A Floor, But Not a Ceiling

Lessons from Dad

It is amazing how much life takes place in a relatively short of amount of time. Three years ago, I blogged about my aspirations as a parent and a principal on this exact same day on the Jewish calendar – on the morning of what will soon be Kol Nidre and the beginning of Yom Kippur. They feel newly appropriate. Three years ago we were new to this community, this synagogue and this school. We had had a great transition and were full of excitement about what the future would bring. We had plans, hopes, dreams, fears, concerns and a whole host of other emotions.

And I had a father.

Of all the myriad of changes that has taken place between now and then, this one looms largest even though it is sometimes difficult day-to-day to always understand how. There are days when it feels like it happened years ago. There are days when it feels like it never happened. And there are days where it feels like it is happening all over again. I am assured that this is all normal and I am sure that it is.

So.

Now that I have been blogging for a few years, I am sometimes moved to revisit prior posts and see how they hold up over time. Occasionally, I am inspired to update in light of new realities. This is one of those times, as I revisit words of prayer written by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov from his Likutey Moharan (2:7) that now speak to me with the same words, but with new meaning…

Dear God,

teach me to embody those ideals

I would want my children

to learn from me.

Let me communicate

with my children – wisely

in ways

that will draw their hearts

to kindness, to deceny

and to true wisdom.

Dear God,

let me pass on to my children

only the good;

let them find in me

the values

and the behavior

I hope to see in them.

I now read those words of three minds – as a son who lost a father, as a parent of two and a principal of many. It reminds me why our faculty handbook quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, saying, “We need to have more than textbooks, we need text-people”. We can have the best books, most well though-out curriculum, and the most sophisticated technology – and hopefully we either do or will soon – but without the right people what does it really amount to?

And we can have read all the best parenting books and have our children in all the best schools and extracurricular activities – but without us parenting as our best selves, what can it really mean?

Among our traditions during the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur include the act of teshuvah – the complicated act of acknowledging past wrongs, correcting past mistakes, promises of changed behavior, etc. For my part, please allow me apologize to all those I have wronged or hurt, intentionally or unknown over the past year. I look forward to working on myself to be the best “me” I can in the upcoming year. For me, my mother, my wife, my children, my family, my friends, my colleagues, my teachers, my students and their families – I hope this year to live up to the words of Rebbe Nachman and Rabbi Heschel.

And I hope to take the lessons of my father of blessed memory to heart as I now follow his footsteps on the journey of my own fatherhood…

Habits of Kindness

As we head into the High Holidays, it seems an appropriate time to revisit and update where we are as a school and an academy when it comes to “community of kindness“. The truth is that the last substantive update came as part of a blog post that dealt with day school faculty and did really not include a lot of specifics.

Let’s rewind and review what we accomplished in the pilot year.

Last year was a pilot. We learned through surveys that our most significant failing when it comes to kindness in our schools is social exclusion. We learned through experience that one significant roadblock to kindness in our schools is what happens outside of school hours and places. We also recognized the unique challenges that living in the 21st century bring to issues of kindness. And we acknowledged that without parents as sacred partners we are unlikely to be the community our children deserve. We provided support to faculty, facilitated experiences with students and hosted two parent forums.

Was it successful?

Well, I would say “yes” with limitations. We succeeded in raising awareness. We began exploring structures for addressing the issues and there were individual successes with specific children that we can point to. But I do not think we had the sort of systemic impact we had hoped for. We are better off for having gone through the pilot than had we not done so. We learned what worked and what didn’t. And so as we head into a second year working with this initiative, we have made significant changes that we hope will lead to an increased impact felt not only within the times and spaces of school, but in our community writ large – our academy, our synagogue, and beyond.

It begins with staffing, but goes much deeper.

The first strategic decision was to pull the initiative in-house (last year we worked in partnership with Jewish Family & Community Services) and give the position to a full-time employee with knowledge, experience and relationships that transcend the academy, and so we have named Stephanie Teitelbaum as our Galinsky Academy Community of Kindness Coordinator. We believe this strategic combination of personality and position will help ensure we are dedicating the proper resources to an initiative of such great import. It continues to serve the faculty, parents, and students of our Academy’s schools, but now with an insider’s knowledge and access.

As important as staffing is a plan.

“Community of Kindness” makes a great slogan and a lousy call to action. We all recognize the need to be more “kind” and to ensure that our community act with increased “kindness” to all…but what exactly do you do? To answer that question and to provide us with a common vision, language and set of behaviors we are turning to a well-researched set of habits, seven of them to be exact.

With a huge assist from Andrea Hernandez, who has been quietly encouraging this for at least five years, we are going to go ahead and adopt and adapt The Leader in Me:

The Leader in Me process is designed to be integrated into everyday language so that it isn’t “‘one more thing” teachers and administrators have to do. It becomes part of the culture, gaining momentum and producing improved results year after year, benefiting schools and students in the following ways:

Develops students who have the skills and self-confidence to succeed as leaders in the 21st century.

Decreases discipline referrals.

Teaches and develops character and leadership through existing core curriculum.

Improves academic achievement.

Raises levels of accountability and engagement among both parents and staff.

The Leader in Me process also helps to create a common language within a school, built on proven principle-based leadership skills found in Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

Habit1: Be Proactive® • You’re in Charge

Habit2: Begin With the End in Mind® • Have a Plan

Habit3: Put First Things First® • Work First, Then Play

Habit4: Think Win-Win® • Everyone Can Win

Habit5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood® • Listen Before You Talk

Habit6: Synergize® • Together Is Better

Habit7: Sharpen the Saw® • Balance Feels Best

It is important to note that there has also been work in the Jewish Day School field work on translating the habits into Jewish settings and value language. Our friends at CAJE-Miami who work in this area offer the following helpful chart from their website:

We began at Faculty Pre-Planning when we held a joint session of DuBow Preschool and Martin J. Gottlieb Day School Faculty introducing the big idea and how we plan to proceed. Teachers of similar ages and grades were led through brainstorming activities on how to incorporate the first two habits as it is our plan, beginning in September, to focus each month on one habit. [The Bernard and Alice Selevan Religious School and Makom Hebrew High are coming on board as they open up.] Activities will be grade and age appropriate and will include stories, lessons and resources. Parents should look for evidence of how the habits are coming to life on school websites, classroom blogs, student blogfolios, as well as in parent forums and synagogue events. This month we are focusing on “Be Proactive”.

For my part, I am going to try to “be proactive” by dedicating my first blog post of each month – this being the first – to its habit.

Community of Kindness isn’t going anywhere. We are committed to getting this right because there is no other alternative. And we will need your help. If you are a parent in the academy, you are welcome to read and learn along with us. Incorporating the habits at home will only make what we do at school that much more powerful. So you can “be proactive” as well.

As we sit on the edge of 5774, let’s make this the year that kindness ceases to be a slogan and starts to be a habit.

Shana tovah!

Emails from Naomi Shemer

Each afternoon between 1 and 1:30 PM, I receive an email from “Naomi Shemer”. Not the Naomi Shemer. From the iPad in our school named “Naomi Shemer”.

See?

One of our founding 21st century learning teachers, Silvia Tolisano, decided when we first got our iPads that we ought to name each one after a famous Jewish person and sneak a little extra learning in. So we have iPads named “David Ben-Gurion” and “Ilan Ramon” and “Sarah Aaronsohn” and (of course) “Solomon Schechter” and so on. Awesome idea.

And because of the way our gmail is constructed it also allows you to receive unexpected emails from names you thought you would never see in your inbox!

Hey! I just received an email from Naomi Shemer! How awesome is that!

So…why is “Naomi Shemer” sending me a daily email?

Because my oldest daughter is in Grade 3 this year and according to their class blog:

And that is what happens. Each day Eliana takes a picture with an iPad of where her clothespin ended up for the day and emails it to both me and her mother. Besides the ease of communication the technology allows for, what I really appreciate about it is that it shifts ownership from the teacher to the student. We typically talk about students “owning their learning” – this is an example of our students owning their behavior.

Grade Three is a pivotal year in our school when it comes to a student’s digital presence. We have blogfolios for each student in our school, Kindergarten through Grade Eight. [NOTE: We are in the second week of school here in Jacksonville and all of our blogfolios have not yet been carried on to the next grade. They are going live as we update them.] But the teachers have primary responsibility for them in Grades K-2 – although reflection is there from the beginning, they function more like digital portfolios than true blogfolios. Grade Three is when our students begin to assume ownership of their blogs and begin to learn how to be digital citizens. They are beginning by learning how to comment on their own class blog.

I have written often about why we put such an emphasis on blogging in our school. And I, myself, have been blocking off for the last couple of years about an hour a week to comment on student blogfolios. But now I have the opportunity to view the experience wearing my parent hat. And I can see the idea that “with 21st century learning education need not be bound by time and space” playing out before my eyes in my own kitchen. Eliana was not required to comment on her class blog and her teacher was not required to comment back. But she was interested as we were cleaning up after family dinner and he was responsive during prep and now their student-teacher relationship has a different nuance than it otherwise would have had.

And both the father and the principal in me couldn’t be happier.

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” that I had never been this excited for the start of a school year in my 9 years as a head of school. All the work of the last three years combined with a cast of talented, dedicated, loving, enthusiastic returning and new teachers 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 under the leadership of our new Community of Kindness Coordinator Stephanie Teitelbaum. We are paying extra attention to lunch and recess to make sure the good work of the classroom teachers don’t full through the cracks of unstructured time.

The first week of our new 1:1 iPad program in Grades 4 & 5 has been a success (with the normal amount of confusion newness brings) and the addition of a full-time K-8 Science Teacher has already raised the bar for science education at MJGDS. And in my meetings with faculty to discuss their professional development plans for the year, I can see the impact their summer reading is already having on their practice.

Confession.

I don’t think I am alone in this, but I will admit that in the eight prior years of being a head of school, that whenever I had the time to do a school walk-through, in addition to all the positive things I was hoping to see…a part of me was always steeled for the possibility of the things I was hoping not to see. If a principal is honest, s/he knows which teachers s/he has concerns about, which students s/he is worried about, and, yes, which parents s/he has difficulty with. We don’t share that information with anyone, but in our hearts we know the score. And we go into each year optimistic that those problem areas will improve, but realistic that there will inevitably be fires to be put out.

I took my first walk-through of this school year yesterday.

I visited each classroom. I saw every facet of our curriculum. I saw each teacher. I saw every space. It took me about a half-hour before I could put my finger on what was different this time around. And then I realized that the small sinking feeling of the possibility of something going wrong that typically accompanies me on my walk-through’s was absent! Room after room, teacher after teacher, activity after activity, student after student…it all looked…like how it was supposed to. It has taken us four years, but it just might be possible that we have finally begun to become the school we have all worked so hard and with such positive energy to become!

I am no pollyanna. Things are going to go wrong during the course of the year. We will still have behaviors to correct, programs to improve, teachers to grow, parents to connect, lessons to be learned, and yes, probably a few fires (metaphorical ones this year!) to put out. But if the next thirty-nine weeks go as well this one, the 2013-2014 school year will, indeed, be a very special one.

MJGDS Pre-Planning: A Storify

Tried something new this week!

[View the story “MJGDS Pre-Planning Week” on Storify]

To everything there is a season…

Life does move on…

A friend who came last week to pay a shivah call who had recently lost a parent of his own, shared with me that although you would think the goal of shivah is to provide the mourner with ample quiet time to grieve, reflect and reminisce; that, in fact, it is to exhaust the mourner to such a stark degree that any return to normalcy is welcome. I do not believe that explanation is sourced in Jewish tradition, but I do second the emotion.

And so I have returned to school, to work, to synagogue and to life. Return is bittersweet – I am glad to be home and welcome the opportunity for meaningful work to fill the void grief left behind. But it also makes it way too easy to forget that I am still grieving. I am embracing Jewish grieving rituals – continuing to wear the keriah after transitioning from the shivah to the sheloshim, attending minyan daily to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish, refraining from participating in overly social or joyous occasions, etc., – because they provide opportunities to remind me that I did, indeed, lose my father and to reflect upon all that that means. And after sheloshim comes the rest of a year of mourning…and I will explore how I intend to commemorate that phase when I enter it a few weeks hence. But now it is time to turn my attention back to matters at hand and what is at hand is the beginning of an exciting school year at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School as faculty and staff prepare to return on Monday (!) for an action-packed “Pre-Planning Week”.

The Transparency Files: Pre-Planning Week

At the beginning of the summer, I blogged about our expectations and plans for faculty to use their summertime for professional growth. I blogged about my summer reading and how it has impacted my thinking heading into another year. In the spirit of transparency, I would like to share with you what we will be thinking about and working on next week – a week dedicated to ensuring the first day, week, month, etc., of the 2013-2014 school year is full of wonder, discovery, meaning and success for our students.

Here’s the scoop:

Monday, August 12th

9:30 – 10:00 AM Continental Breakfast & Welcome Activities

10:00 – 11:00 AM Team-Building Activities – The Transition Cafe

11:00 – 12:30 PM Work in Classrooms

12:30 – 2:00 PM PTA Preschool & Day School Lunch & Teambuilding

2:00 – 3:30 PM Lower School & Middle School Faculty Meetings

Tuesday, August 13th

8:45 – 9:00 AM IT

9:00 – 9:30 AM Student Advisory

9:30 – 11:30 AM “7 Habits”

11:30 – 12:30 PM Student Advisor Meeting & New Faculty IT

12:30 – 1:30 PM Lunch & Learn w/Rabbi Olitzky

1:30 – 2:00 PM HR w/ DuBow Preschool Faculty

2:00 – 3:30 PM Work in Classrooms

Wednesday, August 14th

8:30 – 9:30 AM Brunch & Learn w/Rabbi Lubliner

9:30 – 10:30 AM Summer Book Club Groups

10:30 – 11:30 AM “Square Peg” Alum & Mom

11:30 – 12:30 PM Lunch [JS Faculty Working Lunch]

12:30 – 3:00 PM Hebrew Faculty Webinar

12:30 – 3:30 PM Work in Classrooms

Thursday, August 15th

8:30 – 9:30 AM How to talk to parents about “Square Pegs”

9:30 – 10:15 AM “Wonder”

10:15 –12:00 PM Work in Classrooms / MS Faculty Meeting

12:00 – 1:00 PM Lunch

1:00 – 3:30 PM LS “Meet the Teachers” & MS Work in Classrooms

Friday, August 16th

8:00 – 9:00 AM Final Nuts & Bolts

8:30 – 11:45 AM Middle School Orientation

9:00 – 9:30 AM Final Fine Tuning

9:30 –12:00 PM Work in Classrooms

A few things jump out at me…

You can see that Square Pegs has taken on a life larger just one of the books from the Summer Book Club. A number of teachers and administrators have read it and we believe its message has great resonance for our school.

You can see our belief that the 7 Habits may provide a common language for students and teachers to continue our 21st century learning journey .

You can see in “Student Advisory” the first tangible fruit of having an in-house Community of Kindness Coordinator.

You can see our ongoing commitment to Jewish learning through our “lunch and learn’s”.

But more than anything, I hope you can see our dedication to lifelong learning, our desire to be our very best, our devotion to our craft, our love for children, our passion for education, our acknowledgement of our sacred responsibility to teach, our respect for the whole child, our emphasis on personalized learning, and our promise to deliver “a floor, but no ceiling” for each child we have been entrusted with.

I say it each year, but only because I sincerely mean it. This year is going to be our best year ever. And that is because of who comes walking through the door Monday morning.

Welcome back MJGDS Faculty & Staff.

My father, myself…

It has been only four days since my father passed – only two days since his funeral – and it still hardly feels real. We have been overwhelmed by the amount of well-wishes, prayers, words, and deeds of consolation that have come pouring in from our families and friends from all the many stops life’s journey has taken us. It is impossible to convey the gratitude we feel towards those who have taken the extra step and gone the extra mile.

I managed to get through the eulogy I delivered on Monday and a number of people who were there and an even larger number of people who were unable to be there have requested a copy. I realize that a significant number of people who read this blog do so for professional purposes. And although I do occasionally weave personal anecdotes and information through my posts, I typically shy away the overly intimate. But life is not so easily compartmentalized…

Last week, when I thought things were headed in a positive direction, I blogged about how I believed this experience would be make me a better husband, a better father, a better friend, a better person…and most of all, a better son. I am still hopeful. But that last one will be awfully bittersweet for an awfully long time…

To my father…

My father was in the best shape of his life when he passed.

This was an irony that was lost on no one, including him, during the week he spent fighting back against the stroke that eventually took him from us.

“Why get in such great shape to have this happen?” he said in the hospital.

At the time, I believed it was to give him the strength to survive it. To suggest that it was to give him – and us – sufficient time to say goodbye today seems cruel, but perhaps in time will be a comfort.

It is easy to make fun of my father. He certainly had his shticks.

Expressing his political opinions too loudly at the risk of confrontation was a frequent occurrence. Hopefully heaven has MSNBC…

Treating each part-time tax return like a full-time job. Hopefully heaven has an Internal Revenue Service…

Eating cereal with warm milk was a daily meal that never seemed appealing to the rest of us. Hopefully heaven has Cheerios…

Reading book after book after book after book. Hopefully heaven has a Nook – and good customer support…

A childhood filled with such puns as “Jerry Rice and his brother Fried”. Hopefully heaven has a generous sense of humor…

Baseball caps and T-shirts from wherever he had just visited. Hopefully heaven has a gift shop…

Checking his messages with obsessive regularity well into retirement. Hopefully heaven has voicemail…

Taking out the garbage was the one household chore he could be counted on to perform. Hopefully heaven collects the trash…

Changing hotel rooms to avoid noise or the potential for noise was commonplace. Hopefully heaven has a corner room…

Nicknames for the ones he loved most. Hopefully heaven has my dad…

But my father was more than shtick, although it wasn’t always easy to see. Expressing his deepest emotions did not come easy for him, but there was never any doubt they were there. He understood his primary role in life was to take care of his wife, his sister and me and the successful performance of that role was his greatest pride. Even through their darkest times – the lost pregnancies of my youth and the lost jobs of my teenage years – he was there to protect us and to shield us from life’s difficulties. He took it all on and mostly kept it all in. He would bear the weight so we would not have to. Maybe that took such a toll on his heart that it didn’t leave space for some of the words we sometimes wanted to hear, but his actions spoke loud enough. It now falls to us to ensure those actions continue to speak on his behalf so that his memory endures.

When I delivered my grandfather’s eulogy eleven years ago, I expressed gratitude that he had lived long enough to see me married and regret that he had not lived long enough to meet his great-grandchildren who were not yet. Oh how he would have loved our Eliana, named for his wife, and Maytal, named for him. One of the last things my father said was that he planned to bless the challah at Eliana’s wedding as his father had done at mine…

Oh how he loved his granddaughters…they were his pride and his joy. Getting down on the floor with them and playing in the pool were his greatest delights. My father’s father was such an important presence in my life and all I ever wanted for my father was to have a chance to be the same in the lives of my children. My heart breaks to know he will not have a chance to watch them grow and it shatters to think that they will not have a chance to really know him and that, perhaps, they will be left years down the road with few memories of their own.

These last years were good ones. For that I will be grateful. He was slowly coming to terms with retirement and striking the right balance between keeping busy and finding purpose. He was proud of his work with the IRS and with H&R Block and with good reason. He was proud of his volunteer work with NARFE and within our Jewish community. He traveled to Israel for the first time and many trips were planned. He was working out regularly, had lost weight, and was proud of his newfound strength and energy. He had spent his whole life working and working and thinking about working and now it was time to finally relax and enjoy his wife, his children – for Jaimee truly was the daughter he never had, and his grandchildren. And in the space between his 44th wedding anniversary and his 71st birthday, his time simply ran out too soon.

And so it is left to those of us who knew and loved him best to keep his memory alive. I am counting on you to share your stories with me and my children so they will always have their Grandpa to guide them, to protect them and to inspire them as they grow up in a world diminished by his absence, but better off from having had Michael Mitzmacher – shticks and all – in it.

“You know I’m going to be like him”

My father had a stroke Thursday night.

We got the phone call early Friday morning on our way up to pick up our oldest daughter, Eliana, from Camp Ramah Darom. (I blogged two weeks ago about camping and the power of experiential learning. Suffice it to say that her one-week “taste” delivered on all accounts.) By the time my mother called, he had successfully had surgery to remove the clot from his right brain and was recovering in ICU. After much conversation and thought, we decided that I should continue the trip as planned through Sunday and that instead of driving back with my family that I would fly out to Las Vegas on Monday morning.

Which I did.

When I arrived Monday to the hospital, they had just hours earlier removed the tubes for breathing and feeding. I had missed the very worst, but what I had was bad enough.

My parent’s 44th wedding anniversary is tomorrow and my father’s 71st birthday is weeks away. He will, thank God, be here to celebrate both.

First the status report. He suffered a classic “right brain – left side” stroke. This means that physically his left side is at risk for deficit and that emotionally his personality is at risk for irritability and unfiltered-ness. Luckily he was already pretty irritable and unfiltered, so I feel good about his recovery to full “Mitzmacher”.

He has made a remarkable recovery these last few days. He is eating. He is sitting up. He has begun walking. He has use of his left leg, arm, hand, etc. He can speak and he sounds more and more like himself each day. He has all his memories intact. He knows who everybody is, knows what is going on in the world, and when awake fully lucid. His vision out of his left eye is slowly coming back and, if it does not come back all the way, and that is the worst that comes out of this, a blessing it shall surely be.

I flew back on the red-eye Wednesday evening and as of this writing, he continues to make good progress, with the inevitable setbacks that come with his age and with the significance of the trauma he has suffered. I am planning my next trip out to visit and hope that their next trip to us will be Thanksgiving and that we will by then truly have a lot to be thankful for.

I am writing this blog post, in part, because life required me to share this event with enough people that I wanted to take advantage of this vehicle to provide some sort of update and to thank all the people that have (and all the people who now will) reached out to me, my Mom, and our family with their well wishes, thoughts, prayers [my father’s Hebrew name for healing prayers is Mikhael ben Esther] and offers for help. It has been overwhelming and overwhelmingly appreciated. We will inevitably forget to include someone in this thanks and hopefully this will provide us with blanket coverage.

But I am also writing this blog post because it is impossible not to be impacted by this kind of experience. Because there is nothing more clarifying than experiencing family pain. There is nothing like watching your parents’ love to remind you to cherish the love you are lucky to have. There is nothing like watching your parents’ vulnerability to encourage you to treasure your children.

To say much more will push me into cliche. I have nothing to offer by way of wisdom that others more wise have not already said. I simply pray that as a result of this unplanned and unwelcome reminder of life’s fragility that I will be a better husband, a better father, a better friend, and a better educator.

And I am grateful to still have a chance to be a better son.

Square Holes

This series aired on CBS in 1982-1983…so you may or may not recall its glorious one-year run, documenting the real life adventures of two “square pegs” entering their high school years. I was thinking about the show (and its awesome theme song by The Waitresses) as I have recently finished one of my summer reading books from our Faculty Summer Book Club:

Book Club- Square Peg In the seventh grade, Todd Rose was suspended—not for the first time—for throwing six stink bombs at the blackboard, where his art teacher stood with his back to the class. At eighteen, he was a high school dropout, stocking shelves at a department store for $4.25 an hour. Today, Rose is a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Square Peg illuminates the struggles of millions of bright young children—and their frustrated parents and teachers—who are stuck in a one-size-fits-all school system that fails to approach the student as an individual. Rose shares his own incredible journey from troubled childhood to Harvard, seamlessly integrating cutting-edge research in neuroscience and psychology along with advances in the field of education, to ultimately provide a roadmap for parents and teachers of kids who are the casualties of America’s antiquated school system.

With a distinguished blend of humor, humility, and practical advice for nurturing children who are a poor fit in conventional schools, Square Peg is a game-changing manifesto that provides groundbreaking insight into how we can get the most out of all the students in our classrooms, and why today’s dropouts could be tomorrow’s innovators.

There is a lot to appreciate about this book. It is very easy to read. The human story is compelling. The research findings have impact. The implications for schooling are motivating. But the common thread I am finding as I interact on our faculty ning with other teachers who are reading the book, is that we are constantly thinking about who have been and who continue to be our “square pegs” and how good a job we have (or have not) done serving their needs. Do schools have a responsibility to be “square holes” for their “square pegs” and, if so, how can we truly differentiate in ways that meet all students’ needs? Is it by embracing 21st century learning – which the book clearly indicates is a likely possibility – and, if so, what does it look like on the ground?

One great feature of the book is that it is not just the story of a “square peg” who overcame the odds and went on to be a great success…it is that he has dedicated himself to the very thing that was his greatest obstacle – education (schooling).

I was not a “square peg” – at least not academically. My learning style is built for education. And I would guess that many, if not most teachers and educational administrators were good fits and, thus, good at school. We were round pegs who found round holes. We are now responsible for all shapes of pegs…

The other connecting point was bullying…that square pegs are frequent targets for bullying and that no one can learn – especially those for whom it is hardest to learn via conventional means – when preoccupied with one’s health and safety.

So…inclusive schooling, differentiation, educational technology, 21st century learning and communities of kindness…sounds like an excellent Jewish day school! Hopefully ours!

For (a whole lot) more about the neuroscience informing Dr. Rose’s work, please do check this out:

As we round the bend towards school beginning (!), I am pleased to announce that we are indeed fully staffed. I have already blogged about the structure and makeup of our lead administrative and faculty, but allow me to announce the final group:

Second Grade General Studies Assistant Teacher: Dee Ann Wulbern
Third Grade General Studies Assistant Teacher: Emma Boette
Fourth Grade General Studies Assistant Teacher: Joni Shmunes
Fifth Grade General Studies Assistant Teacher: Michelle Lewis
Jewish Studies Assistant Teacher: Shosh Orgad

Ms. Wulbern is an experienced public school teacher working her way back after having paused to raise a family. Ms. Boette has worked in our Preschool and recently graduated with her degree in education. Mrs. Shmunes has worked at the Center for years and years and was recently honored by the Center for her excellence in teaching. Ms. Lewis is a new teacher who is also new to our community. Morah Shosh was on my faculty in Las Vegas who, by happenstance, recently relocated to Jacksonville.

So…we are fully staffed and fully excited (at least I am!) to report back on August 12th for Faculty Pre-Planning (during which we may very well invite a successful former square peg to share his or her experiences and their impact with our teachers).

For now? Enjoying the present and looking forward to the future…

Why Experiential Education Matters

How is it possible that this guy…

…is old enough to be taking his soon-to-be 8 year-old daughter to her first Jewish summer camp experience on Monday?

I don’t know either.

But somehow life happened and Eliana and I are off on Monday to Atlanta, Georgia where I will hand her off to the good people at Camp Ramah Darom for her one-week “taste”.

As we have been dutifully putting her name in and on everything she owns, I have naturally grown nostalgic thinking about my own experiences. The impact of Jewish camping on me is indescribable and undeniable. It is not hyperbole to suggest that I am neither the Jewish person nor the Jewish professional am I today without having spent my formative years as a camper and staff person at a variety of Jewish summer camps and on numerous Israel experiences. There have been lots of studies documenting the tremendous power of informal Jewish education or experiential education.

Timing, as always, is everything.

As I am living through this family transition, here at the Jacksonville Jewish Center we are going through a directly related professional transition – namely welcoming Ezra Flom, our new Director of Experiential Education. As it says in the article introducing him (pg. 12),

The Center understands that meaningful, formal classroom educational experiences are essential, but recognizes that for many, it is the experiential educational moments that occur in camp and youth group settings that leave a lasting impact. With that in mind, the Center has hired Ezra Flom as its first Director of Experiential Education.

As the director, Ezra will spend his time working with the Center’s youth groups, Camp Ki Tov summer day camp, and scouting programs.

I have blogged about some of the pedagogical implications of experiential education for Jewish day school in the past. I think in many ways there are confluences between “21st century learning” and “experiential education” – the most important of which, to me, is an emphasis on authenticity. Students learn best when engaged in tasks they perceive to have real-world meaning. That can be building a real game or mitzvah trips that make the work a better place. It can take place within the walls of a school or out in the world. As an academy housed at a synagogue, we have unique opportunities to not only “learn Jewish” but “do Jewish”. We don’t just learn about Shabbat; we experience Shabbat. We don’t just learn about tikkun olam/social action; we go out and fix our community. We don’t just go to school; we go to camp and youth group.

Most importantly we encourage our student to be their authentic Jewish selves as they carry their experiences from context to context. To me that why experiential education matters. It brings with the promise of making real what, in some cases, can only be simulated or sampled within the walls of a classroom. Those are often the most important experiences of all…

And so as I am presently feeling the impending impact my daughter’s first taste of Jewish camping will have on her and on our family, and as I think back on the impact my experiential educational experiences have had on me, I look forward to working with Ezra to re-imagine the walls and boundaries within our academy so that we may provide our students and their families the full richness of what Jewish living has to offer.