Jewish Portal of
Teacher Education
The online resource of pedagogical and academic content on teaching and Jewish education
Section archive - Formal Education
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341 items
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While rabbinic texts have long played a central role in the development of contemporary Judaisms and Jewish day school curricula, we don’t know very much about students’ learning. While we have some sense of what teachers and other experts think constitutes an understanding of rabbinics (Levisohn 2010, and Kanarek and Lehman 2016), there is little data about what students actually know about or are able to do with particular texts, or what sense they make of rabbinics as a whole. In the spring of 2017, as part of the Mandel Center’s Students’ Understanding of Rabbinics project, we interviewed twenty students recruited from two Jewish community day high schools about their study of rabbinics.
Published: 2017
Updated: Nov. 09, 2017
22
This past week I was invited along with leaders of universities, college campus programs, Israel trips, camps and other educational programs to participate in a discussion on elevating the status of Hebrew language in the North American Jewish community. Over the years, it has been pointed out that North American Jews, more so Americans, do not have the same level of Hebrew proficiency as do Jews in other countries. Some opine that this is because English is the lingua franca across the globe. Others believe that Hebrew language proficiency is not essential for participating in Jewish life in North America.
Published: 2017
Updated: Oct. 25, 2017
23
Advocates of integration and cross cultural contact believe schools have a seminal role to play in perpetuating or breaking the cycle of violence and division in conflicted societies. Historically, segregated schools are the norm in such societies. An alternative educational model is provided through integrated schools—schools where children from different national, ethnic, or religious groups are deliberately educated together. Integrated schools are believed to be essential in contributing to the healing of the wounds that afflict conflicted societies, easing the path toward peace, reconciliation, and integration.
Published: 2017
Updated: Oct. 25, 2017
24
Tamar Pinto runs what may be the only fully Hebrew preschool in the country, explicitly meant for children of Israelis in America. Jewish preschools across the US integrate varying levels of Hebrew into the day, if only to teach holidays and prayers. But at Gan Gurim, though many of the children were born in the United States and may well live here for most of their lives, you’ll have trouble finding English – or American child-rearing norms – anywhere.
Published: 2017
Updated: Sep. 27, 2017
25
The Sinai Schools, a network of Jewish special education institutions that began in 1982 with three students at one site in New Jersey and has grown to six locations with 150 students in the state, will establish its first branch in New York City next year. Sinai has announced that it will open a “school within a school” at the SAR Academy in the Riverdale section of the Bronx beginning in September 2018. Aura Lurie, who has served as a teacher for more than a decade in the SAR Academy “inclusion” special education program, will be director of the Sinai pilot program at SAR.
Published: 2017
Updated: Sep. 06, 2017
26
During their school years, students encounter difficulties of various types from both content-related and emotional aspects. Often, when asked directly about their learning difficulties, students struggle to express these difficulties explicitly and clearly; as a result, teachers find it a challenge to provide them with a suitable and satisfactory response. In order to help students express their scholastic difficulties, particularly cognitive and emotional ones, and foster their ability to chart out courses of action for coping with these difficulties, we have developed a tool we call “Corresponding with the Professor”.
Published: 2017
Updated: Sep. 06, 2017
27
Between 1990 and 2001, the Israeli Ministry of Education freely distributed to students countless copies of the books written by Holocaust author Ka-Tzetnik. This educational project has never been researched and, despite its magnitude and uniqueness, it has abruptly disappeared from public awareness as if it had never been carried out. The motivations that stand behind this initiative and the lessons it teaches about Holocaust pedagogy are the focus of this article.
Published: 2017
Updated: Sep. 06, 2017
28
Though Holocaust education is of critical importance in the world of Jewish Day Schools, little research has been conducted about it. The purpose of this paper is to answer some critical questions about how they teach the Holocaust in Jewish Day Schools–the who, what, when, where, how, and why questions. Additionally, comparisons are made between how the Holocaust is taught in America’s public schools versus Jewish Day Schools.
Published: 2017
Updated: Jul. 27, 2017
29
The classroom display in elementary schools, usually, manifests the teacher's effort and vision. However, upon entering an elementary school classroom one will usually encounter a visual overload. How can teachers determine the appropriate amount of elements that would be on display? How can they know what is the accurate recipe for a pleasant and efficient display? It seems that, in practice, this might resemble your grandma’s cake recipe, which was passed down from generation to generation. “Just put a little bit of this and not too much of that…” This article addresses thesequestions and provides best practices recommendations in an appendix.
Published: 2017
Updated: Jul. 19, 2017
30
The Pardes Rodef Shalom Schools Program is a unique middle school project that develops conflict resolution skills via the study of traditional Jewish texts. We help Jewish middle schools equip members of the school community to be skillful problem-solvers in social situations, active in the prevention of bullying and committed to creating a more peaceful world.
Published: 2017
Updated: Jul. 19, 2017