Section archive - Teacher Education

The Pardes Educators Program (PEP), a vibrant and innovative two-year teacher training program that combines intensive text study at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies with an interactive and pluralistic Master of Jewish Education from Hebrew College, is currently accepting applications for Fall 2011. PEP prepares skilled and devoted Judaic studies teachers who are ready to empower North American Jewish day school students towards excellence, growth, and opportunity.

The MOFET Institute's Online Academy has opened registration for the Fall, 2011 semester of online courses whose main objective is to prepare teachers, educators and leaders in Jewish communities in the Diaspora for their mission. The courses, in areas that are suitable for educators and leaders in the Jewish world as well as students in universities and colleges in the fields of the didactics and pedagogy of teaching Jewish subjects in the Diaspora, are taught via the internet, a-synchronously with synchronous components. The course developers and lecturers are all experts in their fields and senior staff members of Israel's top institutes of higher education.

The Yeshiva University Certificate Program in Experiential Jewish Education is seeking passionate, creative and motivated graduates who want to impact the Jewish community by establishing or furthering their career in the field of Experiential Jewish Education. The program runs for one year during academic breaks, beginning in June 2011. Four cutting edge seminars – coupled with mentorship, networking, and career placement opportunities – will prepare the cohort to transform the landscape of experiential Jewish education and Jewish identity in frameworks ranging from camps to campuses and classrooms to communities.

Modern educational scholarship has not substantially investigated the learning practice of havruta, paired study and focused conversation around classical Jewish texts. In this article, the author analyzes videotapes and transcripts of real-life havruta interactions and proposes a theory of havruta learning as composed of three pairs of core practices: listening and articulating; wondering and focusing; and supporting and challenging. Through a close analysis of one particular havruta session, the author illustrates and probes the havruta practices and the ways in which they can give rise to generative, textually grounded interpretive discussions of classical Jewish texts. This theory may also be a helpful lens for both studying and elucidating text-based discussions of other kinds of texts in small and large group settings.