If Not Now, When - Blurring the Lines for the Future of Jewish Education

The dust is settling after the January JEA and NATE conferences.  Synagogue educators of all stripes and flavors are returning to our old haunts: Congregations and real life. A taste of what is possible still remains in our mouths, though. We need to ask: How do we keep the spirit that we felt in Mt. Laurel and Seattle, alive?  How do we move forward?  What’s next?

Now is the time for us to translate what we started to learn last month into our everyday routines.  What this means, IMHO, is that we need to work harder to create our own Professional Learning Network (PLN). We have learned that we don’t have to be in the same room/city/state/continent to learn from each other.  We have learned the real strength of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now we need to take the next step and get involved in these networks, learning from each other and building something brand new.

The laboratory that was NATE or JEA was great:  A controlled environment where the best of the brave new world could be displayed in all its cyber glory, pointing a way to what could be. But we all know that when we’re on our own in our offices back home, life has the annoying habit of happening: Distracting us with emergent issues like the kid and her mom who goes to soccer practice instead of the B’nai Mitzvah family program; the teacher who can’t get it together enough to turn in a legible lesson plan, let alone any; the board member who doesn’t understand why religious school teachers should be paid a reasonable wage. We all face these issues daily. We must not let them get in the way of our moving forward to build a vibrant edifice that IS the Jewish future. We can’t let the mundane get in the way of the sacred: L’mavdil ben kodesh l’hol.

Let it be proclaimed through all the lands and Second Life: The tools we need to learn how to construct tomorrow’s educational systems are available in the cloud, from teachers and thinkers at #jed21, from networks, sites and blogs like the Jewish Education Change Network, YU2.0, Welcome to the Next Level, The jewish-education Daily and many many more. They are a mere mouse click away. 

Yes, these resources are there to teach us, but what we need to do is to organize, to work together, regardless of affiliation or movement. This is my Unified Field Theory for Jewish Education: One “place” where we can all “meet” and discuss and build. Rather than the disparate links that can become overwhelming to us and especially to those who didn’t attend either conference, we should create a clearinghouse that will enable us to learn from each other.  We don’t have time in our ridiculously busy days to follow every tweet or blog. I know how traumatic missing 12 hours of tweets can be. We congregational/supplemental/complimentary school educators need to (If I may mangle my friend and colleague Ira Wise’s blog title) get to the Next Level and create one forum that will be OUR Professional Learning Network, irrespective of denomination or movement. 

I’m ready to work on this experiment.  Anyone want to join me?

And if not now, when?

A Testimony to Jewish Educators

Robyn Faintich (@Jewishgps and JewishGPS) posted this piece entitled "Todah Rabah to our Educators!"on Davar Acher-On the Other Hand  blog on Sunday. In it she celebrates the profession of Jewish educators and their role in building the Jewish future. As a Director of Education in a congregational school, I would like to say Todah Rabah to Robyn for her words. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Todah Rabah to our Educators!

In the world of Jewish education, the people who run our synagogue religious schools are often the most under-appreciated and under-recognized. We often defer to the role our rabbis and cantors play when reflecting on the Jewish education of our children and certainly the role a child’s Hebrew tutor plays. But behind the scenes running the religious school is a director of education (sometimes known as the principal) who cares about the Jewish journey of the students and their families.

For the last two weeks, I have traveled across the country to participate and present at professional learning conferences designed for these educators. The Conservative movement’s Jewish Educators’ Assembly (JEA) and the Reform movement’s National Association of Temple Educators (NATE) sponsored the two events held in Philadelphia/New Jersey and Seattle respectively.

Collectively, over 450 educators gathered to learn about the challenges and opportunities that technology and social media offer us in education. (Yes, both conferences engaged in the same theme.) While together in their respective conferences, educators took the opportunity to network, collaborate, and engage in meta-level conversations about Jewish education in the 21^st century. If you want a glimpse at all they learned and toiled with, you can check out the twitter feeds for #jea59 and #nateseattle. 

I had the opportunity to present at both conferences, which gave me the chance to learn with the participants in a unique way. These educators work hard. They work hard at their own learning. I only wish their students and the parents could see them hard at work. I wish they saw the role modeling in life-long learning these school leaders engage in. In addition to the core education components, each of the conferences included aspects of Torah L’shma (text study for the sake of study), offered t’filah, and community-building activities. A perfect dugmah (example) of what our synagogues are trying to offer the student learners. From sun-up at 8 a.m. until way past sun-down (sometimes after 11 p.m.) these educators gave 1000% of themselves for the sake of their own learning, for the sake of being better so that they can serve our people better.

These educators don’t make a fortune; they don’t do the work because of the first-class perks they get, or the year-end bonuses. They do this work because it is a true passion for each and every one of them. So the next time you wonder through the halls of your synagogue, take time to peak your head into the office of the education director, and just thank him/her for dedicating themselves to this sacred work.

One Way or Another

I just read a depressing column in last week’s Forward ( http://forward.com/articles/120123/). It was written by Rabbi Irving Greenberg and it was entitled “There is No Alternative to Day Schools”. In the piece Rabbi Greenberg spelled out his case for massive funding for Day School education, declaring that that there is no other alternative in the fight against assimilation. He calls for the organized Jewish community to “muster its will to live and step up to pay the price – whatever it costs – for the highest level of Jewish education for its young.” Great sentiments. I agree with Rabbi Greenberg. Unfortunately, the solution he is proposing marginalizes most American Jews. That’s why it’s sad.

The majority of those getting any Jewish education in the U.S. do NOT attend Day Schools. Most of them have chosen the path of Congregational education. There are a lot of reasons, cost being just one. The point is that this is where most of the kids are and, I believe, where they will be in the future. So to declare that the Jewish Community needs to invest its education resources primarily in Day Schools ignores the reality of American Jewish life.

Congregational schools (Hebrew Schools, Supplementary Schools, whatever you want to call them) have gotten a bad rap over the years - in some cases deservedly so. Many of us “of a certain age” recall with shudders our Hebrew School experiences. Ironically, some of us have chosen, davka, to work in Jewish education to make it better. That’s the point. There are many Jewish educators in North America who are working very hard to recreate the Congregational School, reformatting it if you will. We’re experimenting with technology, experiential education, off-site learning, service-learning, camp-like experiences. You will find us at conferences, or in the cloud on Twitter and Google Wave. Those of us who work in Jewish education and are affiliated with Synagogue schools understand that the reality of the Jewish community is expressed in its diversity. There is no ONE way. We need to reach the kids however we can. This means that Day Schools, by definition, are definitely NOT the only alternative.

The organized Jewish community (i.e. federations) doesn’t seem to get this message. They are proud of the amount of money they give their community Day Schools, but when asked about how much they give to synagogue schools, in many cases the sound of silence reigns supreme. Amending Rabbi Greenbergs dramatic call, I believe that community organizations must “muster their will” to promote ALL Jewish education, embracing the diversity that is the strength of Judaism. It is time for synagogues and other non-Day School entities to have a seat at the community table when the discussion turns to funding the education of the next generation.

I’m not sure if Rabbi Greenberg will ever see these words. If you do, Rabbi, please understand that I wrote them with only respect for you and your message. I hope that you can understand that the future of Judaism that is embodied in our young people is rooted in more than one type of learning. During the Pesach seder we embrace the four sons, reveling in how they come to us with different questions (even if we don’t like the way they are asked), looking for answers that speak to them. We must remember that they are our children. We cannot turn them away.

Jewish Bifocals

My kid, the youngest, Keren, is going to college tomorrow. I’ve spent the day helping her pack, buying last minute electronics (how can she NOT have a good speaker system hooked up to her MacBook?) and printer cartridges. I’m doing what I can to get her ready for the next chapter.

And I wonder – does she have the tools she will need to make choices about the world? Through which lenses will she observe and judge what is happening? How will she meet the future?

It got me thinking about how other kids are prepared to deal with the vicissitudes of society. What do we teach them, especially in religious/Hebrew school? What kids learn in many Jewish congregational schools today seems to be linked to religion. God. Holidays. Thou shall and Thou shall not. I’m not sure that’s what Judaism is all about. I think it’s more about how we live our lives. What we do. These are the lenses through which we see the world. Our job as Jewish parents and educators is to teach our kids how to see what goes on in the world from a Jewish perspective. Jewish bifocals if you will.

We need to find ways of teaching that acting Jewish doesn’t end with kashrut, or t’fillin, going to services or wearing kippot. These are the means. The ritual we teach, the way we celebrate and mourn; all serve as spiritual signposts pointing the way towards having a positive impact on the world. I call that Jewish Attitudinal Learning: Teaching Jewish values that touch our students’ lives today. Copping a Jewish attitude to help us decide how live. We need to supply our kids with the skills to confront the issues of the future.

As I drive the SUV we’re renting with all the boxes and refrigerator we’re putting in her dorm room, I’ll think about the choices she’ll be making. What will she do with the Jewish knowledge she’s garnered over the years? I’m hoping she’ll make the right choices – whatever those are. If you are into Harry Potter, you’ll recognize the image of portraits of wizards past, looking benignly upon the students of Hogwarts. I’m hoping that the images looking upon Keren and all our students are Jewish wizards who’ve laid the foundation for a future based on Jewish vision.

We Jewish educators – teachers and parents – are our children’s ophthalmologists. Hopefully we diagnosed correctly and wrote the right prescription.

Of Parking Meters and Particle Colliders

At the beach I was flummoxed by technology. Once upon a time we’d go the shore, find a parking spot and deposit whatever loose change we had into the parking meter. There has been a revolution, though. The old fashioned parking meter was replaced by a computerized one, which now handles the entire lot. We keyed in our parking space number, deposited the requisite amount of quarters, and the meter remembered how much time we had. Cool! For some reason however, the-powers-that-be determined to revert to a hybrid system: No more parking numbers. We deposit our quarters and then (are you ready for this high tech solution?) we receive a paper receipt that we must place face-up on the driver’s side dash. It seems that the technological innovators of South Florida didn’t totally get what they were doing. It’s the old 1 step – 2 step shuffle. Backwards.

Recently I’ve read about the problems facing CERN’s Large Hadron Particle Collider - a piece of super advanced science equipment that was felled after only 9 days of operation by essentially an electrical short. So far it’s taken a year to figure out how to fix it. Sometimes I think modern technology is enthusiastically embraced without fully understanding the ramifications or consequences.

I’m not suggesting anything as luddite as to slow down. We need to progress. My question is if we’re moving too fast for everyone else? This morning’s NY Times had an article about the move into digital textbooks. You can find it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/education/09textbook.html?scp=4&sq=tamar%20lewin&st=cse. It’s not that it’s a bad idea. I embrace it, but the question (raised in the article) is what to do with kids who don’t have computers. Will the technology we need to utilize to move forward have an unintended side affect of creating a class of people who don’t have equal access - the educational haves and have-nots? We need to think this process through to its logical conclusion.

So how do we not repeat the mistake of the Delray Beach Ministry of Parking or CERN? How do we take control of the use of technology in our classrooms without paying a price? The particle collider costs something like $10 billion. The cost of our misusing technology or (worse) misunderstanding the ramifications of using these tools in the Jewish classroom is much higher. Yes, we’ll make mistakes and pay good money for them. This will not make our congregational funders pleased – they already have limited tolerance for trial and error anyway. But it’s the kids that concern me the most. I don’t think we want to lose an entire generation because we didn’t totally understand what we were doing.

As we travel into the yet uncharted void of the digital universe, it seems to me that we need to make sure of three things: That we are comfortable with the technology, that the teachers who will be the front line practitioners, understand how these tools work, and that the students don’t suffer from OUR growing pains. The kids will have no patience for our fumbling. On our journey, we need to tether our teachers and students with us. But the line needs to be short. We need to be able to reel them in quickly. We can’t lose them. The worst sin of an educator is irrelevance. It’s a price we can’t pay.

The Jewish future in 140 characters

Twitter has been called overrated, overblown, narcissistic and a waste of time. I never bought into that. I knew that there was potential there. I felt that meaning and relevance could be found despite the plethora of celebrity tweets. Last week my patience was rewarded.

It began with a question about the recently released paper describing the L.A Bureau of Jewish Education's Jewish education concierge program. You can find it here: http://www.jesna.org/sosland/resources. The discussion that ensued concentrated at first on the relative merits and legitimacy of the program described in the piece. It quickly expanded into a far reaching conversation among a group of folks who are tenuously connected by at least 6 degrees. Some of us have never met one another – our first encounter being in the #JEd21 thread (in the twitterverse you can define discussion topics – this is what ours was named). Community, congregation and education and the role of technology was our focus.

What I loved about it was that we were taking on these weighty matters using a new technology and overcoming a major obstacle. What we wrote needed to be meaningful and very succinct, resulting in a lot of creative spelling. Also, in a sense I felt it mirrored a Talmudic debate, to the extent that it was asynchronous. We were conversing over time and space. The nature of the exchange reflected the topic. How does technology impact Jewish engagement? How does it change the way we see community, congregations, synagogues and education?

The very relevancy of synagogues in this brave new future we are creating was put into question. What is the definition of a synagogue: The building or the congregation? This morphed into a discussion about the difference between congregations and communities. Can a true community exist in a virtual universe? Does a congregational experience need to be exclusively “f2f” (face 2 face in twitterspeak). Should synagogues continue to be responsible for Jewish education, or are there new and better venues out there - in the concrete world or in the internet cloud? Is this an either/or proposition? Is it “brick vs. click” or “brick with click” as it was pithily tweeted? What are the responsibilities of the learner and the learning provider in this newly defined world?

I am not giving this 3 day tête-à-tête full justice. There was much more – go to twitter.com and search for #Jed21 and read up. My point is that we have already embarked on a journey into the cloud. I don’t know where it will take us, but I do think we will end up in a stronger and more vibrant place. When Yochanan ben Zakkai went to Yavneh, he and his followers were doing something outrageously revolutionary, ensuring a Jewish future. I wonder if the 21st century Ben Zakkai is even a human. I think that we may be starting a new chapter in what it means to Jewishly engaged and it’s being defined by an interface between people and machines.

Maybe even 140 characters at a time.

The point of teaching Hebrew is...?

It’s been awhile since I’ve last written. I’ve been focusing on the tachlis of creating a meaningful learning experience for my students – the kids who will be attending the religious school I’m running.

I’ve been obsessing on Hebrew lately. What’s the purpose of teaching decoding to kids? Remember, reading implies comprehension. My guess is that most kids, despite our best efforts, really don’t understand (or don’t care about) the meaning of the Hebrew they’re reciting. They just mouth the sounds: ergo decoding. At the risk of sounding really cynical, I’m going to guess that a large chunk of the parents who send their kids to a congregational school do it for one main reason – to prevent performance anxiety. They want their kids to shine at their 13-year-old-coming-out-party. Is this the really the point of what we Jewish educators are doing?

The other day, my friend Adrian Durlestor sent out the following tweet: “how far over prevailing synagogue suppl sch rates can independent jewish suppl school reasonably charge?” It got me thinking about the purpose of congregational schools. It’s certainly NOT supplementary. The idea that our schools “supplement” what our kids learn at home became irrelevant probably in the 50’s or 60’s. Nowadays Jewish education is contracted out to Jewish educators. And the failure of the “supplementary school system” is that successfully performing at one’s bar/bat mitzvah is the definition of a good religious school education for many of the parents.

Where did we go wrong? I’m not sure the answer really matters. These parents who grew up in the congregational school system of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s are just passing on to their children what their experiences taught them. It’s more where we go from here - which is what I’m struggling with.

Do we teach Hebrew so that the kids can decode their Torah portions without error, or because the Hebrew language is that which defines the Jewish people? Remember – back in the 3rd century BCE (!) the Torah was translated into Greek by 70 rabbis for the Greek speaking Jews of the Diaspora. I wonder if back then they were having the same conversation we’re having now about Hebrew education. What does this tell us about the goals of teaching Hebrew? Where do we put our energy? What should be the focus of whatever Hebrew instruction we implement? Given the realities of the amount of time we have the kids, what should we be aiming to accomplish?

The Tony Awards made me think...

When I started out in Jewbiz back in ’93, I was hired to run a Reform-Conservative supplementary school, serving the needs of two neighboring synagogues separated only by three city blocks and one religious movement. The experiment was born out of financial need, and died for the some reason. The powers-that-be decided after 6 years that the combined school was no longer financially beneficial (the idea of creating community be damned) so the time had come to create separate schools.

What this teaches us is that in the current reality many think it is easier to make our own Shabbat. And you know what? Sometimes that works. Sometimes collaborating with another synagogue doesn’t work. Is that intrinsically bad? Torah Aura recently tweeted a link to a piece on cooperative schooling – which I guess is another way of saying community school. The referenced article waxed prosaic on sharing resources. Great, if it...works. But one size doesn’t fit all. Which means that making my own Shabbat doesn’t negate your Shabbat, and in fact may help you light the candles.

That being said, on the Tony awards one of the winners talked about the concept of Fine Arts – how that means that the craft of acting is constantly being tweaked and modified. That’s sort of like what we, as Jewish educators and passers-on-of-traditions, are doing, or should be doing. Looking at what we are transmitting and making sure it makes sense to those receiving our message.

Which brings me back to the question: how do we create meaningful opportunities for Jewish engagement in each of our communities? And what does the concept of engagement mean? What is Jewish Fine Arts?