Search results for: Fishman Deborah

Being a classroom teacher can be an isolating experience. You may not know where to turn for new ideas and wish there was a way you could benefit from the experimentation and expertise of others in classrooms like yours across the country. Fortunately, in the past few years, Jewish day school educators have been able to find networks designed to incubate and spread ideas and practices. As a network-weaver working at the AVI CHAI Foundation, I have an interest in understanding and documenting these networks, which could range from organized programs, such as the JDS Collaborative, for which I serve as program officer at AVI CHAI, to a much less formal Twitter chat. Let’s look at what these networks are, which ones are more likely to scale through successfully spreading ideas, and why.

This summer, AVI CHAI is once again sponsoring Jewish day school leaders to participate in the Art of Leadership (AOL) and Leadership: An Evolving Vision (LEV) programs of the Principals’ Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. AOL participants completed the program the week of June 26, and LEV is taking place this week. A total of 36 leaders from across the US and Canada were chosen for the two cohorts.

As evidenced by the high rate of participation in an AVI CHAI webinar yesterday, Hebrew instruction is a topic which elicits passion in many Jewish day school educators and leaders. The webinar – hosted by Dr. Michael Berger, AVI CHAI Program Officer – sought to illuminate the challenges and possibilities of JDS Hebrew language education in the JDS classroom. It was based off two case studies on this topic from “How Schools Enact Their Jewish Missions: 20 Case Studies of Jewish Day Schools”: “Meshuga La Davar: Hebrew,” about The Epstein School, by Dr. Michael Berger and Pearl Mattenson, and “A School That Places Israel at Its Center,” about the Golda Och Academy, by Dr. Jack Wertheimer, who served as Project Director of the case studies project. Speaking on the webinar were Stan Beiner and Dr. Joyce Raynor, former heads of Epstein and Golda Och, respectively. Beiner is now a consultant to non-profit organizations and schools, and Dr. Raynor currently serves as the Head of School of the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Educational Campus in Las Vegas, NV.

As part of AVI CHAI’s investment in the field of blended and online learning, we are excited to share with you the first in a series of four cases that study and document the experiences of day schools introducing and implementing this mode of learning. Our goal is to bring to life this innovative model and share real-life examples of the learning in action. “Zafon Elementary School: A Station-Rotation Model for Supporting 21st Century Learning,” describes an Orthodox, pre-K through 2nd grade school, which opened in 2012 with blended learning as a core element of its design. As the study’s author remarks, “This case is in many ways a study of implementation, of translating from a design on paper to the delivery of a program in practice.”