By Guest Blogger, Jed Filler
I
still remember my first computer in 8th grade – called the vic20. It
had 24k of ram and games and programming loaded from cartridges. I was
amazed when my father brought home an IBM PC – with two floppy drives
and 128k of onboard memory when I was in high school. There were
hundreds of programs on one floppy – and you had to learn an actual
language to use some of the programs. I helped him and learned about
spreadsheets when he built an inventory program for his business (anyone
remember 123?). Computers shrunk in size and increased in capacity at a
furious rate – so that when I went to college –a few students on every
floor had one. By the time I graduated four years later, many more
students had one.
Why
the trip down memory lane? Because shortly after graduating college, I
started my career in Jewish education working in my home synagogue as a
teacher. They were using textbooks that 12 years earlier I had used, and
the only computer was in the synagogue office. We were still using a
mimeo machine (remember the smell of a fresh ‘copy’)?
I
went to a graduate program to study Jewish education, and my fellow
students and I were determined to bring Jewish education up to date.
While deeply respecting our own mentors and teachers, we knew
instinctively that in order to learn most effectively, a student has to
learn in a context that makes sense to them.
But
this is nothing new. In our uniquely American experience, it seems that
Jewish education has lagged anywhere between five and twenty years
behind secular education in theory, application, and technique. Each new
generation of Jewish educators work diligently to catch up, and over
the past 10 years have made significant strides in closing the gap.
Even
now as I write this, Jewish education students in graduate programs are
doing what we did – working to make the text relevant, both in context
and delivery method, for our current generation of learners.
Jvillage Network, Behrman House, Darim Online,
our movements, and many other organizations are working to help
educators create contextual connections between our texts and our
learners.
When
our kids speak through technology, so must we. Twitter, Facebook,
blogs, foursquare, second life, skype, and texting occupy both their
school and spare time, and we ignore their context at our peril.
We
can't wait for students to come to us. When we do, we are relegated to
the fate of the dinosaurs. Our tradition is rich, enlightening,
fulfilling, and absolutely relevant - but requires constant translation
updates to keep it so.
Pirke Avot
reminds us that we are not required to finish the work, but we are not
permitted to leave it for others either. Our students fill our
classrooms today, and they cannot wait for the next generation of
education professionals. That doesn't mean that we should wait for them
to get into the field to catch up!
The
blending of all the parts of our lives together in a mashup of content
and context is gaining momentum. We must work to continue to grow in
knowledge and expertise - in content, context and delivery methods to be
as effective as possible in our classrooms.
In
my next blog - I'll take a look at some of the ways that Jewish
educators around the country, and world, are integrating technology in
their classrooms - bringing our texts alive for another generation.
Kol Tuv
-Jed
Jed Filler is the Education Director of Congregation Shirat Hayam in Swampscott, MA
 |
| Guest Blogger Terry Kaye |
Jewish
educators are frustrated when they can’t afford to buy new laptops, a
projector, carts, and other computer hardware and software for the
school. How can they close the digital gap between home and school when
they have no money to do so?
Here are three ways to boost your school’s budget so that you can upgrade your technology.
1. Ask an angel.
The
most successful fund raisers are those who ask their personal contacts
for support. Approach the people with whom you work most closely, who
believe in your mission, and who want to see you and your organization
succeed. That may be a parent, grandparent, congregation member, or
board member.
For
example, an educator in Boston got a $50,000 grant from a member of the
congregation to build a technology infrastructure (hardware, software,
blog, social media). Key to the grant is that the new technology serve
as a connection point for families throughout the congregation,
especially in the pre-school where parents are eager to be part of their
children’s school lives even while at work.
2. Hold fundraisers.
Fundraisers
can be lucrative, especially if centered around a holiday. For example,
at Passover, buy haggadot at a discount and resell them to families,
sell Passover candy, or offer wine or flowers for the seder table. At
Purim, ask for donated items to raffle at your Purim carnival; at
Hanukkah, sell gift wrap or create a school cookbook and sell it to
religious school families or the congregation at large. And don’t forget
the dependable bookfair, which not only raises money for the school,
but helps families build a Jewish library.
A
school in Greenfield, Massachussetts holds ongoing fundraising programs
in which members and non-members can help raise funds by buying organic
coffee and by bringing in empty ink jet cartridges and old cell phones.
(This company
runs a recycling fundraising program.) A school in Portland, Maine
invites members to the synagogue kitchen to bake honey cakes, then sells
the cakes as a Rosh Hashanah fundraiser.
A
few other ideas: If your synagogue holds bingo or card games to raise
money, have a school-sponsored night, where you invite your parent body
and the proceeds go to the school. Hold a raffle with tech prizes such
as 1st prize: an iPad, 2nd prize: an iPod, 3rd prize: a good set of
computer speakers or headphones. Consider adding a Technology Fund to
the other synagogue funds to which members can contribute (like the
rabbi’s discretionary fund, the prayer book fund, and the yahrzeit
fund).
3. Approach other departments in your synagogue.
Let
the school committee, Men’s Club, or Women’s Club know thatyou need to
upgrade your technology. Do your homework, then make a presentation to
them. Present a plan that includes the hardware and software you want to
buy, prices, and how you plan to use technology to further your
educational goals. For example, you may want to expand student learning
time into the home by using a Hebrew series with a digital companion at
each level. Make the case that you need to take the school over to the right side of the digital divide.
As
an example, this strategy worked effectively in another programming
area in a school in Bergen County, New Jersey. In that case, the
educator wanted to build a new K-2 family prayer service. She saw a
colorful family prayer book
as the key to creating a successful program. She had no money in her
budget to make the purchase. So she approached her school committee. Two
members wrote out a check on the spot, enabling her to buy 110 copies
of the siddur.
The same can happen to you. Just ask.
Contact me if you need help choosing the right computer hardware and software for your school.
Terry
Kaye is Vice President and Director of Behrman House Consulting Group,
whose ten specialists help Jewish communal organizations flourish. Terry
is a leading authority on traditional and innovative Jewish educational
practices in North America. She provides curriculum consultation and
builds teacher success programs for hundreds of educators each year.
Reprinted with permission from Behrman House.
If
we think about the synagogue as a human body, I believe that the heart
of its life is the religious school, with its vibrancy of children and
parents. And the board of the synagogue, well... I will let you decide
on that body part. Yet my view of reality has the religious school as a
structural attachment, or maybe a detachment. Many times there is a
void between the board of the synagogue and the religious school. At
times they can feel like two distinct organizations.
Synagogues need to restructure themselves with the school at their core.
Just
take a look at the non-Jewish communities we live in. Whether it is an
urban or rural community, the vibrant heart is the community that grows
around and out of the schools. Unfortunately, for many synagogue
boards of directors, lay leadership kicks up at a time when individuals
are very removed from the connection of school life. And today that
disconnect is greater as our children and young parents are ever more
connected in ways that we do not relate to.
We have become our parents.
Creative
energy is the spark of life. Creative energy comes from our youth and
those directly connected to them, parents and teachers. Congregational
religious schools are the number-one providers of Jewish education,
outside the home. We as parents need our religious schools to broaden
and deepen what we are teaching our children at home. Today this is
more and more challenging for the schools, as they face the challenge of
transitioning from outdated teaching models to an ever-increasing
digital structure, from "Hebrew education" to Jewish education--all at a
time when there are challenging economic realities impacting synagogue
life as a whole.
There
are a number of organizations deeply involved in improving our Jewish
education for children. All the movements understand the importance of
educating our children, whether they attend one day of religious school
or six. But the biggest transition we can make is in our own
communities, and the importance we place on educating our children. The
movements and others can provide more structure, more training, better
curricula--but what they can not provide is local community leadership
that can reconnect the synagogue and the religious school and, more
specifically, reconnect the importance of educating our children with
the board of the synagogue.
Look
at your synagogue board. How many board members are parents of
children in your school? Does the educational director come to every
board meeting? Does a religious school committee member have a
leadership position on the board's executive committee? Our children are the future. Is your board structured in a way that ensures the success of our children's education?
