(Re)Designing Tefillah

A colleague of mine once referred to tefillah as the third rail of Jewish education. As irreverent as this may sound, it stemmed from a deep-seated concern that as Jewish educators we struggle with this area of the day school experience, not because it is not important, but because of its complexity and how hard it is to get it right.

Tefillah is hard. Even as adults we struggle with connecting with God during davening on a Shabbat morning. We try to find the right kavana (intent) to go with our keva (the fixed process of tefillah) and often miss the mark. I can only imagine what our synagogue rabbis are thinking as they stare at us from the bima while we are either grappling with this dilemma or are completely off task. Given how difficult meaningful, engaging tefillah is for adults, it is no wonder that adolescents also struggle with blending kavana and keva together in our daily minyanim.

With this problem in mind, we have begun a series of conversations at school to grapple with this challenge. Our Va’ad Tefillah (prayer committee) is a combined group of students and staff who are actively engaged in seeking solutions to this. The Va’ad Tefillah, with the support of The Jewish Education Project’s Day School Collaboration Network, has been using design thinking to address the often intractable problem of creating meaningful, relevant, and engaging tefillah experiences for our high school students. Through this design thinking process, we immersed ourselves in the situation by looking at it from our students’ points of view. We also sought inspiration from a variety of sources. With this in hand, we began to understand what tefillah experiences meant for them.

We then worked to frame our problem to create “how might we” statements that helped us better define the problems facing us in high school tefillah. We then imagined what could possibly be and collaborated to develop a series of prototypes to help us test our understanding, gain more information, and learn as we continued to work in the cycle of immerse, frame, imagine, and prototype.

Our initial prototypes were a series of alternative minyanim that allowed students to engage with tefillah in a different way. Here are the choices and descriptions that were available to students:

Regular Minyan: Similar to our daily minyanim, this larger group minyan will join together for a spirited davening.

Meditation Shacharit: How do I improve my focus, and organize my thoughts in tefillah?  Come to this Shacharit, where you will learn exciting ways to use meditation a mode of thinking to help you focus and direct your tefillot in new and exciting ways.

Words of Prayer: The siddur is an ancient combination of words from the Tanakh, with additions, adjustments and an overall organization made by our Rabbis through the generations. This minyan will take a close look at different prayers and we'll discuss how each prayer fits into the Rabbis' overall plan for the siddur, and how we can make sense of the siddur – personally -  as 21st century Jews.

Are You There God?: How can we discuss God? Why should we discuss God? What is God? How do we believe in God? (and what does that mean anyway!) This minyan will think about these questions and many other theological issues. Our goal is not to generate answers about God, but rather to startthe conversation about God.

Tech and Tefillah: Can the texts of the tefillot be communicated through modern means? How much of a tefillah would you tweet? We will explore using technology tools, like Twitter, PowerPoint, and Facebook, to help us gain greater understanding of the tefillot in the siddur.

Are these alternative minyanim the solution? Probably not alone, but they are a starting point. These experiences were followed up by a survey as we seek to design a better tefillah experience. Through this process, we hope to shift away from thinking about tefillah as an insurmountable challenge for the Jewish day school experience into one that adds meaning and relevance to all of those who participate.

Meditating on Freedom

Early on Wednesday morning, I was working with a group of high school students on a meditation exercise in our alternative minyan. As we meditated together, I realized that the intentional and unintentional activities of the week had somehow aligned as the perfect preparation to spiritually enter Pesah. The meditation exercise that I had picked to use during the Amidah focused on reflecting on feelings of happiness, peace, and freedom. It was during this last portion of the exercise that, for me, the week began to click together and I realized that I was becoming ready to enter z’man matan cherutainu, the time of receiving our freedom.

On Monday, our 8th graders led an interfaith seder for the students of St. Aidan School, our neighbors around the corner. They eloquently explained the reasons behind each section of the seder and served as ambassadors of both our school and the Jewish people. Together, we celebrated the beauty of the seder and learned about its educational mission as the story of the exodus from Egypt is told. For two groups of students from different faiths to sit down and learn from one another brings to mind the incredible gift of our religious freedom.

Tuesday morning began with the delivery of the cots from New York Blood Services for our second blood drive of the school year. Blood, however, has a mixed relationship with Pesah. It can bring to mind the infamous blood libels of our past as Jews were accused of using the blood of Christian children to make matzot. It can also represent the first of the Ten Plagues that dip our fingers into at our seder. At school, however, it represented giving others the gift of life through 48 units of blood that students, staff, parents, and other members of the Schechter community contributed. This giving of ourselves provides others with the freedom to live their lives in health.

Even the fire alarm during high school lunch provided a sense of liberation. Yes, it was cold and wet outside. Yes, it was scary not knowing what was going on. But as an administrator, I found a sense of freedom from my own fears of what would happen if we did have an emergency in the building. Our preparations and practice with our own emergency procedures worked.

With the feeling that spring is actually arriving, our sixth grade students set out to engage in acts of maot chittim, pre-Pesah activities of chesed (community service). While our students did not gather wheat to provide others with the ability to celebrate Pesah, they did stock kosher for Pesah supplies at a food pantry. With the ever present fear of hunger among some in our community, our students worked to liberate them from this through their actions.

I was greeted early one morning by a student stating that she was so tired, but vacation is only a few days away. Clearly, our students are looking forward to the freedom from classwork that Pesah break will bring. Many of us among the faculty have joked about our own self-imposed slavery as we prepare for Pesah and are yearning to be set free.

My hope is that all of us will have a moment to truly reflect on what freedom means to us as we sit down at our own seder tables with friends and family to tell the story of our people’s exodus from Egypt. May you truly be able to feel a sense of freedom as we celebrate z’man matan cherutainu.

L’Shanah Ha’Ba’ah B’Yerushalayim (Next Year in Jerusalem)!

Quick and Dirty Blended Learning Experiments

Making the switch to a blended learning format for a course is intimidating. Frequently, it is referred to as a fundamental switch in the way that we conduct education. Having looked at Kahn Academy and a variety of online courses, I can see exactly why we feel overwhelmed at making this paradigm change.

But, do you really have to turn everything upside down or 180 degrees around to begin experimenting with blended learning?

The answer is a resounding no.

As a classroom teacher and school administrator, I have been experimenting with different elements of blended learning for several years. Do I view myself as a teacher of a blended learning course? No, not yet, but I'm getting there with each experiment.

I started fairly simply by setting up a group of students on WikiSpaces with a few discussion prompts that I wanted to cover, but knew that I was not going to get to in class.

Next, since we were a Google Apps for Education school, I tried out Google Sites and similarly used the discussion forums and comments within the sites.

The response to both activities was fascinating. "Hey, Dr. Yares," one student said to me. "The homework was like being on Facebook, but we were doing homework, but it was like Facebook." Not a bad response for an experiment. I had just extended the classroom conversation and created a home assignment that was meaningful and relevant for my students.

From this initial exposure, the experiments with blended learning have continued. I have worked with students who have used Google Docs to collaboratively edit play scripts at school and at home. Students have used Google Sites to create frequently asked question websites for topics in a life cycle unit. I even experimented with Pinterest as an educational tool (more on that experience can be read about here and here.)

Most recently, I have flipped a faculty meeting using Moodle and added online tools such as linoit.com and edcanvas.com to a student-staff committee to help deepen our interactions. The response in each case has started slowly at first, but grown as my teachers' comfort level increased.

The key is to keep it simple. Pick a single tool and use it to enhance a unit or a lesson. Do not try and film an entire year's worth of lessons in the hope of creating the next Kahn Academy. Experiment with these tools as you redevelop older lessons as a way of refreshing them even further. With this more modest approach, your confidence will increase and your willingness to take greater risks will come along.

Most importantly, though, you are creating opportunities for the students to interact with your subject matter in an increasingly relevant and meaningful way that will deepen their relationship with the content.

Have you started the blended learning experiment? What quick and dirty tricks are you trying?

Powered by Chesed

Like most educators, actually, probably like most people, I dread the day that I return to work after vacation. It’s not that I don’t want to go back to school. As a principal, I truly enjoy what I do. It’s the shift from the routine of vacation to that of work that I find jarring. It is an awkward transition from a (hopefully) more relaxed pace to a more frenetic pace. This week was different. While, of course, there was a portion of me that would have loved to sleep a little later on Monday morning, I was excited to step foot back in the building.

For weeks, the anticipation of our Shushan Purim Chesed Day has been building among the staff. Rabbi Josh Rabin, our Rav Beit Sefer, kept us updated with each contact that he made for the various service projects that would be available for our students. Plans were set for a modified schedule and buses were ordered for the high school projects, while supplies were purchased for the middle school project.

But on Monday morning, it was finally here.

With a group of 9th and 10th graders, I excitedly boarded the bus to AHRC. We were eagerly greeted and we began to visit and play with a group of autistic preschool and elementary school students. The ice and awkwardness quickly melted as the Schechter students followed their new friends from station to station in a physical education activity in the AHRC gym. Everyone was smiling, laughing, and enjoying themselves.

Perhaps the most touching aspect of the experience was the reluctance of our students to leave AHRC. They had seen first hand how they could touch someone else’s life and, perhaps, this is the real purpose of giving matanot l’evyonim (gifts to the poor). Our students connected with people who they could have seen as the “other,” but instead saw them as fellow human beings.

This single event has kept me powered for an entire week.

While we work to plan other opportunities for our students to engage in tikkun olam, we encourage you to reach out to these agencies or others that we worked with and encourage your child to make volunteering part of their lives. As a school, we have a community service/hesed requirement because we strongly believe that tikkun olam needs to be an integral part of our lives as Jews and we lay the groundwork for what we hope will be lifelong habits here at Schechter.

Powerful Food

I am a firm believer in the power of food. It is an almost elemental force that reaches deep into us and has the power to change our lives. Other ideals, kindness, love, world peace, and repairing the world, are intricately related to the power of food and can be addressed through the use of the power of food.

Food has the power to build or destroy and recognizing this and using its powers for good would change the world. The absence of food is all consuming. Civil society can collapse during shortages of food as hunger consumes all those around it. Our baser natures may emerge when we lack basic nourishment and we may revert to more animal behaviors to meet our needs.

Conversely, as I learned personally during Super Storm Sandy, food has the power to improve communities. As we huddled together with two other families during the storm and its aftermath, food drew us together and created community where it had not existed before. Shared meal preparation built lasting bonds.

The simple gesture of sharing food with others creates moments of kindness that can spread. Within a Jewish lens, food has the power to force us recognize our place in the world and our relationship with the Infinite. Many of us prepare meals for others as an act of culinary-based love.

On a grander scale, food has the power to change the geopolitical landscape. Scarcity of resources cause political instability and can topple governments. As I learned from shifting  from working in a poor, urban area where the next meal for a child was not guaranteed to the more affluent suburbs, I have learned that food has the power to free you from worries and stress. Magnify this across an entire community and the presence of food can change the course of history. Simply supplying everyone with enough food could limit the amount of conflict in the world.

Perhaps, though, the power of food is best summed up by the impact that a home cooked meal has on your family or your guests. It brings people together for a shared experience while demonstrating the care and affection of the chef. Simply put, food can create love, peace, kindness, and create a better world.

Why?

The largest challenge facing the North American Jewish community may be summed up by the most challenging question that my almost five year old has ever asked, “Why?” This question is difficult because she is not satisfied by the stock answer of “because I said so” or “because it’s the rule.” She is trying to make sense of the world around her and she really wants to the know the answer to her question because she is on a constant quest to create meaning and relevance.

The North American Jewish community has found itself in a similar position. The marketplace of ideas and opportunities are overflowing with options and we are not making a compelling case to our youth (or even adults in many cases) that Jewish life is rich and vibrant, and most importantly, meaningful and relevant. There are a myriad of Jewish opportunities available from youth groups to day school to gap year programs. Are they truly having the impact that we desire?

During my senior year of college, I conducted research looking at what factors enhanced Jewish identity in college students. My results were disheartening. Despite a reasonable sample size and a focus groups to help interpret the qualitative data, the only tangible result that I could present was that supplementary school experiences had a negative impact. No other result presented as statistically significant in either direction.

As a product of a combination of religious school, youth group, Jewish summer camp, Hillel, and an observant home life, this data continues to haunt me. I wonder why so many of my peers have not chosen to live Jewishly engaged lives. In my role as a day school administrator, I worry that we are working with a model that reaches to too few. At the same time, while day school education has been shown to create leaders in the Jewish community, I encounter many who left their day school experience turned off from Judaism.

As a leader in the Jewish community, I clearly see the need for us to embrace the challenge of relevance and meaning. Judaism is an incredible product whose multi-faceted nature has the ability to reach out to a diverse number of Jews. As an educational leader, I want to be in the trenches working to create the experiences that will bring relevance and meaning. I want to be working expand on the successes of successful models of engagement while trying to understand while other models have failed and learn from those failures. We need to create partnerships and synergies that allow us meld together the most effective interventions and programs and I want to be part of solutions that change the landscape of Jewish education and engagement.

Within the day school world, we need to become exemplars of educational practices for both general and Jewish studies. While minimally engaged families may not be initially attracted by the Jewish studies program, we need to make the case for the deeper skills, such as empathy, critical reading, and problem solving, that Jewish studies build and how they enhance, not just general studies, but the entire child. We need to learn from the success of youth groups and camps that build a love of Judaism through their affective programming that does not over intellectualize Judaism.

I would be remiss, however, if I did not mention that even the most meaningful and relevant experiences are useless if they are not accessible. Building towards this grand vision of learning environments that create engaged Jews is useless if we cannot tackle the affordability question. Without a doubt, Jewish life as it is currently construed in North America is an expensive proposition and in a world with some many competing demands for our dollars, we need to make sure that the experiences that we create are worthy of the financial support of our constituents. While creating a compelling product will not solve the affordability question, it will go a long way towards creating the demand and desire that will impact the financial issues.

We simply need to answer the question, “Why?”

Friday Letter - February 15, 2013

The room was silent. You could hear a pin drop. It didn't matter that there were more than 150 people seated or standing in the gym. The room could not have been quieter empty. Eyes were facing front. No one was shifting in their seat. The entire focus of the room was towards the podium.

These respectful, dignified reactions were beautiful to watch on Tuesday morning. Our students, regardless of how they personally felt about gay marriage, Judaism and homosexuality, or any related issues, made an incredible statement with their behavior. That statement, as they listened to an alumna tell her story of hiding her identity and gradually coming out, was that each individual is deserving of dignity and respect. It continued as their peers stood in front of them to introduce clips of the movie Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School which depicts the story of a student in a Boston Jewish high school grappling with her sexual identity. As the students moved upstairs into workshops that they had selected earlier in the week, the level of dignity and respect that they afforded each other as they discussed topics that could be potentially fraught with emotion was similarly high.

This is a powerful statement.

I recently saw that this past week had been declared National Random Acts of Kindness week by the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. What occurred here, in my mind, was much more powerful than a random act of kindness. While we encourage our students to engage the world with derekh eretz and look for moments where they can do tikun olam, there is something even more meaningful when our students actively work as a group to create an environment that provides dignity and respect to everyone. It recognizes that as a community, we are responsible for setting the tone in each and every conversation that we have with another person.

Through our actions and our words, we shape the environment around us. This Tuesday’s program, a product of collaboration between the Tzibur Club and its advisor Becky Friedman-Charry, Robin Stanton, and Rabbi Josh Rabin, laid the foundation for creating an environment that is more accepting of our individual differences. When we return from break, students will have the opportunity to again shape their environment by engaging in acts of tikun olam at our school and in the community for our Upper School Chesed Day. Step by step, we are changing our school and our world.