Jewish Education – Page 13 – A Floor, But Not a Ceiling

A Pedagogy for Chanukah

Some blog posts are inspired by real world events; others by thoughts that bubble up. Occasionally, however, blog posts are inspired by thought-partners and this one falls into that category. I received multiple emails yesterday encouraging me to respond the following:

Last year, in his blog post on Chanukah, Yossi Prager (AVI CHAI Executive Director – North America) concluded with the following:

Unlike all other Jewish holidays, Chanukah has no sacred text to be read in synagogue. The Book of Maccabees is part of the Catholic Bible but not the Jewish one, and is largely unknown to most Jews. Instead of public reading, we communicate the story of Chanukah silently, with the act of lighting candles at the window so that Jews and non-Jews alike recognize our celebration of the miracles that occurred. What can parents and Jewish educators learn from this method of teaching about how to inspire others to more active participation in Jewish life and connection to the State of Israel?

For me the pedagogical takeaway isn’t so much the “silence” as it is the “act”. It is an action that anyone can take; it is not so ritualistically complex that only the most knowledgable amongst us can perform it. It is an action performed publicly and in the home. And it is an act through which the meaning can be found through the doing. It is truly and act of “na’aseh v’nishma“.

This quotation from the Torah (Exodus 24:7) has been interpreted in many ways in Jewish tradition. The meaning which speaks most deeply to me is: “We will do and then we will understand.” This meaning comes from a rabbinic story (also called “midrash”) that explains Israel’s unconditional love for the Torah. The midrash is as follows:

When the Children of Israel were offered the Torah they enthusiastically accepted the prescriptive mitzvot (commandments) as God’s gift. Israel collectively proclaimed the words “na’aseh v’nishma “, “we will do mitzvot and then we will understand them”. Judaism places an emphasis on performance and understanding spirituality,
values, community, and the self through deed.

Simply put, we learn best by doing.

This idea has powerfully stimulated my own Jewish journey and informs my work as a Jewish educator. I think there are two major implications from this: One, regardless of the institution, we have a responsibility to provide access to informal Jewish educational programs to our young people. Two, our formal educational institutions can stand to learn from what makes informal work. [This is precisely why the Jacksonville Jewish Center will be hiring a new full-time Director of Experiential Education to join our educational team!] Namely, I believe strongly in education that is active, interactive, dynamic, and most importantly experiential. It is one thing to teach Judaism; it is something more powerful to teach people how to live Judaism.

It is one thing to teach social action; it is identity forming for our middle school students to go out into the world each Friday and in lieu of their Jewish Studies Curriculum make the world a better place by doing social action.

It is one thing to read about Israel; it is transformative to visit Israel.

And for this time of year?

It is one thing to study Chanukah; it is something infinitely more meaningful to light a menorah in the window, surrounded by family.

So please next week let’s gather together in our windows to light the Chanukah candles. And by doing so let’s celebrate the historical and religious significance of Chanukah with joy, festivity, and yes, presents. In addition, 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.

Happy Chanukah from my family to yours!

With Mixed Emotions

Here is a blog post whose title I would have like to have stolen, “How Can We Be Thankful As Others are Suffering?“. [It is a little off-color, be warned.]

That is how I feel on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving having just come from an amazing Intergenerational Day Program at our school.

It was a spectacular morning – and the although the theme was honoring American veterans and those currently serving in our armed forces, events in Israel required our attention as well. And that, along with Hurricane Sandy, makes it a difficult time for full glasses of joy. Those glasses are somewhat emptied by the sadness, grief, anger and helplessness we feel about those in harm’s way in the current conflict in Israel. (As I type a cease-fire is being announced, click here, but events are constantly shifting.) Our Middle Schoolers yesterday were simultaneously cooking a Thanksgiving feast for our veterans while hanging informational posters of support for Israel around the school. It was an important reminder of what it means to be an American Jew at this moment in history. Both our countries remain at war – as Americans we honor those presently serving in Afghanistan (and other places) and as Jews we honor all Israelis who face the constant threat of missiles and other terrorist acts as part of their “normal” existence. Helping our students – and families – understand, cope and respond to these challenges of American Jewish life is part of what makes the Schechter Jewish day school experience so unique and important.

And so it is with a heart beating with pride for our school and its many ongoing accomplishments and programs…

…and breaking for our brothers and sisters in Israel as they navigate a tentative ceasefire that I pause for a moment to give thanks for the many blessings I have in my life.

I am thankful for my beautiful wife and children. I am thankful for my parents, my children’s grandparents, and all our extended family and friends. I am thankful for our community into whose roots we sink deeper each year. I am thankful for the parents who entrust us with the sacred responsibility of providing their children with a Jewish education. I am thankful for mentors who force me to reflect and allow me to grow. I am thankful to the students who challenge, push, and motivate us to be and do better each and every day. And I am thankful to my teachers who inspire me to come to work each and every day to give 100% (even if much of it regrettably happens behind closed doors or off campus) of all I am to do my part to further the ongoing journey of this remarkable school we call home.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Transparency Files: Community of Kindness Parent Survey

First off…here is some exciting news:

MJGDS Teacher Selected to Become

“Google Certified” at Google Teacher Academy

Google has selected Andrea Hernandez as an attendee at the next Google Teacher Academy, to be held in Mountain View, CA on December 5, 2012. The Google Teacher Academy is a free professional development experience designed to help K-12 educational leaders get the most from innovative technologies. Each Academy is an intensive, one-day event where participants get hands-on experience with Google’s products and technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, and receive resources to share with colleagues. Upon completion, Academy participants become Google Certified Teachers who share what they learn with other K-12 educators in their local regions and beyond.

Google Certified Teachers are exceptional K-12 educators with a passion for using innovative tools to improve teaching and learning, as well as creative leaders and ambassadors for change. They are recognized experts and widely admired for their commitment to high expectations for students, life-long learning and collaboration. The Google Certified Teacher program was launched in 2006 with the first Academy held at Google headquarters in Mountain View. The program has since held several academies across the US, expanding the ranks of Google Certified Teachers. The Google Teacher Academy is produced by Google, in collaboration with CUE an educational non-profit organization.

There will be 62 attendees from all over the US as well as Canada, Mexico, India, Singapore, Ukraine and Dubai.

Of course we know how much we are leading the 21st century learning revolution at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School, but it certainly is nice to be recognized by Google for the groundbreaking work we do! You can see it in the video Mrs. Hernandez made as part of her application:

I look forward to reading her reflections on the experience and to the impact it has on her work and on our school in the weeks and months ahead.

The Community of Kindness initiative at Galinsky Academy is well under way. We have, with our partner Jewish Family & Community Services had trainings with Preschool Faculty, sessions with Religious School, Makom and Day School classes, and we are prepping for our first parent forum. And at least as important, the language of “community of kindness” is making its way into the common vernacular. Last Shabbat, for example, it found its way (un-prompted!) into a Bat Mitzvah speech. It has also come up in our Parent University courses [you may click to enlarge].

In fact, in one of the courses, we are reading excerpts from a book (and author) very much connected to this topic that I met through my experience at Harvard’s Independent School Institute (which I blogged about, here.) We are currently reading [you may click to enlarge] Richard Weissbourd:

As the work continues, survey data is also coming in. For the sake of transparency, I wanted to share some preliminary results and indicate the first tangible result. Here are some data from the Parent Survey:

Parents with children in multiple schools were encouraged to fill out one survey per child. We had a fairly decent (25%) return rate, although higher is always better. Here is the first critical data point:

Although we would have preferred the answer to be unanimous that “I don’t think there are any issues,” I think it is interesting that “bullying” scored on the low end that “social exclusion” scored the highest. This was something that we intuitively predicted at the beginning and correlates to results we published year (click here). With “social exclusion” and “improved awareness in accepting others” as high scorers, the feedback we are getting from the Weissbourd book, and in combination with what is bubbling up from our ongoing work, we have decided to move forward with the following parent forum:

We are looking forward to strong turnout and an even stronger program. Working together we will ensure that “Community of Kindness” is not a slogan, but a way of life, at the schools of Galinsky Academy. More results and more programs to follow

BTW – if you are a Martin J. Gottlieb Day School Middle School parent and your child is still singing “Schnupencups”…thanks to Hazzan Holzer rare footage of the story is now available. And if this makes no sense to you at all? You had to be there (or with me in any camping setting since 1989)…

Crimson and Shofar (Over and Over)

Yes, that is a horrible pun to kick off this week’s blog post. And in case you were wondering, I am more inclined to the Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ cover than the Tommy James & the Shandells’ original, probably because their drummer lived down my block in New Jersey in 1981 when it came out.

All this to give me the opportunity to ask, “What do “crimson” and “shofar” have to do with each other (besides not really rhyming with “Crimson and Clover”)?”

Well, I hope to find out later this month when I attend Harvard University’s Independent Schools Institute (ISI) along with a small cohort of other Jewish day school leaders as part of a new initiative by the AVI CHAI Foundation.

From the ISI page (click here for a fuller description):

Designed specifically for independent school leaders, the institute provides a practical perspective on current research about independent schools guided by expert Harvard faculty. The curriculum covers topics ranging from personal leadership to innovative instructional strategies to financial sustainability, providing a rigorous and intellectually challenging experience. You will look closely at the challenges of strategic and instructional leadership with top researchers in the field and learn how to apply these findings in your school.

The Independent Schools Institute combines large group sessions with small-group peer discussions. The smaller working groups create a forum for thoughtful discussion, helping you to synthesize new ideas and gain unexpected insights from your colleagues.

For a taste of how extraordinary this opportunity is, here is the full ISI Faculty:

Howard Gardner is the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Senior Director of Project Zero. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. He has received honorary degrees from twenty-six colleges and universities. In 2005 and again in 2008 he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. The author of twenty-five books translated into twenty-nine languages, and several hundred articles, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments. He has also written extensively on creativity, leadership, professional ethics, and the arts. His latest book Five Minds for the Future was published in April 2007. His latest co-authored book Multiple Intelligences Around the World was published in the summer of 2009.

Monica Higgins is Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She joined the Harvard faculty in 1995. Her research and teaching focus on the areas of leadership development and organizational change. Prior to joining HGSE, she spent eleven years as a member of the faculty at Harvard Business School in the Organizational Behavior Unit. Her recent book, Career Imprints: Creating Leaders Across an Industry (2005), focuses on the leadership development of executives in the biotechnology industry. In education, her research interests straddle higher education and urban public schools. Specifically, she has a multimedia project underway on the careers and social networks of the Harvard Business School Class of 1996. In addition, Higgins is studying the conditions that enhance the effectiveness of senior leadership teams and organizational learning in large urban school districts across the United States. While at Harvard, Higgins has taught in the areas of leadership and organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, self-assessment and career development, and strategic human resources management.

James Honan is Senior Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Honan’s teaching and research interests include financial management of nonprofit organizations, organizational performance measurement and management and higher-education administration. Honan serves as a consultant on strategic planning, resource allocation and performance measurement and management to numerous colleges, universities, schools and nonprofit organizations, both nationally and internationally.

Susan Moore Johnson is the Jerome T. Murphy Professor of Education. She studies and teaches about teacher policy, organizational change, and administrative practice. A former high-school teacher and administrator, she has a continuing research interest in the work of teachers and the reform of schools. She has studied the leadership of superintendents, the effects of collective bargaining on schools, the use of incentive pay plans for teachers, and the school as a context for adult work. Currently, Johnson and a group of advanced doctoral students are engaged in a multiyear research study, The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, that examines how best to recruit, support, and retain a strong teaching force in the next decade. The project, which is funded by several foundations, includes studies of hiring practices, alternative certification programs, new teachers’ attitudes toward careers, and new teachers’ experiences with colleagues. Johnson served as academic dean of HGSE from 1993 to 1999. She has taught in the school’s summer institute programs for administrators and teachers since 1989.

Richard Light is the Walter H. Gale Professor of Education. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in statistics, and in recent years has focused his work on higher-education policy analyses. Light has been invited by four Harvard presidents — Derek Bok, Neil Rudenstine, Lawrence Summers, and now Drew Faust — to lead a team of faculty and students to explore the effectiveness of undergraduate education, and how to strengthen it. His most recent book, Making the Most of College, won the Stone Award for the best book of the year on education and society. Light has been elected president of the American Evaluation Association, elected to the board of the American Association for Higher Education, and elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; he was also appointed to the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Currently, Light is chairing a project at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that explores the changing demographics at American colleges and universities. He also is currently chairing a new project at Harvard that works to help 14 distinguished colleges become “learning organizations.” Light received the Paul Lazarsfeld Award for distinguished contributions to scientific practices, and was named by Vanderbilt University’s Chancellor Lecturer Series as one of America’s great teachers.

Leah Price is Professor of English at Harvard University, where she teaches the novel, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British culture, narrative theory, gender studies, and the history of books and reading. Price is Humanities Program Director at the Radcliffe Institute; she also co-directs the faculty seminar on the History of the Book at the Harvard Humanities Center. In 2006 Price was awarded a chair in recognition of exceptional graduate and undergraduate teaching. Price’s books include The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel and (co-edited with Pamela Thurschwell) Literary Secretaries/Secretarial Culture; she has also edited (with Seth Lerer) a special issue of PMLA on “The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature.” She writes on old and new media for theNew York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, and the Boston Globe. Unpacking My Library: Writers and their Books was published by Yale University Press last year; How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain is just out from Princeton. Price is at work on a new book, Book Fetish: How Rethinking the Printed Past Can Transform our Digital Future.

Richard Weissbourd is currently a lecturer in education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and at the Kennedy School of Government. His work focuses on vulnerability and resilience in childhood, the achievement gap, moral development, and effective schools and services for children. For several years he worked as a psychologist in community mental health centers as well as on the Annie Casey Foundation’s New Futures Project, an effort to prevent children from dropping out of school. He is a founder of several interventions for at-risk children, including ReadBoston and WriteBoston, city-wide literacy initiatives led by Mayor Menino. With Robert Selman, he founded Project ASPIRE, a social and ethical development intervention in three Boston schools. He is also a founder of a new pilot school, the Lee Academy, that begins with children at three years old. He has advised on the city, state, and federal levels on family policy and school reform and has written for numerous scholarly and popular publications. He is the author of The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America’s Children and What We Can Do About It (Addison-Wesley, 1996) and The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children’s Moral and Emotional Development (Houghton Mifflin, 2009).

So, you can see that it would be amazing enough to have the opportunity to attend ISI. What is really exciting, however, is that AVI CHAI is sending us five Jewish day school leaders along with what they call an “LRP Facilitator” – “LRP” being “AVI CHAI-speak” for “Jewish literacy (L), religious purposefulness (R), and peoplehood (P)”. The facilitator is Jonathan Cannon, Head of School of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, MD, and I am very excited to have an opportunity to work with and learn from him.

Why is AVI CHAI making this investment?

According to new Program Officer Rabbi Steven M. Brown, Ed.D, and connected to the subject of my blog post last week (click here):

Day schools have been fairly successful in the cognitive domain, seeing student learning accomplishments of high order in Jewish studies and Hebrew language. But I raise some questions:

How can we create Jewish day schools or summer camps which truly affect students’ commitments to seeing the world through Jewish lenses (in whatever denominational form), making Jewish life and practice part of their daily lives now and in the future?

If you are connected to a Jewish day school or summer camp, what are examples of religious purposefulness that you can see and can describe in your school or camp?

What are the biggest challenges in cultivating religious engagement and purposefulness in the Jewish educational context you know best?

So the investment in sending Jewish day school leaders to ISI along with an LRP Facilitator is being made to begin to answer those questions. Because…

Independent schools can address character education and values in school
AVI CHAI is looking to see if this cohort can create an LRP wrap-around for future ISI cohorts
We can explore how the sessions can contribute to Jewish Day School Leadership

Needless to say, I am beyond excited to be attending ISI, to be attending with other Jewish day school leaders, to be working with AVI CHAI on creating this “LRP wrap-around”, to working with colleagues to translate ISI into the field and to applying what I learn to my practice.

You can expect lots of blogs and tweets October 16-19!

Journey Through the Jewish Holidays Update:

We had more students (nearly 45% of the school) in attendance over Sukkot on both days! We offered a special program on each day to accommodate the large number of students. It was wonderful to see so many families in synagogue…let’s see if we can keep it up next week!

Religious Purposefulness: A Community of Kindness Reframe

First, let me thank those who offered encouraging, and candid, feedback on my first attempt at vlogging. [If you want a recap, pop a dramamine, and click here!] Separate from the technical feedback (perhaps staring at myself in the webcam was not the most useful technique) and the performance feedback (perhaps rocking incessantly back and forth in my chair was not the best staging), useful as it is, it is the form and content feedback that I found most interesting. Awkward as it may have been to watch (and shoot), I think the occasional vlog post will be a helpful way to ensure the tree of my voice finds its way through the forest of words I generate most weeks. There is an intimacy that sound and image brings that no typed sentence can match. I may have plenty of room to grow as a vlogger, but I think I am convinced that it is worth the investment of time and energy to accomplish. I imagine the blog will remain my primary vehicle of communication, but supplemented with targeted vlog posts.

And I promise to sit still next time.

Second, as I am typing the afternoon that will soon become Erev Yom Kippur, let me take this opportunity to offer my sincerest apologies to any and all I may have inadvertently harmed or hurt during this last year. I will try to do and be better in the new Jewish year just begun.

Third, let me offer my annual hope for parents to make Sukkot as much a part of your annual attendance as Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur. Please click here for an impassioned plea for marching with fruits and vegetables. New this is year is an incentivization program that will provide an extrinsic motivation designed to ensure sufficient attendance to allow for the much preferred intrinsic motivation of celebrating the joy of Jewish holidays with friends and community.

If any parents have questions about the new program, please email or call me at your convenience. We are looking forward to seeing you on our most joyous of holidays.

Now onto the business at hand…

Dr. Steven Brown, now a Program Officer at the AVI CHAI Foundation, wrote a wonderful blog past last week called “Religious Purposefulness on the High Holidays” (click here for the whole post), in which he issued the following challenge:

Day schools have been fairly successful in the cognitive domain, seeing student learning accomplishments of high order in Jewish studies and Hebrew language. But I raise some questions:

How can we create Jewish day schools or summer camps which truly affect students’ commitments to seeing the world through Jewish lenses (in whatever denominational form), making Jewish life and practice part of their daily lives now and in the future?

If you are connected to a Jewish day school or summer camp, what are examples of religious purposefulness that you can see and can describe in your school or camp?

What are the biggest challenges in cultivating religious engagement and purposefulness in the Jewish educational context you know best?

He then asked the field to contribute examples of religious purposefulness in Jewish day schools, and I said to myself, “Community of Kindness“!

Utilizing the questions Dr. Brown asks provides me with the perfect opportunity during this period of reflection to reframe “Community of Kindness” as an example of religious purposefulness in action. As we move from the initial phase into surveys culminating with calls to action, I find it helpful to remind ourselves of why we are doing this in the first place. Although there is nothing new in what follows, I find the reframe a useful way to reorient and refocus on what is most essential. Without further adieu…

Religious Purposefulness Vignettes

Goal: To begin a national conversation on the nature of religious purposefulness in Jewish day schools by providing succinct examples in the form of vignettes about practices in our schools.

What is the activity or learning experience? What does it look like?

I am pleased to share the first-ever initiative of the new Galinsky Academy [the home for all the schools of the Jacksonville Jewish Center including the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School, the DuBow Preschool, the Bernard & Alice Selevan Religious School and Makom Hebrew High] will be an exciting pilot program called “Creating a Community of Kindness”! We launched at the beginning of the school year and are partnering with Jewish Family & Community Services to create a sustained, meaningful, comprehensive program that will not only include our schools, but also our clergy, to ensure the fullest participation and the maximum impact possible.

Why is this an example of teaching or modeling religious purposefulness?

The purpose of this program is to create a community of kindness amongst students, teachers and parents at Galinsky Academy. This is intended to support what is already being taught with the message of chesed throughout the religious institution. Jewish schools are in the character-building business. It is a significant motivation for parents to enroll their children in our schools. We care at least as much about who our students are as we care about what they can accomplish. We utilize Jewish value language across the curriculum to reinforce the idea that being a mensch is not something one does only in certain classes, but something one is all day long. Our teachers, along with our clergy, work hard all day to ensure that our school lives up to the ideal of being a community of kindness. And even during school we struggle to achieve our goal. That’s precisely why we launched the “Community of Kindness” initiative in the first place. We recognized that in order to become that community it required all of our schools working together with our clergy to build the safe, loving environment our children deserve.

Where and when does it sit in the life of the school (classroom, shabbaton, school-wide, extracurricular, one-time occurrence, ongoing) and to whom is it directed?

Our plan from the beginning, has been to avoid the one-shot assemblies or training that have some, but fleeting impact on the lives of our students, teachers, and parents and move to something deeper and more powerful.

We began last month month with teacher workshops during “Preplanning Week” and “Faculty Orientation”. We also presented information at PTA-sponsored “Back to School” brunch. Student, parent and teacher surveys are in creation and are scheduled for October. Depending on the data, programs, trainings, workshops, town halls, etc., are scheduled to begin in November.

What is the context enabling this activity to happen? How does the school administration and staff lead and manage this activity? How do you measure success?

Prior survey data from our schools indicate that the most prevailing form of “bullying” or “mean” behaviors throughout our institution are those of social exclusion. Our students, academically, know what the right thing to do is. But many suffer from a pervasive “by-standerism” that prevents rightful action from occurring.

The schools are capable of responding appropriately once behaviors happen. The reactionary system is working appropriately, by and large. We need to create a culture that reduces, if not eliminates, those kinds of behaviors from happening in the first place. We lack a proactive system. It will take students, parents, teachers, administrators, volunteers, and clergy working together to create a common vocabulary and to build a culture where a child of 3, a teen of 15, and a parent would each be equally willing to come forward when faced with “mean” behaviors and articulate that this is not how we behave here.

We will know we have succeeded when we hear peers tell each other that…

“We don’t let friends eat by themselves here.”

“We don’t let our classmates play by themselves on the playground.”

“Of course you could be my math partner!”

“No one works by themselves on class projects here.”

“We invite all our friends to birthday parties in our community.”

You can supply your own appropriately positive quote. But we will know the culture has shifted when those kinds of expressions are voluntarily offered, not teacher prompted.

Do I have a stake in who my students are when they are not in school?

Hebrew-brothers-keeper — (Am I my brother's keeper?)

We are completing our third week of school today (!) and I wanted to take an opportunity to reflect on a question that bubbles up from time to time that I struggle to provide a clear answer to. It gets asked in lots of different ways, but essentially boils down to the same idea: Do I or does the “school” have a responsibility to address behaviors that take place outside the bounded times and spaces of school?

Typically the question is specific to an incident of negative behavior, although it is just as fair to ask about positive behavior as well, and I intend to address both.

Jewish day schools are in the character-building business. It is a significant motivation for parents to enroll their children in our schools. We care at least as much about who our students are as we care about what they can accomplish. We utilize Jewish value language across the curriculum to reinforce the idea that being a mensch is not something one does only in certain classes, but something one is all day long. Our teachers, along with our clergy, work hard all day to ensure that our school lives up to the ideal of being a community of kindness. And even during school we struggle to achieve our goal. That’s precisely why we launched the “Community of Kindness” initiative in the first place. [Click here for a recap.] We recognized that in order to become that community it required all of our schools working together with our clergy to build the safe, loving environment our children deserve. But even this important new initiative emphasizes what happens under our watchful eye.

What about the text sent out at 9:00 PM?

What about the play-date on Sunday? Or the ones some children are not invited to?

What about the hallways during Shabbat services?

Let me be clear that I am purposefully leaving parents out of this behavioral equation. Not because I either blame parents for their children’s behavior nor because I abdicate parents of their responsibility to effectively parent. I am simply asking a different question. If I witness or discover noteworthy behavior of my students when we are not technically in school, what exactly are my responsibilities to respond or react? Do I have a stake in who my students are when they are not in school?

The simple answer is “yes”. I care deeply about who our students are when they are not in school because how they behave when no one is watching matters a whole lot more than how they behave under close supervision. That’s the true measure of character. That’s derekh eretz.

OK, that part is simple. I am proud when students behave well outside of school and disappointed when they don’t. But do I share those feelings with them? Do I share those feelings with their parents? Is it my place to hold them accountable for those behaviors?Those are the vexing questions I struggle to answer effectively – especially when the behaviors are grey.

The black-and-white ones are easy; they always are when the level of behavior is so significant it cannot be ignored. We already engage parents when we discover social events where students are excluded. We already employ effective discipline when students bully outside school walls and times. We already impose consequences if the physical facility is harmed after hours. And on the positive end of the spectrum, we already celebrate students who are honored elsewhere. We already praise students for their outside academic achievements (i.e. high school placement). We already highlight students who perform significant acts of lovingkindness outside of school.

The grey ones are more complicated; they always are when the level of behavior is insignificant enough that it can be, and often is, ignored. We don’t always engage parents to ensure all our students have access to frequent play-dates and smaller social opportunities. We don’t always praise students for their random acts of lovingkindness outside of school. We often ignore disruptive behavior on Shabbat and holidays because we are ostensibly “off-duty” and we surely do not call those students to account for those behaviors when next back in school. And we don’t properly incentivize participation in Shabbat and holiday celebrations so important we are willing to close school.

I am no longer willing to stand on the sidelines.

With regard to “community of kindness” we say that we will know if the program is taking hold if students on their own are willing to address their own behavior or that of their friends. That children will be willing to say to themselves and to each other that “we do not behave like that here”. To me this is no different. We need to do a better job instilling pride of school, pride of academy and pride of self in our students so that they feel the responsibility of representation outside our direct reach. A Galinsky Academy student simply does not behave like that. A Galinsky Academy student behaves with derekh eretz whether they are in school, synagogue, the football game, or the mall.

I have a role to play and I am working up the courage to empower myself to do it. If I am made aware of discouraging behavior, I will share my disappointment regardless of when or where it took place. If I am made aware of positive behavior, I will share my pride regardless of when or where it took place. They will know that I have high expectations. They will know that we treasure their participation in Shabbat and holiday celebrations and have announced a new program to incentivize it.

The older ones will know that I don’t issue a character reference or a principal recommendation lightly. If you want me to recommend you to a high school, an honors society, or even to babysit, you will earn that recommendation by making for yourself a good name.

My students will know that I care who they are and that who they are matters.

Our Civic Responsibility

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. I enjoy that research, even if it does require quite a bit of time and a lot of cyber-linking! But as we move out of the Republican Convention, into the Democratic Convention, and towards a hotly contested presidential election, I wanted to inoculate myself from outside information and speak purely from the heart about what role I believe all schools, Jewish day schools in general, and our school specifically should play in educating our students to appreciate and exercise their civic responsibility as members of a democratic society.

This will be my second straight swing state (say that five times fast!) election. Four years ago I was in Nevada and now I live in Florida. I recognize how passionate people are. I appreciate how emotionally-laden the conversation can become. The issues of the day are serious – war, the economy, social issues, etc. 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 be disconcerting. It doesn’t take much for a conversation to veer off course into unkind territory.

Our responsibility as a school seems simple, straightforward and entirely non-controversial. We should educate our students as to how our political system works. 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. And they should honor the office of president regardless of who holds it.

I can hear alarm bells ringing in people’s minds. We are not 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. But no matter how many times I’ve reread the above paragraph I cannot find anything in it remotely partisan or worthy of disagreement. And if you do, by all means write a “quality comment” and let me know.

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 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 role. 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. What is a school (or society) to do?

Presidential elections are an exciting time to be an American citizen. As an American Jewish day school, it is 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 the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School 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 witness history and celebrate the miracle of our democracy.

Shofar so good!

The very first thing we do at the beginning of each school year is gather together as a school community and celebrate the ceremony of Havdalah. Havdalah literally means “separation” and is the ceremony that marks the transition between Shabbat and the weekday. Because of its length (short), melody, and prominence in Jewish camping, Havdalah is a relatively popular ritual even with those who are less ritually observant. Part of what makes any ritual powerful is its ability to infuse the everyday with transcendent meaning. My small way to lend transcendence to the typical “Back to School” assembly is to use the power of Havdalah to help mark the transition between summer and the start of school.

And so this past Monday morning, the students and faculty of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School marked the transition between the summer that was and the school year that is presently unfolding with a heartfelt Havdalah.

I told my faculty during “Pre-Planning Week” (click here for a reflection of that week) that I had never been this excited for the start of a school year in my 8 years as a head of school. All the work of the last two years combined with a cast of talented, dedicated, loving, enthusiastic returning and new teachers (click here for a list) has led us to this point. We are as ready as we have ever been to deliver on the the promise of “a floor, but no ceiling”. And this first week has more than lived up to my expectations.

It has been wonderful to walk the school, to feel the positive energy oozing through the walls and see the smiling faces of our students and parents. As we say this time of year, “Shofar so good!”

Our newest faculty members are acquitting themselves with great aplomb and our returning teachers have plenty of new tricks up their sleeves to mix with their tried and true excellence. We are focused on ensuring that we take the time at the beginning of the year to create classroom communities of kindness. We have added 33% more faculty to lunchtime supervision to make sure the good work of the morning doesn’t fall through the cracks of lunch. The first week of the departmentalization of Grades 4 & 5 has been a success (with the normal amount of confusion newness brings) and evidence of the power of looping (click here for a fuller description of how we approach Grades 4 & 5) is already manifest. Dedicated science instruction in the Lower School (click here for our Lower School schedule and rationale) is a success. And in my meetings with faculty to lay out their professional development plans for the year, I can see the impact their summer reading (click here) is already having on their practice. If the next thirty-nine weeks go as well this one, the 2012-2013 school year will, indeed, be a very special one. Be excited.

Two business notes and a personal one…

Our annual PTA Magazine Drive kicks off next week with an assembly. This year’s drive, one of our biggest fundraisers, will take place over two weeks. It will, like last year, have incentives to encourage student participation. [It won’t be frogs this year and no one is being “kidnapped”, but I can’t give the schtick away here!] We took in a lot of feedback last year, the first one in which the administration and faculty actively participated, and based on that feedback have made a few adjustments to ensure the most positive experience possible. Although it is a fundraiser and the only way those funds are raised is through the selling of magazines, we have worked with our vendor to put “literacy” out in front as the primary motivation for purchasing a magazine. It will be, we hope, as much a literacy campaign as anything else. And, therefore, in addition to earning tokens through sales, students will also have opportunity to earn tokens through reading. In addition, we have scaled back the opportunities for trading and the overall length of the drive to reduce distractions and to prevent student enthusiasm from encroaching on academic time. Finally, in a developmentally appropriate way, we will explore how to explain to students why our schools, like most schools, engage in fundraising activities. That will, we believe, provide meaningful context. We are looking forward to our best magazine drive yet!

The “book” on edJEWcon is out! Thanks to Silvia Tolisano for compiling this amazing document of edJEWcon 5772.0’s tremendous success.

edjewcon5772-0

Save the date: edJEWcon 5773.1 – April 28-30, 2013!

And on a personal note, lots of people have asked me if the cover girl on the newest volume of “Voices of Conservative Judaism” (click here for the whole PDF) is my oldest daughter, Eliana. It, in fact, is! United Synagogue asked all the Schechter schools to submit photos over a year ago for possible publication and without any notice, my daughter wound up in people’s mailboxes this week. I can ensure you that no nepotism was involved, but we certainly appreciate seeing our daughter (circa two years ago when she was in Kindergarten) on the cover. As you can tell from the picture above, she gratefully takes after her mother.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to let us know that they saw it!

Jewish Education Got Game

Personal Note:

Thanks to all who reached out over the last week or so to see how I was faring after having undergone my personal “Fifty Shades of Ow” early 11th anniversary gift to my wife of having a deviated septum repaired along with the ever-popular “uvula shave”. I was always told that “eleven” was the gift of “elective, non-cosmetic survey to reduce snoring” and I am an excellent listener. My nose is back to its normal shape with the added value of being able to breathe out of one side of it for the first time. My throat? I am just about able to swallow without wincing. Another week or so and I should be as good as new. Will it actually reduce the snoring? Stay tuned.

Coming Attractions:

I hired a new Middle School Math Teacher as well as a new First Grade Teaching Assistant this week! Next week, I hope to secure new Kindergarten and Fourth Grade Teaching Assistants as well, so we will be fully staffed! Our new transparent schedule will also be finalized, so you can look forward to a final “Transparency Files” blog post sharing the new schedule and its rationale.

I will also be finalizing a VERY exciting “Creating a Community of Kindness” (click here, here, and here) announcement that will be the subject of a blog post, press release, etc. Please be on the look out for this first-ever Galinsky Academy initiative in the weeks to come!

I wanted to take a moment in the calm of summer to reflect on some thinking we’ve been doing in the area of “gaming” and “gaming theory”. It reflects experiences as far back as last January’s North American Jewish Day School Conference, which I blogged about here. The end of that blog post was my reflection on my experience facilitating a session for Barry Joseph of Global Kids on Gaming 101. He gave a wonderful overview on the impact of gaming on education and provided lots of rich resources.

I have been influenced by this TED talk by Jane McConigal: “Gaming can make a better world” which has been among their most viewed:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

I have also been inspired by thought-partner Rabbi Owen Gottlieb:

And I have been recently working with Nicky Newfield, Director of Jewish Interactive, on potential new projects.

Although I have no groundbreaking program or initiative to announce at present…I am quite confident that all this thinking and collaboration will yield exciting fruit, and soon. Here is where I think we are heading:

White Paper: Gaming & Jewish Education

The last three years in my position as Head of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School, a K-8 Schechter Network Day School of nearly 130 students located in Jacksonville, Florida, has overlapped with an explosion of interest in 21^st century learning and educational technology. In large ways, our school has been shaped by the works of leading figures in this educational movement – Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Angela Maiers, Alan November, Mike Fischer, and Chris Lehmann to name a few. And in small ways, I believe our school has contributed to the movement as well, by serving as a living laboratory and our creation of edJEWcon – a yearly institute for 21^st century Jewish day school education, launched in 2012 with 21 Jewish Day Schools throughout North American and representing the full ideological spectrum. As our work in this area deepens each year, new opportunities for innovation arise. It has become to clear to us that gaming and gaming theory represent the next frontier.

A leading feature of 21^st century learning is giving students the opportunities to own the learning. Knowing that Bloom’s Taxonomy recognizes “creativity” as the highest rung on the ladder, we are interested in giving our students opportunities to create meaningful, authentic work. From a motivational standpoint, gaming provides us with a tangible example of our target audience spending hours upon hours failing to achieve! But rather than becoming despondent, kids find this kind of failure motivating – they will spend hours and days working on new skills and seeking new discoveries in order to accomplish their goal. Deep gaming allows for the possibility of harnessing students’ desire for creativity and motivation for success to the curricular aims of a school.

Although this would apply to any aspect of the curriculum, it is in Middle School Jewish Studies where perhaps the greatest opportunity lies. It could be because the current quality of curricular materials is less. It could be because student motivation for Jewish Studies is oftentimes less in, at least, some kinds of Jewish day schools. It could be that for some students virtual Jewish experiences may the only Jewish experiences (outside of school) available. For those reasons, and for the benefits of creating integrated curricular learning experiences between secular academics, STEM and Jewish Studies that many Jewish Day Schools find desirable either for expediency, mission or both, we believe the creation of a virtual gaming environment built around key periods of Jewish history has the greatest academic and commercial potential.

We envision our Middle School students having the opportunity to build upon existing curriculum by creating avatars who can interact in key periods of Jewish history. It would call upon skills taught in Bible, Rabbinics, Social Studies, etc., and also include opportunities for remediation and enrichment. We envision our day school students and faculty perhaps integrating their 21^st century learning skill set in mastery levels by creating new events, periods, storyboards, characters, etc. This provides the greatest range of differentiation possible, from playing the game to co-creating it.

As an additional footnote, because of our school’s location within an educational academy at a large Conservative synagogue, we recognize there are yet additional applications of a game such as this with a larger population of supplemental school students. We can imagine a game which allows the player to experience key moments of Jewish history being desirable either for the schools, parents and Jewish students who would unlikely be able to experience that subject matter (at least to day school depth) with the limited hours and curriculum supplemental schooling provides.

Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo: What one Jewish Day School Head learned on his Disney vacation

http://youtu.be/_TKBHJeEljU

Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo from the Disney film, Cinderella, 1950. Copyright Disney.

Lyrics:

Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put ’em together and what have you got
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
It’ll do magic believe it or not

I do believe it.

I spent the majority of the last week with my family on a Disney cruise. (My poor children were crushed on our first night back home to discover that no one had created elaborate towel animals on their beds or left chocolates on their pillows!) We have cruised a bit in the past, but a “Disney cruise” is a completely different creature. Disney is not messing around – no one takes customer service more seriously. As the days moved on and memories piled up one on top of the next, like any good reflective practitioner, it occurred to me that it would be worth reflecting on what lessons might Disney have to offer me in my (not-with-mouse-ears) Jewish Day School Head’s hat.

Let me begin by stating clearly that I am hardly the first or best one to think about this question. I am most familiar with my former American Jewish University (then University of Judaism) professor, Dr. Ron Wolfson’s work in this arena. He is well-known for bringing students to Disneyland for a firsthand taste followed by reflection and application. [Click here for a brief article about Dr. Wolfson’s work and here for his book, “The Spirituality of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation Into a Sacred Community”, where he shares his work in this area.] I am not sure how much I can add to the conversation, but when in Disney…

Cleanliness is next to Princess-liness

I have never seen a cruise ship, or even a large room, as meticulously groomed as the Disney Dream. Whether they were soaking up moisture on the pool deck in order to avoid slipping or polishing the brass railings at 11:30 at night, someone was always cleaning up something somewhere at sometime. Details are important and appearance does matter. Students are not employees, I realize, but I would like to see our student body take more pride in our school’s appearance. It doesn’t matter who you are or what role you play in the organization – caring about picking up litter, taking an extra half-second to clean your shoes on the way inside, not standing by while someone else damages property – pride shows through.

Everyone is a Greeter

This comes straight from Dr. Wolfson’s work – it is a core Disney principle that each employee understands that they are a “greeter” first. For our school to truly embrace a “spirituality of welcoming” each student, teacher, parent, staff person, etc., would recognize that they have a responsibility to make everyone else feel welcome in our school. It extends well beyond greeting a stranger – imagine how much closer we would be towards becoming a true Community of Kindness (here, here and here) if we treated each other as someone deserving of the feeling of being truly welcome. Older students looking out for younger students. Teachers looking out for parents. Parents looking out for teachers. What struck me on the cruise is how clearly this cut across hierarchical lines – the maintenance person swabbing the deck and the captain of the dining room treated each of my daughters like true princesses. [Insert gratuitous photo here.]

Time is of the Essence

There is not a minute of wasted time on a Disney cruise. They have constructed a schedule to allow for a maximal experience. We certainly know the challenges of doing the same in a Jewish day school! I am finishing up presently a revised schedule for our Lower School and it has taken hours and hours and still isn’t quite ready. [Spoiler Alert! It will for the first time make transparent hours of instruction dedicated to each subject. I think it will be a most positive surprise.] It is a worthy goal to make each moment of our Jewish day school be filled with maximum meaning.

Personal Navigation

This may be my favorite one (and one that I will likely think the most deeply about in the weeks to come). The Disney cruise line calls their daily schedule a “personal navigator” and I don’t think it is simply a matter of semantics. They create a schedule which allows each customer to clearly identify which activities create the most meaning – activities for each demographic, activities for different lifestyles, activities that bridge and activities that winnow, etc. We would sit down as a family each evening to plan out the next day, factoring in the interests and abilities of our complete family – the four of us plus my wife’s father and wife. The schedule was our invitation to take responsibility for meaning-making.

I talk a lot in my work about how the truest reflections of a school’s values can be found in two places – the budget and the schedule. If you want to know what a school really believes to be important you need not go any farther than how it chooses to spend its money and its time.

As we continue to walk down the common paths of differentiation and 21st century learning, the answer to the question posed in Alan November’s new book “Who Owns the Learning?” is obvious: The Student. If the student owns the learning, how does that impact what we teach, how we teach, when we teach, etc?

What would it mean to organize learning by the paradigm of personal navigation?

I hate to mix metaphors on a Friday afternoon, but as one moves from student to teacher to principal, one peeks behind the curtain and realizes that the Wizard is simply a person like anyone else. Similarly as to how one moves from camper to counselor to rosh at summer camp and one realizes how the magic is made. But it doesn’t make the experience any less magical for the student or the camper just because there was a science behind the magic-making. My daughters’ experience of the Disney Dream was magical even if I know how they did it.

I realize that creating a culture at our school that embraces these ideas will be harder than singing “bibbidi-bobbidi-boo”. But if we could achieve them? Well that would be some real magic.