Section archive - Education & Administration

The Covenant Foundation has announced the names of three Jewish educators who are the 2019 recipients of the Covenant Award. Dr. Gregory Beiles, Head of School, The Toronto Heschel School and Director, The Lola Stein Institute, Toronto, Canada; Sally Grazi-Shatzkes, Registered Drama Therapist, Licensed Creative Arts Therapist, and Theater Director, Yeshivah of Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York; and Risa Strauss, Education Director, Beth Shalom Synagogue and Founding Director, Camp Gesher, The Katie and Irwin Kahn Jewish Community Center, Columbia, South Carolina, are the recipients of the Award, which is among the highest honors in the field of Jewish education.

In September 2018, the first group of one-and-a-half to three year-old kids began attending Olam Katan. I started this drop off playgroup because there are no reasonably priced, pedagogically sound Jewish programs in our Lower East Side neighborhood in Manhattan, and I feel strongly about my son receiving a quality Jewish early childhood educational experience that reflects my family’s values.

Education is about communicating, and that requires the ability to listen, often to multiple voices. We want our students to be able to process that, but for them to hear their teachers, their teachers need to be able to hear them. The same is true for all the other communications which take place in our schools – between parents and teachers, between the principal and the board, between administrators and teachers, and more. When everyone is on the same team, or at least is able to have a respectful dialogue about how to move forward, then education can happen. This current edition of Jewish Educational Leadership, the first in our new format as an online-only journal, is dedicated to opening up the conversations. The articles included touch upon all the key players in schools – students, teachers, administration, parents, board members, and funders. There is much more to be said than what appears in the articles, and we invite you to join the conversation and share your thoughts as well.

A new Working Paper released today by The George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development (GSEHD) and CASJE (Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education) is the first report of a multi-year, comprehensive research project addressing the recruitment, retention, and development of educators working in Jewish settings in North America.