Published:
December 17, 2012
Source: eJewish Philanthropy
UpStart Bay Area and The Jewish Education Project, funded by a generous grant from UJA Federation of New York, are collaborating in establishing the Day School Collaboration Network to bring creativity tools to a group of Jewish day schools in the NY Metropolitan Area. Starting in December, teams within and across schools will explore the methodology of Design Thinking, and use it as an instrument for building school leadership. Through this shared experience, school leadership will become better equipped with creative, innovative tools and mindsets to address and develop solutions to major strategic challenges that confront Jewish day schools today.
The Day School Collaboration Network is an experimental response to needs of NY day school educators, designed to complement and leverage experiences already provided to professionals in their day school leadership programs. A distinguishing feature of the Network is the role of participating day school professional leaders, for they serve as partners in establishing its goals and design. This unique collaboration includes four sectors: the leadership in the day schools; a communal agency and networked non-profit, represented by the Jewish Education Project; the Jewish innovation sector, represented by UpStart; and the secular world of leadership and social entrepreneurship.
While each of the schools involved in this pilot might have a different answer to the broad question of the purpose of Jewish education, and how it connects to the purpose of Jewish life, the authors believe that a creative approach – one that listens deeply and truly to the experiences of the students, teachers, and parents connected to the schools, one that challenges us to think differently and expansively, and one that pushes us to align our shared values, and explore our differences – can only benefit our community as a whole.
Read the entire article on eJewish Philanthropy.