesspeople.  One day, the man caught his son in the company of prostitutes and in the midst of a deceitful business deal.  Incensed, he began to shout insults and threats at his son.  Finally, one of the merchants retaliated by asking the man what he expected his son to do and who he expected his son to become when he placed these influences in his environment.

Do you deal with conflict by exploding, pouting, surrendering, bullying or ignoring?  Well, if you do, chances are that your children will study your responses acutely and imitate them consciously or unconsciously.  As Saadia ben Joseph, the tenth-century gaon of the academy in Sura, Babylonia, observed: “Little children do not learn to lie until they are taught to do so.”  Similarly, it is often the case that little children do not rant and rave, yell and scream, hit and pound, ignore and flee, or bully and bluster unless significant people in their lives do the same.

The Hebrew word for parents is horim, which comes from the Hebrew word hora’ah or instruction.  We are the ones who gently guide our children to proper behavior by demonstrating it for them consistently and persistently.  We are the ones who teach our children about appropriate responses to disappointment, threats, challenges, and provocation as much by our actions as by our instruction.

The Jewish approach to discipline advises us never to shame a child or attack his or her character.  We are challenged to teach our children that particular behaviors, words, and attitudes are inappropriate, immoral, unjust, or unacceptable while at the same time showing them love, patience, and sensitivity.  Guidance and instruction are best achieved in a relationship.  If we hold them, hug them, and honor them as human beings in the eternal process of becoming, we manifest the divine, supernal qualities of compassion and wisdom that sustain Creation even when flawed.  We become our children’s models and mentors and by our example and influence, contribute to the world’s blessings and our children’s health and wholeness.

What? No “model seder” this year?!

Regardless of whether the thought of not having a “model seder” to attend this year Kitah Gimmel Model Seder 2012makes you happy or sad, it is time to revisit the “model seder”.  What, exactly, is it supposed to accomplish?  Do we need to do one in each grade?  And if not, are there other Passover experiences we can offer families that might be nice to experience as well?

At the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School, we have been pretty consistently offering pretty consistent-feeling model seders for quite a while.  Are they rehearsals for the main event?  Are they just-in-case some families have no other Passover experience?

I admit that last year I hit a bit of a “model seder” wall.  I had my own children’s to attend in both Preschool and Day School.  And I had to make meaningful appearances at all of them.  By the time we got to Passover itself, I really wasn’t in the mood for two more!  I mean I love charoset, gefilte fish, and matzah as much as the next person…

We do believe in the “model seder”.  The seder itself is amongst the most powerful pedagogies ever developed.  Celebrating a holiday through reenactment is experiential education at its finest.  We like it so much we have created them for Tu B’Shevat, Yom Ha’Atzmaut and holidays!  And we do in the Jewish day school feel a certain pressure to provide Jewish experiences of holidays to ensure all our families have opportunities to participate.  Hence, our monthly “All-School Kabbalat Shabbat” services and this year’s Shushan Purim (even though we lack walls, we felt we needed to acknowledge Purim in school even though it fell on a weekend this year).  Outside of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we celebrate the entire Jewish calendar in school – whether they fall during school or not.  So we are not going to get rid of Passover.  But maybe we can provide a differentiated educational experience?

The Jewish Studies Faculty and I met last spring after Passover to reflect and again this fall to plan, and we are pleased to share our plan for a K-8 differentiated Passover experience for MJGDS students and families:

  • Kitah Gan: First “Model” Seder
  • Kitah Alef: First Hebrew “Model” Seder
  • Kitah Bet: Hebrew Passover Play
  • Kitah Gimmel: Historical Reenactment “Model” Seder
  • Kitot Daley & Hay: A Passover Experience
  • Kitot Vav – Chet: Lead Seder at Mt. Carmel in partnership with JFCS

Each grade (or grade grouping) has its particular theme or experience (or both).  Every student will have learned appropriate Passover material and each family will have a chance to have an appropriate Passover family experience.  Hopefully, the differentiated experience will give our students something new to look forward to each year…and give our parents and families (particularly those with multiple children) something different to experience with each child.

Looking forward to all the pre-Passover excitement coming soon!

 

Postscripts:

  • We finished (except for makeups) our standardized testing this week!  Click here for last year’s results and background information on our approach to testing.
  • We will soon be issuing our annual Parent Survey.  Click here for last year’s results.

A Trip Around the MJGDS Blogosphere

You know what?  Enough about me!  1206712_digital_world

How about this week, we take a trip through the MJGDS Blogosphere and kvell about some of the excellent projects our students and teachers are engaged in. Perhaps it is too much to expect folk to check all the blogs all the time – especially if they are not parents in a particular class. So allow me to serve as your tour guide this week and visit some highlights…

From the Grade Three Classroom Blog (click here):

Champions of Kindness – Documentary

Posted on February 27, 2013

Our community of kindness documentary is all about kindness here at MJGDS. We made it because we decided that we should show everyone examples of kindness. We want to share it so everyone could learn a little more about how we can be kind. We made it by videoing members of our class interviewing, showing kindness, and seeing what natural kindness looks like.

We – the MJGDS 3rd Graders – made this video documentary. It’s called The Champions of Kindness.

Enjoy!
–Julia

 

From the Kindergarten Classroom Blog (click here):

Posted on February 25, 2013

Our unit about “Let’s Explore: Where will our adventures take us?”  takes us to “a little girl’s adventures” this week.  This week’s book is Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Valeri Gorbachev.

goldilocksWe will be discussing the characters and settings of this book and many others and comparing and contrasting a variety of  versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears throughout the week.  We will even be skyping with another school in Brazil and listening to their version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  We will also continue to learn about the concepts of  two letters that blend to make an initial and final sound, the short vowel ‘u’, and the blending of sounds to make words, among other phonics skills.

Later on that week from Brazil:photo-3

From the MJGDS Website (click here):

From the Fourth Grade Classroom Blog (click here):

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From the Art Blog (click here):

Posted on February 27, 2013

artThird graders are art critics! They looked and discussed, with their classmates, paintings by Romero Britto and…..

These are a few of their comments:

These paintings are about:

“These paintings are about flowers and vases at home.” -Julia

“Pattern and cubism, colors, flowers and vases.”- Sage

“Pop art.” – Gabe

“Cubism, Pop Art and Flowers.”- Jack

“Flowers and vases.”- Benjamin

What do these painting have in common?

“They both have a lot of colors and patterns.”- Allie

“These paintings have patterns and colors and shapes that are the same!”- Nahila

My favorite part of the painting is:

“The detail and color.”- Abigail

These paintings make me feel:

“Happy”- Lial

“Silly”- Samantha

“Happy and joyful”- Isa

“Modern”- Jake

From a Middle School Math Blog (click here):

From a Middle School Student (Brianna G.) Blogfolio (click here):

On Friday the 15th we were invited to the Bolles Auditorium to see the play “Bully.” The invitation was extended by the author, who also was the actor in his one person play. What made this particular invitation unique was that he actually went to our school when he was younger. The play is not based from his experience while attending our school; as they did not have a Middle School then. As a current Middle School student, I could truly relate to the play, as it centered on the author’s personal experiences, feelings, and emotions from his Middle School years.

When he was in Middle School he was made to feel like an outsider, not a part of the ‘in crowd.’ He got bullied a lot. There were 4 kinds of bullies that he referred to: the ring master, the snake, the worm and the boot. Once someone spit in his face and another time a person kicked him. When he got the courage to tell the gym teacher, he didn’t believe him, and he felt worse. He questioned himself and as his insecurity increased he began to believe the words that others said about him.  The ‘ticks’ he started having from being nervous and anxious just added another reason people picked on. He stressed to us that words stick with you and he gave some advice on ways to beat a bully. Like ignoring the bully by not showing on the outside how the bully is making you feel. There are still times now when he feels insecure and wonders if what the bully said is true.

What I liked about the play was it was based off the writer’s personal experience. He was bullied way more than I ever knew was possible. I know what it’s like to be bullied, and what it’s like to be the bully. Neither makes you feel good. After seeing the play, I made a goal with myself to not be the bully. Even though I am making a great effort to be nice, people are not so accepting that I am trying to change. I think it was the best play I ever have seen, because it was very emotional. He did impressions, and they were good. The point is, he was inspiring and I really enjoyed his play.

 

Wow, right!

And if that isn’t enough awesomeness…check out these links:

http://mjgds.org/classrooms/kindergarten/2013/02/24/nouns-are-all-over-our-classroom/

http://jewishinteractive.net/site/announcement-competition-winners-february-2013/

http://www.mjgds.org/21stcenturylearning/?p=967

http://www.mjgds.org/21stcenturylearning/

 

We have a lot to be proud of at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School…and I couldn’t be prouder to work here and have my children learn here.  With enrollment steadily coming in, our plans for the future are to go from strength to strength!

 

A Purim Prescription for Pediatric Judaism – A 5773 Remix

When we think about Purim as parents, we probably think most about this: What shall I Eiliana Purim 5772dress my children as this year for Purim?  But in a hopefully growing number of families,  including ours, the question isn’t what are we going to dress our children as for Purim. In our family, we ask ourselves what are we going to dress as for Purim?

I would wager a bet that no more than 10-15% of families attending Purim services and/or carnivals this year will come in costume.  Why?

The phenomenon is often referred to as “pedicatric Judaism” and I find that Purim is its paradigmatic Jewish holiday.  I recently Googled “pediatric Judaism” to see who should get credit for its coinage and the best I could come up with was the following from a Reform Judaism Magazine article:

Why, then, the emphasis on what Rabbi Larry Hoffman, professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, calls “pediatric Judaism”?  “We have planned for our children only,” he wrote in 1996.  “In our understandable anxiety to pass on Judaism as their heritage, we have neglected its spiritual resources for adults, leaving ourselves with no adequate notion of how we too might draw sustenance from our faith as we grow up and grow older.”

That sounds about right.  Far too often, even those who are the most engaged – the ones who do affiliate with synagogues and do try to provide their children with Jewish educational experiences – we work to ensure our children experience and participate, but neglect to include ourselves.

When as a graduate student in Los Angeles, I first attended a synagogue in which adults participated in Jewish holiday celebrations as adults – active, joyous and engaged – it was almost surreal.  This was not a Judaism for children – costume contests, parades, pony rides and candy (although that may all have been there as well) – but a Judaism that adults took seriously for themselves.  They were not lining the walls watching the children within; they were celebrating the joy of being Jewish for themselves.

What’s the danger of “pediatric Judaism”?  For me it is the perpetuation of the idea that being Jewish, or perhaps more accurately doing Jewish, is something that is only for children.  We are our children’s most powerful role models and teachers and they are surely paying attention.  When they can see that we take something seriously, it is a signal to them that they ought to as well.  Children learn how to be an adult by watching our adult behaviors.  We understand this as parents and so we think carefully about how we behave in front of our children, what kind of language we use, and what kind of values we express and try to live by.  So, too, it is with being a Jewish adult.  Our children are looking to us to see what adult Jews do and it presents us with a big opportunity and a huge responsibility.

I don’t wish to pile on parents.  Jewish schools and institutions play a part as well.  If Rabbi Hoffman is correct that adult Jews do not see in Judaism a resource to find their spiritual needs met, we have to be willing to ask the difficult question of why?  What programs, classes, experiences, outreach, etc., have we not successfully offered or facilitated that have led to this situation?

We will all need to do more if we are ever to cure ourselves of pediatric Judaism.  In our schools and our synagogues, we need to reach out to parents and provide them with the support, education, experiences and love they will need to find the courage to try on new ideas and behaviors.  We will need to present a Judaism worthy of the education and sophistication of our parents.  Luckily, Judaism contains within it all that and more.

One example of taking our adult population more seriously at the Jacksonville Jewish Center?  This year’s “Purim Unmasked” (click here) is a concrete attempt to reach the needs of adult Jews – an evening celebration sans children to celebrate the joy of being Jewish!  We are hopeful for a strong turnout.

Proof us adults can let our hair down come Purim time?

So this year…what are you going to be for Purim?  Don’t let your children have all the fun…and don’t let them think that the fun of Purim is only for them!

And if you live here in Jacksonville and are looking for a place to celebrate…join us!

This Cannot Be Done Without You

Screenshot_2_15_13_9_17_AMNo Wordle’s.  No iPads.  No blogfolios.  No SmartBoards.  No Skype’s.  No 21st Century Learning.  Not even 20th Century Learning.  No amount of global connectedness or educational technology will make this happen.  And, it appears, no amount of money, seminars, interventions, blog posts, or acts of discipline can will it into existence.

This cannot be done without you.

Nothing extraordinary happened this week at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School.  This is not predicated on an event.  If anyone thinks this is connected to him or her, s/he is mistaken.  There is no crisis nor emergency.  There is simply honesty.

This cannot be done without you.

I have written 14 blog posts about “Community of Kindness”.  We have invested thousands of dollars in new programming and interventions.  We have hosted Parent Forums.  We have preached from the pulpit.  We have made faculty and student movies. We have meted out significant consequences.  We have accepted responsibility.  I have made a number of personally awkward phone calls or meetings with parents.

This cannot be done without you.

We are not unique.  Having recently returned from a national conference, I am reassured to note that issues of kindness rank high on all administrators’ lists of priorities and that we are all struggling with similar issues.  Although it is somewhat comforting to know that we are not the only Sisyphus pushing the kindness boulder up the hill, it resolves nothing.  We share resources and uncomfortably shrug shoulders.

This cannot be done without you.

There is nothing poisoning the water in Jacksonville.  The students, teachers, and families of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School are not uniquely unkind.  We want our school to live up to our highest Jewish values.  We want our children to feel safe, protected, nurtured and loved within (and without) our walls.  In my heart of hearts, I cannot believe that anyone doesn’t have the best of intentions.  And yet.

This cannot be done without you.

Facebook.  Instagram.  Twitter.  Minecraft.  Text.  Skype.  Who knows what else?  It is true that our ability to be unkind has gotten easier and faster.  It is also true that we have dedicated class time and coffee talks to digital citizenship.  Pushing unkind behavior from the playground to the PlayStation does not satisfy.  Our ability to be kind has not gotten harder.  We just have to remember to practice it.

This cannot be done without you.

Birthday parties.  Play-dates.  Sleepovers.  Concerts.  Virtual Gaming.  Who is included and who is left out?  Which children come to school having shared an out-of-school experience and which children come to school having lived through its exclusion?  For that matter, which parents?  And how many of our teens and parents are forced to confront their exclusion via social media as pictures and videos of what they are missing are paraded, exchanged, and liked before their eyes?

This cannot be done without you.

I am as guilty as anyone else.  I have children in our schools.  They have friends and they have acquaintances.  They have play-dates and sleepovers with the former, but rarely with the latter.  I use social media.  We have become obsessive self-documentarians and I am no different.  I want to provide friends and family a window into our lives and social media allows us to.  Have I unthinkingly posted pictures of such play-dates and sleepovers without thinking through the consequences?  Absolutely.

So this cannot be done without me as well.

I am not in despair.  We are not giving up.  We have had successes.  Students refer to “community of kindness” in the lunchroom and during their Bnai Mitzvah speeches.  We continue to reward kindness and penalize meanness.  I continue to push myself to intervene in the grey areas.  Our middle schoolers are attending an important play on the topic this very afternoon.  We have a movie screening coming up for our teens and parents.  And, most importantly, our teachers care deeply and are willing intercessors in the lives of their students.  When children are in our care we can, in fact, ensure communities and kindness.  But.

This cannot be done without you.

No amount of programs, interventions, assemblies, blog posts, sermons, coffee talks, dollars, hand-wringing, or complaining will make us into a community of kindness.  And no amount of saying “Community of Kindness” will turn us into one.  It will take simple, everyday acts of kindness, piling up one on top of the other, day after day, week after week, until one day we look up and realize that we are, indeed, a community that is a little kinder than it once was.

Please, God, let that day be soon upon us.

From Theory to Practice in One Photo

I recently returned from the annual North American Jewish Day School Conference, held this year in Washington, D.C.  It was a wonderful experience, and you can click here for links to the conference.  You can click here (even if you do not have a Twitter account) to see tweets from and about the conference.

There were many wonderful keynotes and sessions.  I had occasion to do lots of productive networking and project-planning.  And it was wonderful to reconnect with colleagues and friends from years past.

Whenever I return from a conference, my temptation is to push as much information about my experience as possible out onto my blog.  I have done so using words, Wordle’s, screen shots of tweets, pictures of graphic organizers, etc., etc.  And if you want to see examples of all those kinds of retro-diaries of prior conferences I have attended, please feel free to click here, here, here, here, and here.

But not this one.

No, in this blog post I simply wish to present one photo which, to me, represents everything I believe about education as it came to life before my very eyes.  What you see in this picture is the theory of 21st century learning (or as we now like to call it in 2013 – “learning”) in practice.

MJGDS @ SDSN/HHJThese are middle school students at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Florida participating through a back-channel (TodaysMeet) as part of a crowd-sourcing dvar Torah that I was giving (that’s me in the foreground on the screen) in Washington, D.C. by way of introducing Heidi Hayes Jacobs (that’s her in the chair in the background on the screen) at the North American Jewish Day School Conference.

Torah.

Technology.

Global connectedness.

Authenticity.

Real-time.

Collaboration.

Amplification.

 

It is all there.  The reaction of the conference attendees was priceless and my pride was boundless.  Not for me.  (Although it was pretty cool introducing Heidi and leading the activity…but that wasn’t it.)  Looking at what our teachers and students have accomplished over the last couple of years amazes and astounds.  I am proud to be at a school where a picture like that and others just like it can be taken on a daily basis.

It is not a picture of the future of education.  The future of education is happening now. And it is happening here each day.

Stay tuned.

 

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Ready, Set, Ignite!

This is a very exciting weekend!

Our Kindergarten has its annual Shabbat Service & Dinner this evening.  First Grade has its annual Consecration tomorrow morning during Shabbat services.  In our local community, we will be participating in Federation’s annual Super Sunday (click here for more info).  The DuBow Preschool will be hosting a Magic Bubble Science Show & Open House that morning as well (click here for more info).  And I am off to Washington D.C on Sunday for the North American Jewish Day School Conference (click here for more info).  I will surely be Tweeting and blogging from the conference and will just as likely make it the subject of my blog post next week.  One highlight (and opportunity) comes Monday morning when I will be offering a Dvar Torah and introduction of Heidi Hayes Jacobs (click here for more info).  If you are available at about 8:45 AM (EST) that Monday, look for a tweet with a link to participate in a crowd-sourcing experiment.  The more participation the better!

And of course I will be avidly rooting for my San Francisco 49ers to bring home the sixth Super Bowl of my lifetime!  Go Niners!

That’s what’s coming up.

Today, I want to take one last look back at the third element of our MJGDS EdCamp that I have not yet shared.  I blogged about the big idea, here.  I blogged about the introduction of our new Learning Target, here.  I blogged about the EdCamp sessions, here.  But the middle of our day was one of those astounding moments where you see hopes and dreams come to life right in front of your eyes.  Watching our teachers deliver their hatzatot was like watching a child take their first steps or graduate college – it crystalized and validated in a very powerful way the path our school is walking down.  It was actually quite emotional; I told a colleague that we should just pack it in and go home – it couldn’t possibly get any better!  Now that they are all posted on YouTube, I want to celebrate the work these amazing teachers did by ensuring they are seen by as many people as possible.  But first, a recap…

הצתה    (“Hatzatah”= Ignition) is our adaptation of a popular presentation format basedHatzatahRubric on Pecha Kucha and Ignite.  Each presenter has 5 minutes to share their idea, broken down into 20 slides, which automatically advance every 15 seconds. Each MJGDS Faculty Meeting begins with a hatzatah. We find it a fantastic way to get our faculty to fulfill the moral imperative of sharing in a 21st century modality.  To celebrate and inspire our faculty to make more and better use of iPads in the classroom, we decided to host a Hatzatah Contest on the theme of “How has the use of iPads impacted my professional practice?”  The presentations took place during lunch on our EdCamp.

We found three interesting educators who agreed to be judges for our contest.  They were Mike Fischer, Lisa Johnson (AKA “Techchef4u) who is a great curator of educational iPad content and Richard Byrne, famous in the edublogger world for his “Free Tech For Teachers” blog and who has recently started an iPad in ed blog.  We videotaped each hatzatah and shared the videos, along with the above rubric, with our judges.  The winner was awarded an iPad and each participant was awarded an iTunes gift card.

But the judges found it awfully hard to decide because they were quite amazing…don’t believe me?  Then take 25 minutes (turn the volume up) and see for yourselves!

 

I know, right?  They were extraordinarily good.  But the judges did identify a winner…who do you think it was?

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Take My Wordle For It

A deep breath on a lovely day-of-Erev Tu B’Shevat here in Jacksonville, Florida.  Students throughout the school are engaged in different planting projects, seders, and celebrations of this “New Year for the Trees”.  And, for whatever reason, this week of the year has become my annual “New Year for the Blog”.  It is time, indeed, for my annual Wordle reflection of my blog!  [What’s a “wordle”?  From their website: “Wordle is a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide.  The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.]

(For last year’s, you are welcome to click here.)

One year ago this blog’s Wordle looked like this:

And almost exactly one year later, it looks like this:

Having spent about thirty minutes or so comparing the two Wordle’s side-by-side, and factoring in the occasional random word or favorite idiom, there are indeed a few things that strike me as noteworthy:

  • The word that takes on the most prominence in this year’s Wordle is “conversation”.  I LOVE that!  To the degree that this blog represents my practice, I am very pleased to see “conversation” rise to the top.  I do believe that a significant facet to being an effective leader is engaging people in conversations, facilitating collaborations and fostering connectedness.  I hope that I am not simply blogging about it, but actually doing it.  I’m definitely trying.
  • So what might all these “conversations” be about?  Well, based on this year’s Wordle it would be “teaching” and “learning”!  Those sound like good things for a school to be conversing about, no?  But digging deeper, to me it actually reflects the possibility that we have successfully made the philosophical (and semantic) shift from “21st Century Learning” [which has almost disappeared from the Wordle from the prior year] to simply “teaching and learning”.  This has, indeed, been a major priority of ours – the complete identification of this thing called “21st century learning” as the core of “teaching and learning” in our school.
  • What is not there that surprises and disappoints me?  No appearance of “Community of Kindness”!  (I have definitely blogged about here, here, here, here, here and here.)  Maybe the word “kindness” is filtered out of Wordle’s logarithm, but I do want to honor the possibility that this important initiative has not received the attention it requires to impact our culture to the desired degree.  This demands deeper reflection and will receive it.
  • New initiatives or ideas that definitely reflect the facts on the ground include “iPads”, “EdCamp” and “target”.
  • Specific to this blog, this annual exercise asks me to consider and reconsider a foundational question: Who is my audience?

When I began blogging, I thought my audience would be almost exclusively parents of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School.  Little did I know that through the power of amplification, social networking, the amazing work our teachers and students are doing, and the happenstance of being in the right place at the right time – I am chronically surprised by who reads this blog.  I barely have time to cross-post; I do not have time to operate two different blogs.  So I try my best to write about topics (and in a style) that would be of primary interest to an ever-growing concentric circle of stakeholders, beginning with my parents and ending at the edge of the educational universe.

Am I succeeding?

I am not entirely sure.

I am sure that this weekly reflective exercise called blogging has made me a better Head of School.  I am all in on “reflection leads to achievement“.  So on my personal, annual “New Year of the Blog” I am thankful for the opportunity to be transparent.  It takes supportive and brave lay leadership and I got it in spades.

Next year’s blogging?  I certainly welcome and encourage feedback from readers of this blog.  If I am not meeting y’all’s needs, this blogger definitely wants to know!

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Live Blog of MJGDS EdCamp

This is my unplanned live blog of today’s amazing MJGDS Faculty EdCamp!

9:15 AM Sign Up for EdCamp

We gathered the faculty together in Library with our blank board.  After a brief introduction, teachers began to sign up!  After some shuffling, the schedule for our first “unconference” is ready to go!

My goal is to live blog 15 minutes from each of the nine sessions.  Off to camp!

9:30 AM Session #1 – The Daily 5

Second Grade General Studies and Fourth-Fifth Language Arts Teachers are explaining how they are piloting “The Daily 5” in their classrooms.

They begin by explaining how it works in their classrooms.

It is very important that children are given an opportunity to build stamina for reading. Each class has their own chime for transitions.

 

 

Do they pick their own books?  They use “I-Pick”.  They show a video of how they introduce the concept to the students.

I am struck watching the teachers bounce back and forth between each other how powerful EdCamp can be…the whole point is that there is nothing to prepare because you are already experts.  They are simply sharing their practice with their colleagues.  It is great as a principal to watch teachers be excited about what they are doing.  It is equally great to watch their colleagues inspired to ask questions.

They are reading their own books, no basal reader.  One reason why the Daily 5 is a great fit for our school is because it emphasizes authentic tasks which increase student motivation.  They aren’t doing simulated or artificial reading…they are reading.  Another reason?  Reflection is built in.

As I leave they begin a conversation about how the Daily 5 might expand into other grades…or Jewish Studies.

Off to the next session!

 

9:45 AM Session #2  – iPads or textbooks or both?

Walking into the middle of a conversation…

…what do we if students have a hard enough time keeping track of their books?  How can we give them iPads?

…sounds like a conversation about becoming BYOD is underway!

Is it a conversation about where information is read or what extra features come with use of iPads?

What would be the right year for students to come with iPads?  4th Grade?

We then move into a conversation between the school providing them at school, should parents be required to buy them,  or should the school buy them and then provide them to students in lieu of textbooks?

Challenges of filtering appropriate websites and apps!

Off to the next session!

 

10:00 AM Session #3 – diigo

Walking into the end of a conversation…

…everyone is actively practicing how to add bookmarks to their lists!

Wish I could have been there for the whole thing!  Everyone is working hard establishing their diigo accounts, their libraries and their lists.

Teachers are enjoying finding new lists, adding websites to their lists, etc.

How will MJGDS teachers use diigo?  We are going to have to find out!

 

10:15 AM Break #1

OK!  The first round of EdCamp is complete, but the conversations are not!  Snack is being put out and we have a moment to catch our breaths before the next round begins…

 

10:30 AM Session #4 – Student-Led Conferences

Very full session!  Our Fourth-Fifth Grade Math Teacher is describing the process she went through for our first pilot experience, which was Fifth Grade Student-Led Conferences, which we did last marking period.

It began with letters to parents introducing the idea.

It took a LOT of reflection – particularly for the students.  Who owns the learning?  MJGDS students (and teachers) do!

The surprising part was how willing and able they were to accurately reflect about their study skills and work habits.  We were concerned the more challenging students might struggle with this, but it turned out to be amazing.

“I never saw them the same way again.” – What a powerful statement!  This  forever changed the way this teacher saw her students.  And maybe vice-versa…

Teachers are making connections to curriculum (Language Arts) and to our use of blogfolios…

As a principal, this connects so many dots – reflection, ownership, blogfolios.  Student Led Conferences are a great fit for 21st Century Learning.

Off to the next session!

 

10:45 AM Session #5 – SMART Boards

How awesome is that our Art Teacher is facilitating a conversation about how to use SMART Boards for General & Jewish Studies Teachers!

Now she is showing them examples from SlideShare and Pintarest on where she does research, finds inspiration and organizes her own work.

They are moving into a practical sharing of favorite sites for game-making…and I am off to the next session.

 

11:00 AM Session #6 – Current Events

Students need to source their information!

How do you help students distinguish between opinion and fact?

Starting teaching Current Events at a younger grade may sharpen critical thinking skills that has cross-curricular impact.

We now move into a fascinating conversation about how we help students develop those skills in a world where one person’s fact is another person’s opinion and how challenges it is teaching these subjects in 2012.

Hungry?  Time for another snack!

 

11:30 AM Session #7 – Student Blogfolios

We are now in the Kindergarten classroom and we are now discussing how our student blogfolios which until this point had been restricted from 3-8 now begins in Kindergarten!

Let’s talk process…it started with categories.  Most of which will carry…some will be revised, new ones will be added.

 

The very first item placed into blogfolios in K are self-portraits.

Questions that need to be sorted out as they transition from K-2 to 3-8…

…when do they begin to use the “blog” part of the platform?

…when do they begin to help curate their material?

…when do they go live?

…when does it shift from “digital portfolio” to “blogfolio”?

Knowing where we were when we began…it is amazing to see how far we have come with this process!

I can’t believe EdCamp is almost over!

 

11:45 AM Session #8 – Art Collaborations

I walk into a great conversation about collaborating between subjects and art.

We are blessed with an amazing art program (and teacher)!  In addition to the Art Resource, we now have Open Art which teachers can sign up for, and Art Collaborations where teachers can partner on units or topics.

Moving from theory to practice…teachers are now brainstorming on new projects…first one up?  Black History Month in Grade Two.

What I am enjoying about the EdCamp model is the easy flow between conversation, demonstration and active collaboration.  We are now playing with Blabberize.

I need to head to my last session, but a great conversation about Tu B’Shevat has just begun!

 

12:00 PM Session #9 – Writing Scope & Sequence

I am very pleased that this conversation is happening!

They are deep into the details of how assessment can be more embedded, authentic and universal.

There is a conversation about revisiting our benchmarks and standards in light of new realities such as blogging and commenting.

Time is up!  We had just started a great conversation about when to teach keyboarding skills and now EdCamp is over!

 

What a morning!  Now it time for lunch, our hatzetah competition and we’ll close with our “target” conversation.

What a day!

UPDATE: Here is Andrea Hernandez’ video reflection on our awesome day!