Welcome to the Nitzanim Family Connection, where community is being built one link at a time... Find out more about Temple Israel of Great Neck's new model! Add Comment When A Duck is No Longer a Duck 05/08/2012
by David Bryfman, Director of the New Center for Collaborative Leadership at The Jewish Education Project "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck." We've all probably heard this saying many times before. And I guess it still rings true. But I guess that here comes a certain point in the life of every ornithologist, or anyone who's ever observed our fair feathered friends, when one begins to ponder - it doesn't quite look like a duck, nor does it really swim like what I thought a duck would swim, and quite frankly it doesn't even sound like a duck. So the question becomes when is a duck no longer a duck? I asked myself this question just last week when I was privileged enough to view a video that Cyd Weissman, a colleague of mine at The Jewish Education Project had sent me. The video depicted a Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, activity like few I had seen before. Students engaged all senses as they walked through their self-created "museum" of remembrance. They would stop to touch a phrase that resonated with them about loss or despair. They would look at large AV presentations. They would walk through a dangling series of photographs, posters, images. In some ways the content wasn't even what drew my attention. It was the way that the students interacted with the Shoah in a very real way, and most importantly it was the students themselves who had created this experience for one another - clearly with guidance, but just as clearly without only didactic instruction. It is true that I believe that the Jewish world is going through a radical change right now. I have referred to it often as a revolution before our eyes - one that we are perhaps too immersed in to fully notice - but a revolution nonetheless. Truth be told I don't really care if you think of this as an evolution or a revolution but what I have implored institutions to do is to wake up to these changes and demand of educators to open themselves up to the possibilities at this revolution holds rather than be fearful of its pitfalls. Once I labeled this "Innovation or die?" a title that didn't go down too well, but the sentiment is still there as I refer to it more endearingly, but not any less urgent than, "the innovation imperative." I suggest that technology has become to symbolize many of these changes but that they are only representative of the revolution. At Temple Israel Center it seems that the revolution has taken place - at least in this example of learning that we are fortunate enough to have documented in such a moving way. 1. Who has the power? In 21st century Jewish learning, students and educators must share agency of their learning experience. In the 21st centuries hierarchies and power structures are falling apart where every person is empowered to become an autonomous learner. 2. What are our core texts? In the 21st century with access to all information, all texts become a part of our canon and I is for us to make meaning and find relevance in that which has most significance in our lives. 3. In the 21st centuries learners are no longer passively sitting by waiting for learning to happen - they are intentionally moving from consumers of the Jewish experience to producers of their own experience s- or more accurately - prosumers of their Jewish learning experiences. 4. Our youth today are universalists, they are Jewish global citizens who know that it is important to be Jewish because that is who they are, but more importantly they believe that being Jewish can indeed make the world a better place in which to live. 5. Our youth today care, and when given the opportunity to do so they shine and excel at a rate far greater and with more impact than ever before. Our twenty-first century Jewish youth are not just our future they are our present as well. When you put it all together - a radical change in Jewish hierarchy, our relationship to text, prosumerism, universalism and the power of all to bring about change - we have a revolution in the making. Jewish life and living today is simply not the same as it once was, and more importantly it is not the same as the way it was intended to be when many of our institutions were conceived of and built. What happened at Temple Israel Center in this short video did not look, swim or quack like the perception that many may have about Hebrew School. It did look , feel and sound like a radically different approach to Jewish education that meets up to the challenge of the radically changing times in which we now live. Not Your "Regular" Religious School 05/08/2012
What is the impact of nurturing the whole person? This video, screened at Yachdav, tells the story... What We've Learned About Relational Judaism 05/07/2012
At Yachdav, every attendee had the opportunity to text a line to Ron Wolfson, who joined us over Skype, sharing a bit about what we've learned about relational Judaism over the past year. Here are the results! Anything you'd like to add? Other thoughts based on these responses? Share your comments here! ILP for Teachers, from Emanu-EL NYC 05/04/2012
By Mollie Andron, Coalition Educator Dear Innovators and Dreamers, I would like to share with you an Individual Learning Plan that I have been working on with the third and fourth grade faculty at Emanu- El NYC. They meet every three weeks to develop personal relationships, share successes and hardships, learn new pedagogy, plan professional development for the larger faculty, and co- create curriculum. This model of PD is a blessing that not many institutions have. After the first semester, we decided to try something new. We decided that the teachers should have more of a choice about their own learning. We asked each teacher to choose an area of focus that they were interested in developing. I then met with the teachers, one- on -one, provided them with extra resources, and supported them in whatever else they needed to work on their version of powerful learning. So far it has been a great working experiment. I would love to share with you the initial document that we created to begin the process. Please be in touch with me if you are interested in learning more about it. Blessings, Mollie 
The next round is ready for ya! Here are some of the texts you might find if you're seated at the Relational Judaism table: Without saying new things, congregations cannot think new thoughts. That seems counterintuitive, but philosophers of language have demonstrated that in order to think, people need a language to frame the thinking. We make progress not by arguing better but by speaking differently....Old words just recycle old thoughts. Without shaping old issues in new language, thinking about them in a new way is very difficult. And without a new way to think them through, we are doomed to the dismal experience of deja vu, over and over again. -from Sacred Strategies (p. 178) Aron, Isa, Steven M. Cohen, Lawrence A. Hoffman and Ari Y.Kelman As long as we see ourselves merely as grasshoppers up against giants, we will set ourselves up for failure. If we want to create anything new and to enter into the Promised Land, then we have no choice but to leap into the unknown, to believe in ourselves, and to trust in God's faith in us. This voice of optimism and hope is what separates Joshua and Caleb from the other scouts. This is what - in spite of a long history filled with good reasons to see ourselves as grasshoppers and to give up - has enabled the Jewish people to continue and to thrive. -Josee Wolff, Contemporary Reflection on Parashat Sh'lach L'cha in The Torah: A Women's Commentary In the wilderness, the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the hand of The Eternal in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death." -Exodus 15:2-3 If you've ever been a part of a learning or change initiative, you probably recognize the feeling of challenges. After a brilliant beginning, with high demand, you cross a threshold. Suddenly you think, "We're not seeing any movement anymore." Your work is less effective, your support in the organization wanes, and crosscurrents stymie your impact. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back....If you want to make any long-standing progress in that kind of situation, you need to understand where the apparent limits to your success are coming from. Limits generally don't become visible until they're provoked, but by the time you provoke them it may be too late to deal with them. Therefore, your highest leverage comes from anticipating them rather than reacting to them. -Goodman, Michael, "Using the 'Limits to Growth' dynamic to meet the challenges of profound change effectively" in The Dance of Change by Peter Senge 1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency. 2. Forming a Powerful Guiding Coalition. 3. Creating a Vision. 4. Communicating the Vision. 5. Empowering Others to Act on the Vision. 6. Planning for and Creating Short-Term Wins. 7. Consolidating Improvements and Producing Still More Change. 8. Institutionalizing New Approaches. -John Kotter's 8 Steps to Transform Your Organization Continuing in our series to get excited for Yachdav, here are some of the texts you may find waiting for you at the Intergenerational table: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” -Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) “Families are the main context of learning for most people. Learning within the family is usually more lasting and influential than any other. Family life provides a foundation and context for all learning.” -Riches Beyond Price: Making the Most of Family Learning, NIACE, 1995 Intergenerational relationships are created through intergenerational learning, as people of all ages learn from each other and grow in faith together. -Intergenerational Faith Formation, Mariette Martineau, Joan Weber and Leif Kehrwald Who is wise? Those who learn from everyone. -Pirkei Avot 4:1 By delving into the diversity of opinion that characterizes intergenerational dialogue, we challenge the deepest recesses of our intellect and activate our individuality, using the words and ideas of those who came before us to articulate opinions that are uniquely our own—which is precisely what the new generation demands. -The Children of Prophets: Intergenerational Transmission and the Ethics of Tradition; The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity Prize in Ethics 2011 Intergenerational Communication: Ultimately, Judaism survives not through schools or synagogues, but through families — parent to child, child to parent — the established, indispensable formula for growth developed in the Haggadah. -http://ohr.edu/holidays/pesach/pesach_themes/4735 Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. - James A. Baldwin Children learn about their culture on their own initiative without explanations from the elders. They in essence “watch and learn” from others in the family. -http://amsamoa.net/culture In order for children to experience successful Jewish learning and to acquire the skills, values and behavior that we identify as critical to the goals of Jewish education, the learning needs to take place within the context of a community of learners. -What we now know about Jewish education. P. 147 Current research about religious and cultural transmission places the family at the center. The family is the place where we learnt about who are and how to interact with the world. -What we now know about Jewish education. P. 145 It's that time again - Yachdav is almost here! As you know, this will be a wonderful opportunity to (re-)connect with colleagues in the Coalition and learn with one another. Over lunch, you'll be able to sit with others curious about the same areas. Each table will include a few texts to ground your discussion in Jewish thought, values, and history. Here are a few you may see at the Hebrew table: All Jews speaking the same language felt that they were members of a living people bound to their brothers wherever they might be.... -Simon Glustrom- The Language of Judaism The loss of Hebrew and the inability to read primary Jewish sources will leave us with only a watered down cultural heritage, not a national identity. -Occidental Israeli, 2009 It will therefore not be beyond the power of this people again, as once before in the days of King Cyrus, to effect the miracle of awakening to life even after its death and to revive the language that died with it! -Eliezer ben Yehudah I’ll tell you how much I love Hebrew: Read me anything Genesis, or an ad in an Israeli paper, and watch my face. I will make half sounds of ecstasy, and my smile will be so enormously sweet you would think some angels were singing Psalms or God alone was reciting to me. -Danny Siegel For the most part, the Hebrew programs in our supplementary schools teach recitation (through participation in t’fillah/prayer services) and decoding. We set children up for disappointment when we tell them that they will learn to read Hebrew in their four years of “Hebrew School.” -Lifsa Schachter Powerful learning occurs for students when there is congruence between the core values of the congregation and the Hebrew focus chosen for the school. -See Rabbi Nicole Greninger’s article in The Journal of Jewish Education Many schools are unclear about what to teach and toward what end… Within schools, teachers lobby for a greater emphasis on modern Hebrew because it may be more accessible to students or easier to teach. But learning a foreign language is difficult, and without utmost clarity about goals and whether specific goals are attainable, schools surely will not succeed. -Schools That Work, Avi Chai Foundation If a congregation commits to “Prayer Hebrew” …then children need to be nurtured to be prayerful. Hebrew for a spiritual journey, connecting life’s essential questions to the words and chants of our people, is very different from learning a list of Hebrew prayers. Hebrew can be a language to call out, to hear anew and to connect. A child only learns that language when given practice and permission to have a private and communal prayer life. -Cyd Weissman Replace conjugating verbs and checking off Hebrew prayers “learned” with having a child explore Hebrew prayer within a community that uses the siddur as a roadmap to a life with meaning and purpose. Then Hebrew is not a subject to be taught. It is a Hebrew that is lived. -Cyd Weissman’s blog…Hebrew is not a subject to be taught Each school has the ability to articulate its own Hebrew curriculum goals, to choose ways to realize them that respond to the students and circumstances, and to assess whether the program is achieving the goals that have been set. However, this type of independence and differentiation can only be realized if the school invests in the professional development of its teachers. -Ringvald, Vardit. "Raising the Bar in Hebrew Teaching and Learning," Learning from the Cutting Edge in Education, in Contact: The Journal of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life. Winter, 2009. pp. 8-9. ...the Internet, with its unparalleled ability to connect people throughout the world, is changing the way that many people learn languages. There is no still way to avoid the hard slog through vocabulary lists and grammar rules, but the books, tapes and even CDs of yesteryear are being replaced by e-mail, video chats and social networks. -Wayner, Peter. "Learning a Language From an Expert on the Web," New York Times, July 28, 2010 … There is no point in teaching Hebrew grammar to our young students…. Moreover, there is no point in expecting most of our students to read Hebrew prayers or Torah portions with comprehension. The linguistic complexities of the texts and the lack of background knowledge of this genre make it virtually impossible for most children to comprehend such texts in Hebrew. -Rivka Dori, “What We Know About…Hebrew Language Education,” in What We Know About Jewish Education, pp. 264-265 Hebrew is a portal, a sign post and a roadmap to a life well lived and guided by Judaism. As educational leaders we should be asking: What life journey do we commit to nurturing in our learners? How can Hebrew support that life journey now and in the future? What kind of Jewish living does our community embody? How does Hebrew enable our children to be nurtured in this community? -Cyd Weissman, “Hebrew is Not a Subject to Be Taught” Conference on the Jewish Family 03/01/2012
by Mollie Andron, Coalition Educator My father, Saul Andron, is organizing a day long conference at the Yeshiva University School of Social Work on the changing Jewish family. I think that this topic is pretty pertinant to our work as congregational educators, and I thought you all may be interested. Please send this along to anyone else who you may think would benefit from this. 
Measuring Connection 02/17/2012
by Sheryl Glickman, Hollis Hills Jewish Center
The goals of our new initiative called Kesher Connection are to help participants develop a sense of community and build relationships with each other and across generations. We want them to be involved in life long learning with this population and be on a journey of applying Torah to daily life. We cultivated a community of ten coach families who will be paired with other school families. After four training sessions with coaches we were ready to launch our 1st joint program. In addition to beginning the nurturing process of creating relationships between families we chose Shabbat practice for our programs. We wanted to create a baseline survey that would give us information on several levels. This survey would be taken by coach and school families. We wanted to know how connected people felt to others at HHJC. We wanted to know where they might be interacting. We also wanted to know their ideas and interest in Jewish ideas and practice. Taking this survey at the onset of the program would allow us to have a comparison of changes after our 4 sessions with families and also their spending time with coach families on Shabbat. It might also be helpful to have participants take the survey midway through the program as a means of tracking progress as well as seeing changes. Suri Jacknis, our Jewish Education Project Consultant, and I first fine tuned our goals for the initiative. We then began creating questions that would speak to those outcomes. We tried to be very careful with our wording and the way questions were formulated. We did not want to offend anyone or appear to be prying into their private lives. We tried to balance our questions asking first about how people felt toward others in the synagogue community and then about their views on living Jewish lives. We also wanted an open ended final question where people could write their own thoughts, suggestions and ideas. The survey was distributed in a packet of information each family received. It was pointed out to them and asked to be turned in before they left. Although the survey did not ask for names they were precoded on the back so that we could track responses. We also included 2 surveys in each packet and asked both parents to do a separate one. The majority of participants did not do this. With few exceptions we received only one survey per family. Approximately 80% of those who attended returned the survey. As we move through this process we hope that the results of this first baseline survey and subsequent survey will help us tailor future programs and measure whether we are achieving our outcomes. | About the Blog<<Share your story by contributing a post!>> CategoriesAll  Find Coalition Colleagues on Twitter!
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