Next Monday is our semi-annual Faculty Development Day at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County. Like many schools, these days begin appropriately so with tefillah (a prayer service). For the past couple of years, we have increasingly examined the value of having the entire community together to begin our day. Whether it is for ideological reasons of belonging to a different faith or those who pray in a different ideological setting (i.e. where men and women sit separately) from ours, some of our faculty has felt disconnected to the community by the school’s compulsion on faculty days to attend a mandatory Conservative Jewish prayer service. Continue reading »

I would like to share with you parts of an article I wrote in September for our weekly school communication, The Shabbat Shofar. The article, entitled Being Bullies; Being Bullied was intended to offer parents and students concrete responses for dealing with bullying issues while cautioning against use of the bullying label too often.

Among the many values we work to instill in our children are those of kindness, respect, honesty, and a sense of responsibility. As Jewish educators and as parents, we know the value of modeling character traits that we want to build in our children. We talk about ways to exhibit these values, and we offer guidance and advice when our children are faced with difficult situations. Continue reading »

I’ve been writing a series of columns on key directions our school is embarking upon to further integrate technology into the educational program, and into the operations of the school. In this column, my second in the series, I had intended to focus on what educational research tells us about the impact of technology on student learning. More specifically, I intended to share the results of research on what the advent of computers in schools and classrooms has on student outcomes, on various measures, including but not limited to, standardized test scores and other established measures of improved student performance. Continue reading »

Here are some claims I have heard about the arts and the evidence of neuroscience: Music training improves children’s ability to read. The performing arts improve creativity. Visual arts training correlates with children’s enhanced ability to do math calculations. Dance training improves “executive function” (organizing, planning, etc.).

Some of these studies might turn out to be right and others wrong. What bothers me is the assumption behind the superficial news reports surrounding them. They purport that the arts are important only if they make people “smarter” in the way we usually think of intelligence. Continue reading »

This is the new logo and name of the association of Conservative day schools to which Sinai Akiba belongs. In fact, Akiba was the first Schechter school—and very likely the first non-Orthodox day school—on the west coast.

 

Having served as president of the Schechter Network from 2008-2010, I have participated with colleagues and lay leaders from around the country in re-thinking the role of the association in an age when, blessedly, the notion of Jewish day school is no longer experimental and when a healthy competition for excellence exists among Jewish day schools of varied philosophies. Continue reading »

Medieval Rabbi Yonah tells the story of an elderly sage who was walking along a path with his student when they passed a dog’s rotting corpse. The repulsed student yelled, “this corpse is disgusting!” His Rabbi answered, “but what lovely white teeth it has!”

I could use this Rabbi’s perspective every time a teacher at my kids’ Solomon Schechter school pulls me aside to say, “I wanted to tell you something about your child.” I instinctively brace myself for the bad news (sucking in my stomach, as if that would help), and I must admit, nine times out of ten, the news is delightful. Continue reading »

At last month’s day school conference in Los Angeles, collaboration was in the air. In this new era of economic austerity, strategic planning, and collaborative use of resources, the 600+ attendees were focused on how to structure things such that we really can accomplish more together than we can apart. This has never been more true, in theory or in practice – particularly at the Tri-State Schechter Consortium, comprised of 11 Schechter schools in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

In fact, our world will never be the same again. Continue reading »

Day schools and early childhood schools – it’s all about relationships.  A 2008 survey of non-Orthodox synagogue and JCC early childhood directors* revealed that while many EC directors are day school supporters, the day school community still has some work to do to insure healthy, supportive relationships with early childhood schools. The relationship between early childhood directors and the leadership of Jewish day schools is critical if families are to stay on the path of Jewish education. While there is no analysis of statistical significance, the survey does demonstrate that while in many locations this relationship is strong, there is still much room for improvement. Continue reading »

Creating a culture of teaching and learning in our schools seems like an obvious goal. After all, we are schools and teaching and learning is at the core of what we do. Cooki Levy and I were privileged to discuss these issues with leaders of Jewish schools across North America at our workshop at the conference in L. A. We were able to hear real life examples of ways leaders stay current with pedagogy, inspire teachers, reinforce teachers’ hard work, and partner with them to make a difference in the learning of their students.

There were so many questions that came up for us at the workshop. Many of those questions were about what it means to be an authentic leader, how to make a difference in culture when you are a new Head of School, and how this is different in a Jewish school with so many competing values. Continue reading »

For the past decade, Pressman Academy students, parents, and faculty have benefitted from a unique practice known as Council. Council grew out of the Native American experience as a structured way for people to tell their own stories and to learn how to listen actively to others. Council is practiced in many cultures using different names. In our school we have used Council as the central social emotional educational tool for teaching a program we call Kesher that is essentially a Jewish human development course.

At the Conference, it was our intention to leave the participants with an interactive and informational ‘taste’ of Council. We began with a conversation about the ‘sage on the stage’ model of teaching in which the teacher is the ‘expert’ deliverer of knowledge with the student as a passive recipient. Council shifts this paradigm: the circle formation levels the hierarchy and responsibility is shared for the quality of the experience. Mapping Dialogue, (Bojer, Roehl, Knuth, Magner, 2008). This dialogic practice enables all participants, leaders included, the opportunity to see one another as storytellers of their lives. Continue reading »