Jedcamp on a roll

It started so simply.

Back in late 2012, a number of educators in South Florida organized the first ever Jedcamp, or Jewish Edcamp.  Playing off of the still-young-but-gaining-steam "unconference" model of Edcamp, these educators decided that a similar model could be employed for Jewish educators.  The rationale was simple and twofold: First, almost all Edcamps took place on Saturday, thus precluding observant Jews from attending, and, second, that there are many issues unique to the Jewish educational community that rarely get discussed among educators from different schools and different branches of that community (day schools, supplementary schools, community schools, federations, etc.).

The initial results were excellent.  Over forty people came out for a day of fruitful and dynamic discussion on a wide range of topics, both tech-based and non-techie.  But the true success of the first Jedcamp was that it led to the second one, in New Jersey in April 2013.  Like the one in Florida, the New Jersey Jedcamp brought together a wide range of educators for a full day of meeting, greeting, brainstorming, and envisioning.  One member of the Florida planning team came north, and a future Jedcamp planner from the West Coast made the cross-country trek to see just how much potential this new model had.  A small start, but a solid one.

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During the 2013-2014 academic year, the Jedcamp model gained a little more traction.  South Florida held a second Jedcamp.  San Francisco held two.  Chicago had their first.  In New York and New Jersey, two full day Jedcamps were held in addition to two shorter (but very well attended) nighttime events.  In all, several hundred Jewish educators attended Jedcamps last year, experiencing the power of professional development that was based on collaborating with inspiring and devoted colleagues, not simply listening to well-paid gurus sharing the current trend in education.

Beyond the events themselves, Jedcamp started connecting with the broader Edcamp movement.  Kristen Swanson, a founder of Edcamp, attended Jedcamp in San Francisco and became a source of advice and direction for several Jedcamp organizers.  Jedcampers attended the Edcamp "Birds of a Feather" session at ISTE 2014 and shared the community-building aspect of Jedcamp that is such a powerful feature of these events.

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The 2014-2015 academic year has barely begun, and already Jedcamp is in full swing across the continent.  JedcampBoston and JedcampLA took place this past Sunday.  South Florida is back with another Jedcamp this coming Sunday (sign up now!).  Chicago gets back into the game on October 19th (sign up here) and Toronto takes place a week later on the 26th - the first Jedcamp outside of the United States.  Plans are being made for a Jedcamp in Brooklyn, NY in early November and one in Northern New Jersey in the spring.  The Jedcamp model has begun attracting attention from several other communities, including Mexico City!  Like Edcamp before it, the second full year of Jedcamp is poised to have more events after a few months than it had in its entire first year.

Like any maturing phenomenon, much is being learned as more events have taken place.  Attendance often peters out as the day goes on; scheduling on a Sunday can be tricky when trying to include supplementary school teachers who often teach Sunday morning; reaching out to those not tied in to social media often takes an extra effort.

At the same time, Jedcamp has achieved some notable successes beyond its mere existence.  To some extent, Jedcamp grew out of social media communities such as #jedchat on Twitter and Jedlab on Facebook, and the conversations at Jedcamps have often started in cyberspace, continued live at the events, and then gained further steam back in cyberspace.  Real connections and relationships among distant "colleagues" have been formed and strengthen through Jedcamps, as educators from far-flung parts of one region, or even from different regions of the country have come together to share their thoughts and concerns.  Topics that rarely get discussed in more formal professional development sessions are given plenty of airtime due to the "bottom-up" nature of the Jedcamp model.

So, what comes next for Jedcamp?  I would offer a few visions:

1) Spreading the learning.   For all of my enthusiasm about the spread of Jedcamp, it really has only hit a few major cities so far.  While there may be a limit to the number of metro areas that have enough Jewish educators to have their own Jedcamp, there is still a ways to go before we reach that limit.  If you are interested in starting a Jedcamp in your area and want to know what to do next, please feel free to reach out to me or anyone else who has planned a Jedcamp.

2) Spreading the learning (part 2).  Even in communities that have hosted Jedcamps, there are doubtless many educators who did not even know that such an opportunity existed.  Reaching out both within and beyond social media networks can take serious planning and requires knowing the contours of your community and who can help reach out to all potential participants (by the way, lay leaders are welcome as well).  It takes effort, but a Jedcamp is enriched when it includes as diverse a group as possible.

3) Recognition as "real" PD.  Jedcamps are fun; professional development is serious.  You choose to go to Jedcamp; your school sends you to a professional development day.  Jedcamps are free (so how valuable an they be?); professional development has a line in the school's budget (so it must be worth it).

All of those dichotomies often lead people to believe that Jedcamps and not as valuable a use of teacher's time as traditional professional development sessions are.  That conclusion is clearly false to anyone who has been to both types of professional development.  While there is no question that there are experts in the field who have much that is valuable to share, and there are certainly full-day workshops that equip teachers with new skills and tools to take back to their classrooms, it is just as true that a day at a Jedcamp conversing with colleagues about innovative, inscrutable, or pervasive issues can be just as meaningful a day and can help a teacher grow and develop as a professional in a similarly meaningful way.  As Jedcamp continues to grow and spread, it is important to convince stakeholders and decision-makers in schools that Jedcamps should be considered equally among the other professional development opportunities afforded to schools.  And, let's face it, they can be a real money-saver as well.

To all those who have run or attended a Jedcamp already - Kol Hakavod!  To those who have not done so yet - what are you waiting for?

The Most Important Year

My youngest child is about to begin second grade (where did the time go?), and while that may not seem like the most momentous change that is happening in my house this school year - our oldest is headed to high school, after all - in some ways this is a game-changing moment that is about to take place.  Why?  What earth-shattering learning happens in second grade that is more important than that which is learned in 6th or 9th grade?

The answer is simple and twofold.  At least in our school, 2nd grade is when a child learns Shemoneh Esrei and receives her first Chumash.

Learning Shemoneh Esrei means a radical change in how a child davens (prays).  Until now, davening has been about a handful of songs from the periphery of the service, as well as the all-important Shema.  However, Shemoneh Esrei is the heart and soul of every prayer service, and until this point my daughter has been missing that.  When she sees her parents and siblings davening at home or in shul, she knows the motions of Shemoneh Esrei (feet together, gentle front-to-back swaying, siddur held slightly aloft), but she has never really had access to what they were really doing.  Now she is going to know, and her davening will forever be different.

The same goes for Chumash.  Until now, her exposure to Chumash has been second-hand.  She has learned many Bible stories, often in great detail and with meticulous attention to what the text describes, but it has all been a story, perhaps no different in her mind from Ramona and Charlie Bucket.  Now those stories will have a text and words and grammar.  She will be able to recognize roots that she learned in one chapter and have now popped up in another one, and she will be on a path to notice, as generations of commentaries before her have, when something seems to be missing or askew in the text.  Many civilizations have their heritage preserved as an oral tradition; we have ours entrusted to the written word.  A child's first encounter with that written word is hopefully the beginning of a lifetime of deep and serious learning.

As we grow older, we tend to form connections with our high school teachers, our college professors, and our Rebbeim and Morot that we as young adults are privileged to learn from.  Often we forget or lose touch with the teachers who had us at our earliest stages.  And yet it is they who put us on the path towards those teachers who will educate us when we have matured and who usher us, at a very young age, into the world of Jewish learning and Jewish living.

Think before you call

David McCullough, in his masterful biography of President Harry Truman, relates the story that President Truman's desk in the oval office had a collection of angry letters that the President had written to various congressmen and senators.  Of course, this being a time long before email, if the letters were in Truman's desk, that meant that the intended recipients never saw them.  If Truman never bothered sending the letters, why write them?

A 6th grade teacher of mine once gave us advice that seemed, and still seems, to be impossible to follow.  He told us that we should think seven times before we say something to make sure that our words are not harmful, foolish, or otherwise ill-advised.  Of course, telling a room of 11-year olds to be thoughtful may seem like an exercise in futility, but as I grew up I realized that by setting the bar so high, this teacher may have really been aiming for us to think even once before speaking, something that seems like an ever-rarer occurrence in today's fast-paced, quick-response age.

Of course, the advice of my teacher is the answer to the question about Truman.  President Truman understood that when we have something to say to someone, particularly when we are angry or worked up, we need to release those words as soon as possible.  And so Truman did - onto the paper.  The mere act of writing the letters was in itself therapeutic, but Truman realized that actually sending a letter written in a fit of pique would ultimately do more harm than good and damage relationships with people that he needed to work with.  And so the letters went into the drawer, never to be seen by their intended targets recipients.

These thoughts come to mind as we are getting ready to embark on another school year.  In our Middle School, it will be our second full year running a 1:1 iPad program.  In thinking of the various pros and cons of such a program, one seemingly side issue comes to mind.  By equipping our students with devices that are always online, we are providing them with an easy and quick way to contact their parents as soon as they feel the need to do so.  While our long-standing policy to not allow cellphones in school largely muted constant communication between parents and children during the day, in this case the devices are completely legal and even sanctioned, and it is next to impossible to prevent students from switching to email when a teacher critiques them or a social situation explodes or they just feel like saying hi.

What is so wrong with this?  Don't schools constantly speak about wanting to partner with parents in the education of their children?  Aren't we happy that parents take an interest in what is going on in school?  Well, yes - but we need to consider what is lost when that involvement becomes too much, too soon.  I have received phone calls from parents complaining about something happening in a particular class while that class is still taking place.  In other words, the child has not had the chance to speak with the teacher, to voice his or her displeasure or discomfort, to work to find a solution, to consult with the various other adults in the building who are here to help everyone work out various issues.  Instead, the child has immediately circumvented the process and the parent has been complicit in doing so.

Why is this a problem?  A big part of school, and certainly middle school, is gaining the social skills that one needs to navigate difficult situations in life.  I have spent a good deal of time coaching students on how to approach teachers that they have had a disagreement with, and in most cases I insist that the student handle the situation on their own.  More often than not, not only is the particular situation resolved, but the student gains a new appreciation for the teacher, and vice-versa, and future problems are often forestalled.  When parents take the "snowplow" approach, trying to smooth a path for their children, they are sacrificing long-term social skills for short-term relief, to the ultimate detriment, not benefit, of their children.

When every adult is equipped with the ability to text and email immediately, it can be exceedingly tempting to make use of that ability all the time.  I have spoken to many adults who have a hard time not reaching for their phones when they have a lull in their day.  As we begin a new school year, it is important for us to realize that sometimes the fastest way is not always the best way.

No Words (but I'll write some anyway)

Tis was not how I intended to get back into blogging.  I have been saving up a semester's worth of posts and ideas.  I am currently at ISTE, the major education technology conference of the year and have several thoughts to share as a result.

But all of that will have to wait.  There is only one topic to discuss today.  After two and a half weeks of praying and hoping, we received the horrible news yesterday that three of our brothers had been found murdered.  The past twenty-four hours have been a tear-fest, as we have been reading and watching, listening to the painful yet noble eulogies by the parents of the slain teenagers, awed by the midnight vigils that broke out in public squares across Israel, and left to cope with a cocktail of sadness infused with anger laced with helplessness.

Many have already published their thoughts, and I am not sure how much more I have to add.  Trying as always to remain faithful to this blog's mission of being focused on education, a few thoughts from an educator's perspective.

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Many have already noted the amazing and seemingly unprecedented sense of unity among world Jewry that has been pervasive over the past few weeks.  All of our fights over theological matters large and small have been largely put aside as Jews of all stripes have prayed for Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali.  Many have also commented how it is a shame that it takes moments of tragedy to unite us, and while that is true, it is also not unique to the Jewish people.  To be honest, I don't expect an era of peace among all Jews to be ushered in,  and I expect that we will continue to have our differences and to fight about them.  But perhaps, just perhaps, we can peel away some of the hatred that has built up alongside those differences.  One of the deleterious effects of the world of social media is the quick escalation of arguments from mild disagreements to fights to the death, with name-calling, polarization of views, and delegitimization of others (and not only their opinions) being sadly de rigeur. For the past three weeks, we were able to speak to one another as fellow Jews.  May we continue to see each other that way three weeks from now.

The world of social media has also highlighted another important point, and that is that those of us living outside of Israel are very much in galut, in exile.  And, truth be told, there are two sides to this story.  In some ways, it has never been easier for us to stay connected to what is going on in Israel.  Every potential new piece of evidence, every update from the police, every call for prayer has been instantly broadcast to us via Facebook and Twitter and a hundred different news sites.  We were able to easily mobilize to contact our elected officials demanding that they put pressure on Hamas.  And, in the end, we found out about the discovery of the boys' bodies in the moment, as our streams and news feeds began trickling and then flooding with the news.

But at the same time, there was a surreal sense to it all.  I found out the news while sitting on the floor in a conference center, surrounded by 20,000 other people of whom only about 150 were even following the story.  As I bumped into the other Jewish educators who are here with me, we exchanged knowing looks and solemn reflections, but the world moved on around us as normal.  By contrast, the State of Israel came to a near halt, ushering in a national day of mourning that even from afar we can sense was tangible and palpable.  Hundreds of thousands attended the funerals today and likely everyone else was watching on TV.  That sense of national grief cannot be replicated in Teaneck or Riverdale or Chicago.  The collective Jewish body is in deep pain today, but the pain is so much more acute near the heart of the nation.

This is not a call for everyone to pick up and make Aliyah tomorrow.  Life is much more complex that than and each of us has our own calculations. But, at a minimum, each of us who still lives outside of Israel should be reminded that we are missing something.  For those of us in America, even the biggest pessimist has to admit that we are welcomed and accepted like never before in Jewish history and yet we should be concerned that that acceptance could cause us to lose our focus as to where we can best live as Jews.  Israel has to be more than another Disneyland or another smorgasbord for us; we have to recognize and teach our students that it is the only place that we can live fully Jewish lives.  I was planning on discussing this message from a more optimistic standpoint, as the upcoming shemita year would present a reminder that there are mitzvot that can only be fulfilled and experienced in Israel.  The tragic murders of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali reminds us that our connection to and identification with our Jewish brothers can also only attain its fullest potential when we are together in our land.

May the memory of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali inspire us in the future in the same ways that their disappearance inspired us in the recent past.  יהי זכרם ברוך.

Why PBL is Hard for Students

As readers of this blog well know, I spend a non-insignificant amount of time thinking about and experimenting with Project Based Learning.  Over the past few years, one purpose of this blog has been as an outlet for me to express ideas about PBL and get feedback, and at the same time to share my own experiences in implementing PBL in the hopes that others who have an interest in trying it will be able ti find ideas to adapt for their own classrooms.


However, one area that I have rarely focused on is PBL from the student perspective.  One of the great selling points of PBL is its ability to increase student motivation and interest by providing them with greater "voice and choice" in their own learning, by setting up units with driving questions meant to spark their interest, and with seeking out authentic audiences that help students realize that the material that they are learning in class actually matters to the world at large.

All of that may be true, but on a practical level, I am constantly encountering a very big roadblock that students face when doing PBL.  While students may, on some level, crave independence and may enjoy the freer classroom environment that accompanies a PBL unit, the fact is that students need to be taught how to be independent learners.  Unless a school has been fostering this since 1st grade, most students have likely been taught to be good listeners and to look for "right" answers - and PBL often works against those impulses.

If you have ever had an obsessive notetaker in your class, then you know full well what I am referring to.  Think about that student who writes down every word that you say, and constantly raises his or her hand to make sure that they wrote down exactly the right thing.  Why do students do this?  Sometimes because they are really interested in learning, but more often because they have learned the rules of the game of school - come to class, get down really good notes, and ultimately turn those notes into correct answers on tests or projects or quizzes.  There is a certain comfort that accompanies this mindset - the information comes from a trusted authority (the teacher), can be easily checked for accuracy (by asking the teacher), and gets confirmed in its accuracy on assessments.  To top it off, such students generally earn praise as being "good students" for having mastered the skill of, basically, obedience.

And then those students enter a PBL classroom.  Now the trusted authority is no longer providing a reliable wellspring of information.  Instead, the students has to trust himself and his ability to find a source, know that it is reliable, read the source, and interpret it correctly.  Of course the teacher will be by at some point to steer the student back to the correct path if a mistake has been made, but that reassurance is not immediate and that time lag can be very jarring for some students.  As PBL projects are somewhat open-ended, students often ask myriads of questions as to whether their idea is acceptable.  Again, they are looking for something as concrete and well-defined as a test, and that type of assessment just is not forthcoming.  It can be unnerving.

How can we help students get past this roadblock?  In the same way that we teach children to do anything else, beginning with teaching them to walk.  We stand a few feet back and let them try, knowing that they will occasionally stumble but that they will eventually figure it all out.  When students in my PBL classes come to me with infinite questions, I answer the ones that I know are a bit beyond them, but I send them back to work on the ones that I am confident they can solve with a little more effort.  And if they make a mistake, so what?  I will be there soon enough to catch them before they drift too far off course.

Mercava - The Future of Jewish Education or merely a part of it?

For the past week or so, it has been hard to escape this video about a new internet portal for Jewish educational resources and material known as Mercava.  In a nutshell, the vision of Mercava is to make as much Jewish content available in as engaging a manner as possible, complete with all sorts of tools and bells and whistles that will make it "the future of Jewish education".

A number of educators have already chimed in to support or raise questioning eyebrows at these claims.  Over at the Lookjed listserv, several well-respected educators have expressed skepticism that Mercava is merely the latest "flavor of the month" that purports to be a cure-all to whatever ails us.  My friend Seth Dimbert has offered a glimpse into what currently exists on Mercava and is also not so convinced that there is a lot happening (in fairness, the end of the video announces this July as the real roll-out date).  Sounding a more positive note, the ever-thoughtful Tzvi Pittinsky, who has already viewed their live presentation a few times, is quite upbeat about all that Mercava has to offer.

Me? Not surprisingly, I have a few thoughts on the matter.

1) I know that this video is probably aimed more at potential funders than at teachers, administrators, or current day school parents, but why does every new idea in Jewish education have to refer to the current state of Jewish education as being abysmal?  This video starts out basically saying that without Mercava, we are going to lose thousands of children to Yiddishkeit.  Someone please enlighten me - is this really what funders want to hear?  And do they actually believe it?  Do they not see the growth in day school enrollment, fledgling Jewish communities, Shana baAretz programs, and so on and so on?  Of course we can be doing better, and of course we have problems and students that we do not succeed with - but I do not think that we are failing in the way that this video suggests.

2) Why do we think that Mercava is going to do something qualitatively different than the many tools that are already out there?  As Seth points out, we already have online texts (such as Sefaria.org, see my review of it here), apps that can provide for all sorts of linking (such as ThingLink), many ways of creating instructional videos - and all of those things come free.  Yes, Mercava is planning on doing this with much better quality - but is the success of a classroom reducible to the difference between a video that I make on my own using Camtasia Studio and a similar video made by someone trained by Disney?

3) While Judaic Studies currently lacks a massive collection of online video-based material, such materials have existed for several years over in the world of General Studies.  Has there been a noticeable uptick in student interest and motivation as a result?  Have these tools even been around long enough for there to be any valid studies?  Without knowing the answer to those questions, I am not sure that we can make any concrete claims about similar tools in Judaic Studies.

4) Finally, we need to understand what any talk of a crisis in Jewish education is about.  I rarely hear anyone bemoan the fact that students have not memorized the names of the Meraglim or that they have not learned enough mishnayot or that they have not completed part one of the Mishna Berura (all lamentable things, but not usually the topic of discussion).  Instead, the negative talk about Jewish education is generally about how well we are or are not communicating a love for Judaism and for learning to our students.  Love is not something that comes via a computer - it comes from people.  Mercava could wind up being everything that it hopes to be, and it will all be relatively worthless without well-trained teachers to skillfully implement it into their daily lessons and units.  So, yes, Mercava may be part of what the future of education looks like (and, let's be honest, it already is looking like that), but I do not quite see how they will be more than a very effective and useful tool.

Now, if someone wanted to develop some Torah-based video games that would be X-box worthy, that would be something...

Guest Post: PBL in a 6th Grade Mishna Class

Rabbi Simcha Schaum (@simchaschaum) teaches 4th and 6th grade Judaic Studies at Yavneh Academy in Paramus, NJ.  He is an enthusiastic PBL'er and has used it to much success in his classes.  He has generously agreed to share with us his review and description of his most recent PBL unit in 6th grade.

One of my goals in teaching 6th Torah Shebe’al Peh (with Mishnah as its starting point) as a subject that is dynamic, exciting, and relevant. In my first year-or-so of using PBL to teach Mishnah, PBL seems to best accomplish this goal.



My 6th grade Mishnah classes were nearing the end of the 4th of Berachot – containing Mishnayot that are mainly about different aspects of prayer – and I was searching for PBL ideas that were could be somewhat ‘authentic.’ Since the two mishnayot we were up to (4:5-6) discuss some laws of how to pray on a trip – when many of the ideal conditions for prayer are unavailable – I decided that my students would use their knowledge of these mishnayot (and some related halachot) to create educational materials for a population that could actually use this knowledge in practical way: Jewish kids at sleep-away camp. After all, camps take trips all the time, be they sleepovers in the woods or days at an amusement park. The campers have to pray on the trips, and perhaps the camps may use their time on trips as a “teachable moment” to teach
some of these halachot – and our materials would come in handy to help them teach these halachot.

After clearing it with my supervisor (thanks, Aaron!), I pitched this idea to several camps, asking if they would take and use our educational materials and if they wouldn’t mind sending someone to whom we
could present our designs in person. Camps responded with enthusiasm and, while not everyone was able to come, three popular camps sent representatives – including Morasha and Moshava, whose directors came.

The PBL came in two parts: designing educational materials and presenting these materials in a way that shows mastery of the laws and their derivation from the Mishnah. To make their materials, I encouraged the students to make brochures or double-sided pages – small enough to laminate and send to camp. On these materials, they were to present the halachot about what to do in two typical camp situations. For example, what to do if one must pray on a moving bus (where one cannot stand up or may not know which direction to face). For their presentations, I required the students to write up their presentation  grade Mishnah is for my students to view scripts on Google docs (which is easy in our 1:1 environment), which they shared with me as well, so I could check their progress in real time.

In the presentations, they were required to cite parts of the Mishnayot in Hebrew and explicitly connect those citations to at least one of the practical laws displayed on their educational materials. This was
especially important, as these particular mishnayot give examples that are no longer common, such as one who finds himself riding a donkey or wagon. Properly applying these rules to modern situations was a
must, since it would mean that the students truly understood the legal principles behind the mishnayot and, would hopefully experience the relevance of the Halachic process as well.

The students really worked hard on their materials. Motivated, at least partially, by the opportunity to present to prestigious visitors (quite a few students attended or plan to attend these camps), my students got right
to work. They learned and worked with intensity (and would even start working before I arrived in the classroom) and ended up doing some really nice work. My students gave strong presentations showed materials that were nicely done.

For the first time, I created a project calendar that had important project benchmarks, such as when the materials were due, when they should start and finish making their presentation scripts, and, of course,
the tentative presentation date. At the beginning of each day, I would review the calendar with my students and point out what was expected by the end of that day. The calendar helped keep the students on pace
and focused on the task(s) at hand.

Aside from the project’s completion, I also included smaller “check-in” assignments along the way, to check how the kids were learning and who needed extra help. I gave a couple of quizzes on the wonderfully
simple iPad app, Socrative, and also asked my students to create notes, using Evernote, on the mishnayot they were learning. On these notes, they recorded themselves reading and translating the mishnayot out loud
and typed summaries as well. These notes also accomplished the goal of making sure the students pay attention to the Hebrew Mishnah text, which students can have a tendency to ignore in favor of the more flashy aspects of creating their projects.

In the end, I believe this project was successful. In terms of the content covered, the students were able to read, translate, and summarize the Mishnah, as well as apply it to real life situations. They seemed excited
by the “real life” application of the Mishnah and their being able to connect with an “authentic audience,” as well as by the opportunity to be creative and work independently.