Poised Communicators

Public speaking has been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe it’s because I know that I will be called upon to do this several times in the next weeks. As the school year begins to unwind, there have also been a number of opportunities for our students to speak publicly. Whether it was at the Yom Yerushalayim assembly, a board meeting, or the Sports Recognition evening, it has been a delight to see our students share their thoughts about a wide variety of topics.

For adults, public speaking is something that brings with it anxiety, fear, and a host of other emotions. Some of us simply just won’t do it while many of us view it as a necessary evil that we would prefer to do without. Very few of us have had any training or support in public speaking which adds to our discomfort.

For our students, this is far from the truth. As exemplified in our Yom Yerushalayim program, our fourth graders were able to speak eloquently in both Hebrew and English from the bimahin the Merkaz as they shared their studies of the modern state of Israel’s roots. Many of our eighth graders have given D’vrei Torah at board meetings in front of adults that they have never met. They share willingly of their studies and give glimpses into their personal lives as they interpret the week’s Torah portion.

Next week, our fifth graders will each have a moment to reflect publicly on their experience as Lower School students as they make the transition to our Middle School. Their teachers have been guiding them on how to pick what to say and how to speak with confidence, as well as  making sure them their volume, articulation, and cadence are appropriate.

There is no doubt in my mind that one of the most critical skills for our students to learn is to be an effective communicator. Sharing one’s thoughts in a public forum is a crucial element of this. In each of our grades, we provide a number of opportunities to hone these skills whether it is through reading Torah, being part of a class performance, or working on an individual speech.

The ability to speak with confidence and poise builds success for life. It is a lifelong skill that will pay dividends beyond speaking confidently at a bar or bat mitzvah. So the next time that you are asked to speak at a public event, instead of trying to imagine that you are speaking to an empty room, ask your Schechter student for some tips.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dr. Ari Yares
Head of School

What's RARA?

Earlier this week, I traveled to Chicago for the Partnership in Excellence in Jewish Education’s (PEJE) Recruitment and Retention Academy (RARA). It may have seemed odd to spend three days focusing on recruitment and retention. You put out a few signs, have an open house and people enroll their children at your school, right? Retention means sending out the contracts, setting a deadline, and waiting for families to re-enroll.

If you thought any of these things, you would be wrong.

While, perhaps, an admissions director might wish that the job of recruiting new students and retaining our families was that simple, he or she knows that it is not. Recruiting a family to a school requires time, patience, and passion. This means identifying the family, talking with them, bringing them to school for a tour, connecting them with others within the school, answering questions and helping to make them feel at home. Similarly, retention is not limited to the time when re-enrollment contracts go out. It needs to be infused in everything that a school does.

PEJE’s Recruitment & Retention Academy focused on digging deep into the issues that make recruitment and retention so complex. Joined by Rachel Gonsenhauser, our Director of Admissions, and Leah Polikoff, co-chair of our recruitment committee, we spent three days looking at what best practices are for recruitment and retention, measured ourselves against them and started planning for our own improvement.

We learned about how to be more data driven. We heard about admissions practices at other schools and consulted with experts in the field. Building a culture of responsiveness is a topic that came up frequently, and being data driven can help drive our ability to do that effectively. While the Measuring Success survey distributed a few weeks ago may be closed, we still want to hear about your experiences in the school. I encourage you to provide us with your thoughts so we can continue to collect this data.  

We delved into the power of a Jewish day school education and how to share it. For example, here at Schechter, we know that our students are stronger in their General Studies education because of their Jewish Studies, not despite of them. We learned that we need to share this message: Through a Schechter education, our students are globally connected, critical thinkers who are invested in improving the world around them.

Perhaps one of the most important things that we talked about was the power that you, our parents, can have as ambassadors and advocates. Everyone connected with a school can serve in that role. This is a place where we need your help. Have you shared one of our Facebook posts, particularly if you child was in the picture? Have you shared, with your friends, the incredible experience that your children are having at Schechter? Have you passed along the name of a potential student to the admissions office?

The saying goes - it takes a village.  This is particularly true for recruitment and retention as I look back on those three days in Chicago. We’re making great progress as a school and I’m looking forward to putting our learning into action.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dr. Ari Yares

Head of School

Mirror, Mirror

Every once in a while, a student asks me what a typical day looks like for me. This is probably one of the hardest questions that I get asked on a regular basis. It’s because I seldom have two days that look alike and defining typical is just pretty tricky.

Sometimes my days are filled with meetings with administrators, teachers, parents, and community members. Other times, I’m visiting other Jewish agencies or synagogues or maybe walking through classrooms. I might be attending one of our programs or a program at another organization. I could be schmoozing with parents in the hallway or meeting a potential donor for the school. I even might be having some quiet, productive time in my office. The predictable lack of consistency in my daily schedule is one of the things that I enjoy about my job, but it does make defining typical difficult.

This week, I got to do something that was different from the routine that I just described. Throughout this year, I have been working with an experienced former Head of School who serves as my coach. We chat weekly via Google Hangout and discuss various challenges that I might be dealing with or talk about what might next steps be for a particular project. It is an opportunity to stop and think a little bit about how I am doing my job and what needs to happen for me to continue to be successful. Those conversations give me a short amount of time each week to be reflective about my practice.

With my coach in town, I had the opportunity this week to shift into that reflective mode for about 36 hours. We sat with a variety of people, looking back at my first year and looking ahead to next year. It was a chance to think deeply and to spend quality time talking about intentions behind actions, trying out “what ifs,” and see what progress has been made on the school’s goals.

Being reflective means starring in the mirror (figuratively, of course) and seeing all of the warts and the beauty. It means taking time to understand what worked and how you know that something worked. It means conversations about what to do differently if I had the opportunity to try something again. 

Reflective practice is about understanding what caused this to occur and deepening my understanding of how our school works (and sometimes doesn’t work). It means asking, “What would need to be true” for changes to happen.

There were times that I wanted to stop the conversations and check into my e-mail or be able to mark something off on my “to do” list. Each time that this happened, I reminded myself of how important having this time is and now that my coach is safely back at home, I am realizing how valuable the time was, and perhaps, how short it really was.

The takeaways from a reflection aren’t always major “a-ha” moments. Some things that I learned will take a while to process while others, hopefully, will have a more immediate effect. A lot of our conversations focused on the behind the scenes processes that keep the school running. Others included conversations about recruitment and how to better share the incredible Schechter learning experience. Plans for next year continue to evolve. This week’s conversations were part of that process and my goal as Head of School has been to keep you abreast of how we are moving forward and I pledge to continue doing that.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dr. Ari Yares

Head of School

Israel on My Mind

This past week it has been hard to not have Israel on my mind.

The week began with a moving commemoration of Yom HaZikaron organized by the Federation and involving middle school students from Schechter, Agnon, and Mizrachi. Listening to our students sing Ma Avarech, a haunting melody whose lyrics remember a young man illed during the Six Day War, heightened my sense of loss as we commemorated Israel’s fallen and the price paid for a Jewish homeland.

Just as it does in Israel, Monday progressed from sadness and sorrow to joy and celebration in Cleveland as we marked the beginning of Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day. What could be a better way to mark the beginning of the holiday than by joining together as a community, eating falafel and schwarma, and, of course, listening to the beautiful voice of Israeli superstar Noa? It didn’t end there. So many activities took place in and outside school from assemblies to parades to just feeling the vibe of the day.

That sense of longing for Israel drove me to look at the many pictures of our 8th grade students on Facebook as they tour Israel and then to their blog posts about their experiences. The 8th grade Israel trip is more than just a tour, though. It is an interactive educational experience that pulls together lessons learned throughout the students’ experiences at Schechter.

Don’t believe me? Here are a few of the highlights.

Students connect with the history that they have learned: 

• As we walked through the museum and watched the videos our learning about Herzl suddenly came to life. Whenever the tour guide would ask a question we would be able to answer it. If she noted something important about Herzl we recognized it. Everyone was able to follow long since we had learned all about Herzl and his connection to Alfred Dreyfus at school and our visit to the exhibit at the Maltz museum....Without Theodor Herzl we would not have the life changing opportunity of spending three weeks in Israel. Thanks to him we are here today.

They see joy in being Jewish:

• After celebrating Shabbat every week, the holy day can become somewhat humdrum causing people to under-appreciate the holiness of this particular event- so why did this past Shabbat intimate the total opposite? Was it the small and rare conservative temple located in Jerusalem? Or the bar mitzvah we were luckily able to attend the next day? No- although it was a cool experience it was the RUACH we generated.

They watched science in action:

• Our tour guide, Ariel, also explained how the Banyan springs worked using my hat. He sprayed shaving cream on me because it snowed here in the winter. He had me fill my mouth with water to show how the water was melting into the rock. He squeezed the water out of my mouth and that was the spring.

And perhaps, most importantly, they grow as individuals:

• In the end, I conquered one of my fears and had a great time. I am so glad I rode the donkey because if I didn't I would have missed out on a great experience.

This is the 8th grade Israel experience.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dr. Ari Yares

Design Thinking Update

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in publicly with our Design Thinking team that is working with the Day School Collaboration Network. In a recent conversation with our coach, the team broke down the larger question of redesigning the Burt L. and Iris S. Media Center to address some of the smaller questions that will help inform the design process. For example:

1. How might we inspire kids to read age appropriate material with guidance?
2. How might we create a space that serves as valuable resource for teachers to get materials: accessible, supported, organized, and uniquely valuable content?
3. How might we create a space that is versatile for displaying work so that students are inspired?
4. How might we create a space where students can meet in a cozy, warm, communal space that is amenable to food, movies, etc.?  
5. How might we create a central meeting place that feels appropriate for meetings with the the board, parents, and other guests?

In thinking about these questions, I started thinking a little bit more deeply about what we have learned so far through the design thinking process. Enter a blog post from  Ed Horwitz of the Jewish Education Project and Maya Bernstein of Upstart Bay Area, our partners in the Day School Collaboration Network, laying out five observations of the design thinking process that they had learned about training and schools and got me thinking about how their observations applied to our process.

1. Slow down to speed up - This seems counter-intuitive to reduce speed to get somewhere faster. After all this is why we floor the gas pedal on I-271 to get where we want go faster. Slowing down doesn’t seem like it would get us anywhere in a speedier way. Yet, our design team is discovering just that. We could have taken any solution and thrown it at the Media Center and seen how it works. And maybe we would have been successful, but probably not. The design thinking process has forced us to think about how the space is used currently, what people would like to use it for, and what truly are the needs of the school. Our initial solution lacked insight into this and a true understanding of the space.

2. Diverse teams make the biggest impact - There are so many stakeholders involved in this process. The team itself represents alumni, administration, and general studies, Jewish studies, middle school, lower school, and preschool staff. This mix of experiences as well as length of service at the school has created a team that can practically “see around the corners” as they explore the problem.

3. Sometimes the process itself is the product - As noted above, the administration could have simply imposed a solution on the Media Center, and, in fact, the current situation of under-utilization is the outcome of an administrative decision. While I can’t comment on the decision making process that yielded the current layout and use of the library, it became clear to me that needs were going unmet. In going through a design process, we’ve have made a shift in the way that decisions for our school can be made. They can be inclusive and involve multiple perspectives working together to benefit the school.

4. Name the unspoken issues - Simply in addressing this problem, “How might we enable our community to use our Media Center and common space in a way that feels valuable, accessible, and alive?” has raised issues that we might have preferred not to discuss. Conversations have touched on the absence of a full-time librarian, the use of the space as a math classroom, and the lack of availability of the media center when a teacher needs it. Often times, these are the topics that we dance around rather than addressing head on. It doesn’t mean that each of these will find a solution, but rather being aware of them sensitizes us as we seek to answer the larger question.

5. Teacher and student empowerment - Since the beginning of the process, the design thinking team has not simply locked themselves in the conference room and pondered the weighty issue before them. Instead, the entire staff has been part of the process as they are asked questions to help better understand how they do use the media center and why they do not. One of the most interesting observations from this process was a teacher who shared that she doesn’t use the library because it is simpler to call the children’s librarian at the Beachwood Library, share with her what she is looking for, and later in the day to pull up to the library’s drive through window to collect her books. Without going through this process, we might never have heard this anecdote and have it shape our understanding along with comments from her fellow teachers.
   Student voices have also been heard and noted. Group discussions around the library and creative classroom activities with students in multiple grades helped them share their input into this process.

Now it is your turn. We know from listening to conversations in the hallway that the media center is often on your mind. Our parents were incredibly excited and engaged by our Go for the Gold - Read for Life program because Kehillat Schechter is a community that prizes literacy. We want our children to explore written texts that allow them to think critically and to gain enjoyment from the telling of a well-written tale.

Click on this link to answer a few short questions and add to the diversity of opinion that is shaping the design process as we look to create new models of how to engage with our media center.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dr. Ari Yares