One week from today, I will be headed up to Philadelphia to be sure I am ready to go for the 2015 North American Jewish Day School Conference, beginning Sunday, March 8th. This will be my first time as cohost, having had the wonderful opportunity to attend as a school head in 2011, 2012 and 2013. (Last year, the field had two national conferences, Schechter (and me with it) having been a cohost of iJED.)
From Schechter’s part of the planning, I want to acknowledge Ilisa Cappell, Schechter’s Associate Director, for her tireless efforts on the conference’s Planning and Leadership Committees and for working so hard with Marc Kramer, RAVSAK‘s Executive Director, to develop a track at the conference for small schools.
In addition to my hosting duties, I will have the pleasure of presenting twice:
I will be co-presenting with Harry Bloom of PEJE on how small schools can leverage their resources to effectively recruit and retain families.
I will also be presenting on how schools can use “nings” to enhance professional culture, improve professional development and, thus, fulfill the promise of 21st century learning.
[I will send out links to both presentations once they go live.]
I am further thrilled to have chances to connect, celebrate, and dream with our Schechter community (including our friends in the Jewish Montessori Society), our growing edJEWcon community and all the formal and informal opportunities to learn, reflect and share with old colleagues and new friends that make these experiences so powerful.
We are proud of the work we have done with our sister networks to create what we hope will be a meaningful learning experience for all participants. We have all worked hard to ensure the quality of content while trying to maximize access. Schechter will have a strong showing and we look forward to our annual opportunity to be together. But in addition to the networking, the learning, the socializing, and the celebrating, we also hope this conference shows what happens when networks work together for the greater good, deepening and strengthening our collective service to the field.
There is one truth about our schools that is universal regardless of the size, age, or location – it is never boring to be a Jewish day school! A related corollary is that there never seems to be a down or calm period anymore. There is a season for each activity and it can sometimes feel like you are racing from one peak to the next, with no time to breathe between. (Unless the weather conspires to shut you down! However, school closures create their own unique pressures as so many of you are presently experiencing.) As soon as you successfully launch your year, you are already focused on recruiting and retaining families for the next. As soon as you close one campaign, next year’s campaign readies to begin. As soon as your board begins to function at high capacity, it becomes time to cultivate new members. As soon as you hire your last staff person and close your professional development calendar, the work of evaluation and planning the next year’s calendar launches.
And so on.
It can be a real challenge even finding an hour to read, to think, or engage in conversation with colleagues about big picture issues. That is why it is such a pleasure for me to share this podcast with my friend and gifted educator Rabbi Marc Baker and to work on it with the good folks at ELI Talks. It is our opportunity to take that hour to discuss important issues of the day and to engage others in the conversation. We opened this second podcast with a discussion of the challenges extended snow days present to schools and whether they can become opportunities to challenge the traditional model of schools with bounded times and spaces. But our main focus was our very first guest, author Allison Fine, and a conversation about her new book, “Matterness,” and its implications for the field.
It is not a #humblebrag to suggest that we would do this podcast with no audience. Truthfully, we aren’t even sure what kind of audience we have! We genuinely appreciate the gift of time the podcast gives us to learn and discuss and we hope that those who are listening (or watching after the fact) enjoy the conversation half as much as we do.
As always, you are welcome to share your feedback as commentary on this blog or on the ELI Talks YouTube page!
Notes:
Here are the links to the two blog posts Marc discussed in our intro:
This past week, I had the pleasure of attending PEJE Atidenu and the privilege of presenting on how to effectively market the 21st century learning aspects of Jewish day schools for maximum impact. It was a great opportunity to learn with experts in recruitment and retention from within and beyond the Jewish day school world and to catch up with colleagues new and old. (I should also mention that Schechter is well-represented amongst a strong and diverse cohort of schools seeking a more secure future.)
Valuing transparency and possessing a strong desire to share what knowledge we have with any who may benefit from it, I am happy to share here my presentation (the first half of which is borrowed from the work of Silvia Tolisano, 21st century educator par excellence and Schechter’s Eduplanet21 Project Director):
(There was also a very robust TodaysMeet that remains open to participants for another few days, the transcript of which I have printed, but cannot share publicly for lack of permission. If you were in attendance, I encourage you to download it!)
ELI talks presents “The Jewish Education Olde Thyme Radio Hour”!
Join hosts Dr. Jon Mitzmacher and Rabbi Marc Baker in a lively conversation with Allison Fine, author of “Matterness: What Fearless Leaders Know About the Power and Promise of Social Media.” We’ll explore the idea of matterness, the implications for Jewish education, and for educational leadership – and take your questions along the way!
This conversation will take place via Google Hangouts on Air.
Information on how to join will be sent to guests in advance of the event.
Space is limited! Be sure to RSVP through Eventbrite to secure your spot in the conversation:
Marc and I had a great prep meeting and we are guaranteeing less “um’s” and more “hmm’s” this go-around! We are thrilled to have Allison Fine as our first official guest and look forward to a great conversation.
For those of you enduring rough winter weather, please stay warm and safe! Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday weekend…
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.
Smallness 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.
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.
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:
And the text from our new case statement:
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.]
Passing the torch to my friend, mentor and new Head of MJGDS, Rabbi Jim Rogozen.
In June, I wrote my last blog post as head of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School (MJGDS) and on July 1, I officially assumed my new role as Executive Director of the Schechter Day School Network. It has been an extremely busy couple of months and as I have been finding my way in my new work, I put my blogging on hold so as to give me time to decide how to repurpose and reimagine who I am blogging for and what I ought to be blogging about.
If you are regular reader of this blog (and “thank you” if you are!), you know that it was born out of a desire to lead by example. I had inherited a school that embraced a culture of blogging and it did not seem fair to expect students and teachers to blog regularly if I wasn’t willing to do the same. And so in July 2010, I wrote my first blog post and pushed it out into the world.
I chose to title the blog, “A Floor, But No Ceiling,” which reflects my belief about teaching and learning – namely that there should be a floor, but no ceiling on expectations, achievements or possibilities for learning. I imagined my primary audience – if there was going to be an audience at all – would be the stakeholders of the school and I tried to find topics I imagined would be of interest for parents, board members, donors, supporters, etc., of this one Jewish day school in Jacksonville, Florida.
Perhaps it was the forced discipline of weekly blogging. Perhaps it was my wandering attention span. Perhaps it was the generous patronage of folk with a much greater online presence than my own. Perhaps it was the timing.
Who knows?
Over time, it became clear that the blog had developed multiple audiences and I tried to shift both my writing style and my topics accordingly. I could never predict when a post would resonate or with whom. And since even today most blog readers prefer to remain lurkers rather than active commentators, it remains difficult to be really sure you aren’t just whispering into the wind.
So…
…having come to believe in the power of blogging, I have every intention of resuming weekly blog posts, beginning with this one.
But…
…who am I writing this blog post for and what will I be writing about?
History teaches that the accurate answer will more likely evolve in time than be what I am suggesting here, but I do have some thoughts to get me started.
As was the case before, this is a professional blog. I am blogging as the Executive Director of a network of diverse Schechter schools throughout the world doing the critical and holy work of educating the next generation of Jewish children. I would hope that those who are already stakeholders of their local Schechter schools and for the larger mission of “Schechter” will find this blog a valuable resource. And I would hope that those who care passionately about Jewish day school, Jewish education and education will find this blog a useful read as I attempt to tackle important issues of the day, share perspective, answer questions, field feedback, and – in my own way – try to create a commonplace of exploration, discussion and celebration for the sacred task of educating Jewish children.
As was the case before, this is a professional blog written by a particularly personality…mine. I am blogging as Jon Mitzmacher. I don’t have dual identities and although I respect those who have both professional and personal identities, I neither have the time nor the interest in maintaining them. My understanding of authenticity leads me to be me. You will get my love for words you need to look up. You will get my many ellipses, asides, and occasional snark. You will get glimpses into my family when appropriate. You will get the extra 400 words that a more parsimonious (see!) writer doesn’t need to get to the point.
My colleague, Andrea Hernandez, who I am thrilled will be one of my daughter’s teachers next year at MJGDS and continues to lead edJEWcon into a bright future, introduced me to a phrase that I loved so much that I both wish I had thought of it and toyed with the idea of changing my blog’s title to it…and that is “The Adjacent Possible”.
It is not a new concept. A Google search will reveal lots of articles going back to 2010. Here is the definition that struck me from Steven Johnson’s fantastic essay for the Wall Street Journal called “The Genius of the Tinkerer.”
The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself. The adjacent possible captures both the limits and the creative potential of change and innovation. The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations.
And so goes my “a-ha” moment from the Summer of 2014.
That’s how I see what is happening in Schechter schools – an adjacent possible for the future of education. That’s what role I see for Schechter in the field – learning from and contributing to a larger adjacent possible for the future of the Jewish people. Let our ability to serve as incubators of innovation catalyze the field. Let our thirst for the new and the better stimulate and foster healthy collaborations with our sister networks of schools, foundations, federations, stakeholders, supports and friends, both in the Jewish world and beyond.
What do I hope to accomplish with this blog?
I hope – with your help – to make the adjacent possible.
We’ll start next week with a summer update of all things Schechter. Your comments and questions on this or anything else are genuinely welcome and if offered, will be addressed.
[Programming Note: I regret that I need to delay my final “Transparency File” introducing the 2014-2015 MJGDS Faculty for one additional week. We have been working hard on our budget and will need until next week to make it final. I cannot issue contracts until that time…and so even though I do not expect much drama in the announcement, I do need to wait until teachers have signed contracts before I announce them!]
I posted this last night about an hour before Graduation.
And then I hit them up with one of these before diplomas…
I actually do not often speak with notes, but because I like to offer them some personal words, some inside jokes, some Jon-isms, I do occasionally jot them down. Those that were there will understand the full context…those that weren’t…you might get a taste for how we do things here. Or, I should say, how I used to do things here…
Last night really marks the beginning the of the end of my time as Head of School of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School and Head of the Galinksy Academy. Although I will be here through June, with the last day of school with students next week and with teachers, the week after, my time is being spent winding down, trying to take it all in, and reflecting on what I have learned during my four years at this remarkable institution.
This is my 175th blog post.
I never blogged before coming here.
My blog is entitled, “A Floor, But No Ceiling” because that is what I feel our primary responsibility is to all the students entrusted to our care. That if you place your child in our school, that we will know them better than anyone can and, thus, will have the ability to push them (with love) reach their maximum potential. That although there has to be a floor (grade level) for each student, there should never be a ceiling on growth. They should fly as high as their talent and drive can take them.
I hope during my four years we have lived up to that high bar…I know we have tried our very hardest.
My blog is also described as, “How one Jewish Day School Head marries 21st century learning with a 5000 year-old tradition”. This is a reflection on my educational philosophy about Jewish day school education and probably makes up the content of the majority of my blog posts. As we shall see in a moment, it is probably the case that I have written more towards the “21st century learning” pole than the “5,000 year-old tradition”, but it is the dialectic between them that is at the heart of my interest as an educator.
To test that theory, let’s look at a Wordle representing the 174 blog posts I have written to date:
Not bad! Outside of some miscellaneous words (we obviously spent a lot of time blogging about “Whack-A-Haman”!) that the algorthym picks up, this is not too far off from what I would believe is the appropriate content for a blog that has attempted to have the parents of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School as its primary audience and the larger fields of Jewish day school and education as secondary and tertiary audiences.
I am honestly not sure yet how the blog will transition when I transition. I will have a different audience to be sure, but have not yet figured out what that means in terms of what I will be writing about. I have a few weeks to think about it before the blog moves from this site to the Schechter Network site at which time I will reintroduce it (and me) and attempt to lay out what new shapes and directions this blog will take.
In the meanwhile, I will spend my final blog posts here continuing to reflect on my experiences and fulfilling my responsibility to communicate essential information and truths to our parents.
Thanks to all who came out to graduation last night. It was a special evening for all. I am looking forward to our VPK “Moving Up” Ceremony at the DuBow Preschool next Tuesday and to teaching during Shavuot here at the Jacksonville Jewish Center. I am also looking forward to honoring and saying our official good-bye to my colleague and friend Rabbi Jesse Olitzky on June 4th as part of our closing L’Dor V’Dor Donor Appreciation Event.
[Yes, I’m there too…but come to say good-bye to Rabbi O.! We’re not going anywhere!]
This is our fourth year of publishing the “Grade Equivalent Scores” for the Iowa Test of Basic Skills or ITBS – the standardized test we take annually at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School. (We did not have comparison data the first year we published results.) I also blogged that first year about our overall philosophy regarding the proper context for standardized testing.
There remains some confusion about the proper understanding of what a “grade equivalent score” is and, more importantly, is not. I am happy to refer you to a thorough explanation, but if you want the quick summary:
Grade-equivalent scores attempt to show at what grade level and month your child is functioning. However, grade-equivalent scores are not able to show this. Let me use an example to illustrate this. In reading comprehension, your son scored a 7.3 grade equivalent. The seven represents the grade level while the 3 represents the month. 7.3 would represent the seventh grade, third month, which is December. The reason it is the third month is because September is zero, October is one, etc. It is not true though that your son is functioning at the seventh grade level since he was never tested on seventh grade material. He was only tested on fifth grade material. That’s why the grade-equivalent scores should not be used to decide at what grade level a students is functioning.
We do not believe that standardized test scores represent the only, nor surely the best, evidence for academic success. Our goal continues to be providing each student with a “floor, but no ceiling” representing each student’s maximum success. Our best outcome is still producing students who become lifelong learners.
But I also don’t want to undersell the objective evidence that shows that the work we are doing here does in fact lead to tangible success!
Our graduates the last four years have successfully placed into the high school programs of their choice. Each one had a different ceiling – they are all different – but working with them, their families and their teachers, we successfully transitioned them all to the schools and programs they qualified for.
And now for four years running, despite all the qualifications and caveats, our ITBS scores continue to demonstrate excellence. Excellence within the grades and between them. And let’s be clear, this academic excellence comes with an inclusive admissions process.
That’s the headline…let’s look more closely at the story.
First up is “Language”.
Remember…in order to track a class you have to compare 2012 to 2013 to 2014. For example, in 2012, the Language Grade Equivalent of Average for Grade Two was 3.4. In 2013, those kids in Grade Three scored 4.9. In 2014 those same kids in Grade Four scored 6.8. That class “grew” 1.5 from 2012 to 2013 and “grew” another 1.9 to this. (Also, the scale stops at 13…it is the highest score available.)
The positive, of course, is that each grade is functioning at an extremely high level! There are dips up and down, but when both the averages and the diversity level is high, it is hard to find much to point to. One data point to explore is that almost every class grew over a full grade level, but there is some “flatness” between Kindergarten and Grade One. They still have high averages, but this is worth looking at further. It could be that Kindergarden’s high starting point is a mismatch with Grade One curriculum, for example. This is one of the benefits of not teaching to the test…it can sometimes uncover gaps in curriculum.
Let’s move onto “Reading”.
Here again the news is largely positive! Most grades have growth of at least one grade level, despite high starting points. Grades One and Three were slightly less. Next year when we fully embrace the Daily Five, we will have to pay attention to these scores to see how it impacts Grades One-Three. There was also a dip from Grade 7 to Grade 8 – these scores are awfully high to begin with, but we will have to track to see if this is an anomaly or becomes a trend.
Let’s look at “Math”.
Again, the overwhelming news is positive. This marks the third year we are using Singapore Math in Grades K-5, the second year of departmentalization in Grades Four & Five, and we added a new Middle School Math Teacher. The only trends worth noting is the relatively flat growth in the youngest grades. The grade averages, even in those grades, are appropriately high and the class averages still show growth. It is the rate of growth we will need to explore. [NOTE: It takes a lot of courage for teachers to work under this level of transparency.] We have noted in the past that the curriculum tends to start out slow and build, and now after a couple of years of similar results it is time to revisit how we supplement the curriculum in the lower grades to ensure maximal growth. It is also worth noting the extreme jumps in the Middle School this year. This could be due to the impact of students coming out the Lower School with better skills from having been more fully in Singapore Math or it could be the impact of professional growth on our Middle School Faculty…or both!
To sum up, despite our focus on individual growth, our average growth continues to significantly outpace national percentiles and grade equivalency scores. Does “reflection lead to achievement” at MJGDS? Does being a 21st century learning pioneer translate into high academic success?
Four years in a row may not be conclusive, but it may be heading towards it!
Please know that all receiving teachers will have prior years’ data and be charged with making the next year even better. They have been up to the task these last four years and we look forward to more learning, more growth and more excellence in the year to come.
Conference week is almost upon us!
community (including our friends in the Jewish Montessori Society), our growing edJEWcon community and all the formal and informal opportunities to learn, reflect and share with old colleagues and new friends that make these experiences so powerful.
