A Fresh Perspective on Learning Hebrew

Chadron, Nebraska is not exactly a hotspot of Judaism.  Tucked away in the northeast corner of the state, a couple of hours due south from Mount Rushmore, this town of roughly 5,000 people is a slice of small-town America - and miles and miles away from even the nearest Chabad, let alone a full-fledged Jewish community.  And so you can understand why the following encounter took me so much by surprise.

My wife and I stayed in a beautiful Holiday Inn Express in Chadron on a recent road trip, and after an early morning davening, I walked over to the breakfast area to get a drink.  Breakfast had yet to begin, and the hotel staffer charged with setting up, a lovely woman named Melissa, noticed the letters on my tallis bag.

"Do you speak Hebrew?" she inquired.

"In fact, I do."

"Aleikem Shalom!" she replied brightly, if hesitantly.

Recovering quickly from my shock, I responded "Shalom Aleichem - do you speak Hebrew?"  Again, I am barely expecting anyone to have seen an Orthodox Jew before, let alone speak Hebrew.

"I'm learning, although some of the vowels still give me problems."

"That's wonderful!", said I. "If I may ask, what inspired you to do so?"

"To get closer to god," she replied...

...and that response struck me like a bolt of lightening.  We would continue our conversation an hour or two later when I can back down for breakfast, and it was clear that Melissa was a woman of faith and conviction, who was determined to do what she could to bolster her own personal practice of religion (albeit a different religion from my own).

Our conversation got me thinking - how much discussion do we have in Jewish Day Schools about teaching Hebrew?  Beyond simply explicit Ivrit instruction, the place of Hebrew language in our instruction of other Judaic subjects, subjects where the original text is in Hebrew, is and has been a hot topic on and off for decades.  Ivrit B'Ivrit, having Hebrew being the spoken language in the classroom of Judaic subjects, is an approach whose time seems to have mostly passed (with a few notable exceptions), but even having Hebrew be the language of written work is often a struggle.  There are a myriad of explanations and justifications as to why introducing more Hebrew into the Chumash or Gemara classroom is difficult - ostensibly for the students, but sometimes for the teachers as well - but I wonder if we ever stop for a moment and consider Melissa's message:

Knowing Hebrew allows us to come closer to God.

Hebrew is the language of the Tanach, of the Mishna, of the Siddur.  It is the language through which God spoke and continues to speak to His people.  It is lashon ha-kodesh, the holy tongue, and we believe that it earns that appellation not only because of what it is used for, but because of its inherent qualities of purity.  The better we and our students know Hebrew, the more opportunities we all have to access the divine and to continually come closer to him. 

When framed in this way, it becomes harder to justify avoiding Hebrew in our teaching.  Yes, it can be a challenge, for us as much as for our students.  And, yes, real questions still have to be asked about the trade-offs involved in introducing more Hebrew to an English-speaking population.  However, we also have to think about what our goals are in our teaching and what helps us move closer to achieving those goals.  Melissa, working in a Holiday Inn in a small town in Middle America, is spending her evenings making the effort to bring herself closer to god.  Surely we can at least ask ourselves if we are doing the same.

Vin Scully, Master Teacher

Vin Scully, the great broadcaster for the Los Angeles Dodgers for almost 70 years, passed away on Tuesday night.  It has be said without exaggeration that Scully was an American icon, whose soothing voice was the soundtrack for summer evenings for three generations of baseball fans.  He was a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was described by at least one writer as the only person about whom no one had anything negative to say on Twitter.

What was it that made Scully so unique?  What was it about the way that he called balls and strikes and home runs that made him so different, so much better, and so much more memorable than the thousands of others who have done the same job over the past seven decades?  Scully did not merely report or describe the action on the field; rather, he taught it to us as only a master teacher could, and, as such, there is much about his style that every teacher can learn from.  

In what ways was Scully a master teacher?  I offer four suggestions.

1) He told us why the game mattered.  Every teacher dreads the question of "why do we have to know this?"  Sometimes, the answer is easy ("you need to know math so you can do your taxes"), and other times our answers seem, even to us, to be more contrived ("you have to learn about the Gilded Era because those who fail to learn history yadda yadda yadda").  Vin found a lesson for life in moments big and small.  

Perhaps his most significant call was when Hank Aaron took over the all-time home run record from Babe Ruth.  This was a big deal - the greatest sports star of the 20th century had held the most famous sports record of all, and now someone had come and claimed that throne from him.  But Scully went further, telling his audience, "A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol."  The moment wasn't just about baseball - it was about racism, and our ability as a nation to overcome it, and as such it was a moment that everyone, baseball fan or not, could and should care about.  Master teacher that he was, he provided a big view of the moment and thus allowed his listeners to connect and to want to tune in more.

2) He was eloquent.  Much has been written about Scully's choice of words and his ability to come up with the perfect phrase in the moment.  Legendary broadcaster Bob Costas commented that it would be impossible for someone to script their words to call the final inning of a perfect game, and yet Scully's call of the last three outs of Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965 is held up as an example of broadcasting perfection - and was done on the spot.  This was neither by design not by accident.  Scully was a lifelong learner who, like the best communicators in any field, had read and absorbed widely and deeply from a wide range of authors, broadcasters, and public figures.  He was able to draw on this vast reservoir of the best that language has to offer on a moment's notice, a skill that the best classroom teachers can certainly relate to.  Our commitment to our own development does not end when we begin teaching - it continues forever and our students benefit immensely from it.

3) He knew when to yield the floor.  In the biggest moments, after Aaron's home run and Kirk Gibson's World Series home run in 1988, Scully went silent and allowed the noise of the crowd to make the moment.  He knew that nothing he could say would have a bigger impact than the roar of the home crowd, and he pulled back so that his viewers could feel what everyone in the stadium was feeling.  Broadcasters, like teachers, have the constant temptation to dominate the stage and it is the rare breed in either field who can sense when someone else should be allowed to provide meaning, insight, or emotion.  We sometimes accomplish so much more when we seem to be doing the least.

4) He was a cheerleader.  Vin used to say that his interest in baseball began when he saw a score posted from game 2 of the 1936 World Series, which the Giants lost to the Yankees by a score of 18-4.  He felt so bad for the Giants that he immediately became a Giants fan, and a baseball fan.  For 70 years, his main role was rooting for the players on the field - for his Dodgers, of course, but really for all of the players.  He took a genuine interest in each and every one of them, learning and telling their stories, meeting them and sharing advice, and just generally being happy for their success.  The millions and millions of people who tuned in to listen to him sensed that they were listening to someone genuinely selfless, and that drew us closer to him, made us want to hear him tell us more about the men on the field.  We connect with those people that exude a sense of caring, and if that is true about a sportscaster that we never have and likely never will meet, it is certainly true of the people who walk in front of our classrooms every day.  Our students know which teachers care for them and which teachers are just checking boxes and marking papers (and time).  Vin's magnetism - and hopefully ours - was in his always reminding us that it wasn't about him - which ironically made him the one that we wanted to tune in to.

A Letter to Day School parents

Dear Parents,

It has been well over two months since we have had the opportunity and privilege to teach your children in our normal school environment.  Yes, we have been making real efforts to continue to educate our students via Zoom and other online platforms, but even for the older students who can more easily handle such situations, it is still a far cry from what we normally are able to provide and what we want to get back to providing.

At the same time, this moment presents an opportunity for most of us.  Those of you who are medical professionals and are doing the heroic front-line work of saving lives or searching for cures and vaccines are probably busier now than you were before this all started.  But most of the rest of us probably find ourselves with more time on our hands - no commuting, no endless carpools, no gym or malls or meals out, no minyan or shiurim outside of the house.  Your children are undoubtedly seeing a lot more of you, and while that can be stressful at times, it also allows you to focus on your ever-important role in the chinuch of your children.

It is often debated whether education is a science or an art.  If it is the former, the thinking goes, then there should be a collection of time-tested theories and techniques that can be taught to anyone willing to commit themselves to it.  If it is an latter, then we are looking for teachers who possess a certain undefinable yet unmistakable spark of talent or inspiration that propels them into that hallowed realm of "everyone's favorite teacher" status.

I would suggest that the teaching-as-art metaphor has another aspect to it.  An artist is only as good as the medium on which he deploys his talents.  A cheap piece of notebook paper is nothing compared to an expensive canvas, paints come in varying qualities, and a potter's clay must be mixed just so in order for it to be molded to the exact shape that the artisan desires.

As teachers, we can take all of our knowledge and skill and pizzazz and bring them into the classroom in our efforts to impart knowledge and hopefully a love for the subject matter to your children.  However, every teacher knows that not every "canvas" is the same.  Every student brings something different to the classroom - not only in terms of their ability, but also in terms of what they are motivated to do and what they find valuable and important.  Teachers can try to improve those qualities of the canvas, but the truth is that those are the things that are forged at home.  Even before you think your child is paying attention, they are noticing what you consider to be important and what you value.  By the time a child enters school, he or she has spent four years being formed, and they will continue to build on that every day of their lives.  Now that they are spending all of their waking time with you, here are a few areas where you can make a tremendous impact over the next few months:

1) Tefilla - From the youngest grades, schools teach children to daven, adding more and more tunes and paragraphs each year, and hopefully introducing lessons on the meaning and purpose of davening as the students are mature enough to appreciate it.  But any educator will tell you that by Middle School, you can tell a lot about the parents' attitude towards davening from the attitude that their child brings with them.  For now, tefilla is being done at home, which means that your children will see you doing it.  For now, there is no such thing as coming late, or talking during davening, or complaining about the chazzan.  For now, all that exists are your moments of connecting with God.  Let your children see how important that is to you.

2) Torah - It's almost axiomatic - the doctor's kid has the best Science Fair project, the finance guy's kid wins the Stock Market Game, and the Rabbi's kid gets top marks on Gemara tests.  But while the Rabbi might not understand markets and the finance whiz might be clueless about genetics, raising a child who feels that Torah is an essential component of our lives can be done by just about anyone, regardless of their level of Torah knowledge.  Find something to learn with your child, even for just a few minutes, even for just a few times a week.  That little bit of time investment will communicate loads about the value that you place on Torah study and will give you new and significant topics to discuss with your children.

3) Shabbat - While we all know that Shabbat is the day for family, how much time did we devote to our family on an average Shabbat back in January?  Between catching up on sleep, hanging out at the kiddush, and long meals with multiple families where the adults talk for hours while the kids eat, bentch, and run, perhaps we did not always take advantage of this most special of days.  Well here we are - davening is shorter, there are no kiddushim, and meals are just with our nuclear families.  To call this a golden opportunity to improve family bonds and to better appreciate the beauty of Shabbat would be a massive understatement.

Over the past two decades, there has been a massive increase in programming in Jewish Day Schools.  While some of that is a result of evolving notions of education, a lot of it is also an attempt to provide religious inspiration to our students, many of whom have not been finding elsewhere as everyone's lives have become more and more busy and chaotic.  With much of that chaos currently on hold, you have a chance to provide that inspiration to your children - and, believe it or not, they are so willing to receive it from you.  We continue to be ready to work our artistic talents on these precious canvasses - and we wish you much success in this unforeseen moment when you can significantly impact the overall quality and receptivity of those canvasses to what we have to teach them.

Looking forward to continuing to partner with you,

Your Children's Teachers

The Coronavirus will change everything! (Spoiler: not really)

The past month has been one of upheaval for every aspect of our world.  As people have retreated into quarantine, businesses have closed, and life has moved online, everyone has tried to figure out how to remain positive, sane, and solvent for what is still an undetermined amount of time.  Education has been impacted along with everyone else, with the rapid popularity of Zoom and other video-conferencing tools allowing many classes to continue while teachers and students are confined to their homes.  Teachers at all levels of comfort with technology have figured out how to reconfigure their lessons, and administrators have been working with their faculties to figure out how to alter academic expectations and maintain a sense of normality and stability for their students.

As would be expected, there has also been a surfeit of articles and blogposts about how this is going to change education forever.  Often based on the tired complaint that our current system of education was designed during the industrial revolution and has not changed much since*, these writers posit that now that people have been shown that everyone can teach online, teachers will be forced by mass pressure to radically change their method of instruction.

*To my mind, this complaint is a lazy one.  It is generally stated that whole-class frontal instruction was created to help mass-produce students who all knew the same thing, and that such an approach should be thrown out because we have now discovered new and exciting and more effective ways to teach.  It ignores the fact that some of those new ways require more teachers and other resources, and thus cost more, as well as the fact that every generation has put forth its educational panaceas that do not always stick (open schools, anyone?).  On top of that, there are innovations from the industrial revolution which are still essentially with us, such as the assembly line, but have been tweaked and improved over time.  Whole class frontal teaching is not always the most effective approach for each individual student, but it can be very effective if done properly and with an appropriate mix of other instructional methodologies.

Leaving aside the fact that our schools today are a far cry from the schools of even thirty years ago in terms of instructional methodology, awareness of and sensitivity to the differing academic, social, and mental needs of students, and even curricular goals, what I think the past month has really shown is that online teaching may be a substitute for content delivery, but fails miserably in replacing school.  Even for content delivery, younger students (definitely below grade 6, and even for some at that age and older) often do not have the independence or the patience to sit in front of a screen and focus on a lesson for more than twenty minutes at a time, a few times per day.  Several high schools in my area initially tried replicating their 8-9 hours of instruction online and quickly retreated, realizing that there is only so much that students can handle virtually.  College professors who pontificate about the future of education being online should realize that they are working with twenty year-old students who take about 12 hours of class per week even when they are on campus, not ten year-olds who restlessly manage to complete 6 hours of schooling every day.

More important is the fact that attending school is not just about acquiring content knowledge.  Zoom cannot replace the mentorship and guidance that teachers give during the two minutes walking from one class to another, during lunch and recess breaks, and during a million other "stolen" moments of time during the school year; Google Hangouts does not replace actually hanging out with your friends by your locker or on the bus; FaceTime is not the same as face time.  As my teacher Rabbi Yehuda Amital once said, "You can make a robot that does everything a mother does, but what kind of a child will you have?"  Our students may still be acquiring some knowledge, but they are losing out on much of the human connection that helps to make the learning process richer, deeper, and ultimately more lasting.

Eventually, we will be able to return to our schools and to resume our full complement of classes and programs.  Will there be lessons learned and a million small changes made as a result of our time teaching from a distance?  Undoubtedly there will be.  But perhaps the most significant changes will be an increased appreciation - by teachers, students, and parents alike - that education is first and foremost a people business, and that it is the personal connections that we form and nurture on a daily basis that are the real secret of the success in education.

Daf Yomi - Building a Global Beit Midrash

For obvious reasons, Daf Yomi is all the rage these days.  Over 110,000 packed a football stadium and a basketball arena in the New York area last Wednesday for the Agudah-sponsored Siyum HaShas, and countless smaller siyumim have been made around the world in the days since.  In Teaneck, over 300 people came out on Sunday morning for an event launching the new cycle of Daf Yomi, and with good reason it is assumed that perhaps as many as half a million people learned the first daf of Masechet Brachot on the same day, a feat both unprecedented and unimaginable to previous generations.  Over the next few days and weeks, countless people who never before saw themselves as candidates to finish Shas will at least take the first steps along that path.

Consistent with Newton's third law, all of this positive action produces the inevitable and predictable reactions.  Daf Yomi is not the ideal way of learning; it is too fast; it is too slow; it is too superficial.  The critiques come from both the halls of Yeshivot as well as from secular Talmud scholars - and they all contain a modicum of truth to them.  However, they also strike me as largely irrelevant, and for two reasons that I wish to elaborate upon.

Reason #1 - The mitzva of Talmud Torah
Rambam (Hilchot Talmud Torah 1:8) rules that a person is obligated to establish fixed times for Torah learning every day and every night, based on the pasuk in Sefer Yehoshua - v'hagita bo yomam va-layla.  Shulchan Aruch (O.C. 155:1) codifies this as well, and emphasizes the need to make this time a permanent fixture in one's day.  Granted, neither one demands that the learning in question be the study of Gemara, and certainly not the amount demanded daily by Daf Yomi.

However, Daf Yomi is perhaps the most successful program of study that makes a daily demand that one learn a certain amount.  The one course of learning mandated by the Gemara, namely the requirement to review the weekly parsha with a commentary (shnayim mikra v'echad targum - Brachot 8a), only requires us to finish the parsha over the course of the week, and thus one could fulfill that obligation by waking up early on Shabbat morning and spending an hour or two reading through the parsha.  Only Daf Yomi requires its adherents to show up every day without fail, with no regard to busy days, vacation days, holidays, or any other type of days.

But, but, but!!! What about all of those other "Yomi" programs - Nach Yomi, Mishna Yomi, Mishna Berura Yomi?  Don't they count as learning?  Of course they do - but we have to recognize that they all were created in the shadow of Daf Yomi.  If mishna is more one's speed, then by all means, he or she should focus on mishna.  If Tanach works for you - go for it.  And if you are learning in Yeshiva and you have time for serious analysis far beyond what is involved in Daf Yomi, then certainly you should expend your energies there.  The genius of Daf Yomi is that its widespread and growing acceptance forces everyone to answer the question of "What are you learning today?" - and forces us to answer it every single day, exactly as Rambam and Shulchan Aruch have ruled.  Your answer to the question can be that you are doing Daf Yomi, or it can be that you are learning something - anything - else.  But your answer cannot be "nothing".  Daf Yomi has elevated the issue of learning every day to the status of a national priority and thus even if it is not for you, it pushes you to figure out what is.

Reason #2 - The Global Beit Midrash
There is a disheartening comment by the Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 2:1) that states that for every 1,000 people who begin to learn Tanach, 100 will advance to learn Mishna.  From that 100, 10 will move on to Gemara, and only 1 of those who advance to the level of hora'a, meaning that they will be qualified to offer halachic instruction.  On the face of it, it sounds like an educational system with a fairly low success rate.

Of course, those numbers are not set in stone and they do not have to remain static.  Centuries of Jewish thinkers, from the Sages to the Maharal to modern-day educators, have offered pedagogical, methodological, and psychological advice as to how to enhance education, reach more students, and create learners who will absorb more of what they are taught and be able to analyze that material at ever-higher levels.

However, on its most simple level, the Midrash is saying that Torah learning is challenging.  To be an accomplished Torah scholar requires one to master a wide range of texts written over several millenia, in multiple languages and dialects, in often opaque and complex writing styles.  There are more books to master than there are minutes in a year, and every volume seems to cross-reference every other volume.  Viewed from that perspective, one out of a thousand does not seem so bad.

It is here that the sheer popularity of Daf Yomi becomes its strength, by raising the numbers of people who enter into the pool in the first place.  While there are undoubtedly some for whom Daf Yomi is not the best way to spend the time that they have available for learning, for so many more that time was not being used for learning in the first place.  True, for many of those individuals attending a Daf Yomi shiur will be the highest level of learning that they will attain - and that alone is an amazing accomplishment!  However, the more people who involve themselves in the daily study of Gemara, the more likely that a few of them will push beyond and become the people giving the Daf Yomi shiur, and perhaps even go beyond that.  Further, as was highlighted at the Siyum HaShas this past week, the result of children seeing their parents involved in daily study of Gemara is likely to be children who follow in their parents' footsteps, again expanding the pool of people who commit themselves to serious Torah learning.  If a rising tide lifts all boats, then the tide of Daf Yomi is currently a high one indeed.

Rav Meir Shapiro, in founding Daf Yomi, famously dreamed of two Jews from different countries and different stations in life being able to chance upon one another on a train and be able to converse about the daf that they both happened to be learning.  As Daf Yomi continues to gain in popularity with each new cycle, those encounters become more common and the broader Jewish world continuously crystallizes into an international Beit Midrash.

Transmitting our Vision to the Next Generation

In a letter written to his wife Abigail, future President John Adams wrote, “I must study Politics and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry, Mathematics and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematics and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Music, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.”  Though often underrated as a Founding Father, Adams had a clear view as to the purpose of the grand experiment that he and his compatriots were undertaking - they would occupy their time with the necessary activities of nation-building so that the next generation could focus on building a thriving and thoughtful nation. And that would, in turn, allow the third generation the opportunity to engage in those pursuits which were more aesthetically pleasing, intellectually stimulating, and personally elevating.

The pioneering visionaries who founded our first local day schools decades ago in industrial hubs such as Jersey City and Paterson may have had a similar thought process to that of President Adams.  Ivrit curricula and Erev Shabbat programming were the farthest things from their minds. Their role was to undertake the monumental task of creating Jewish schools and to convince people to entrust their children to the educators in those schools, in order to preserve Jewish life in America for another generation.  As our community has grown and our schools have increased both in number and in size, we have indeed had the luxury to no longer worry about the existence or survival of the schools, but rather to focus on the degree to which we are able to care for the educational, spiritual, and emotional needs of each and every one of the thousands of students in our schools.

And yet.  And yet for all of our successes in building communal institutions to a degree of sophistication unimaginable to previous generations, we nevertheless find so many of our children struggling to find meaning and purpose within the framework that has been bequeathed to them.  How often do our children not see the connection between the lesson learned in Chumash class and the behavior expected of them in their daily lives? How many children show up in shul on Shabbat, unsure where to go or what to do? How many seconds after Shabbat - hopefully, after Shabbat - do our teens turn on their phones so that they can maintain their “streak”? (Ask a teen if you’re not sure what that means.)

There is an old adage in wealth management that serves as a useful counterpoint to John Adams’ vision.  It claims that “the first generation makes the money, the second generation spends the money, and the third generation goes to work for someone else”.  Studies have shown that somewhere around ten percent of family-owned businesses are still run by the grandchildren of the founders, and a surprisingly low percentage of wealth in this country has been inherited.  Why is this so? Simply stated, as each generation inherits wealth, it fails to also inherit the appreciation for what went into creating that wealth. Never having experienced a sense of want, they don’t understand the effort involved in maintaining that which they were given.  Many businesses frame the first dollar that they earn; children lucky enough to receive birthday money from their grandparents tend to run out and spend it.

As with material wealth, so it is with spiritual wealth.  The founders of our older schools were not all as halachically knowledgeable as today’s communal leaders are, and yet they intuitively understood that the Jewish community in America could not survive without an educational system that would provide their children with both the knowledge of and love for Judaism.  Their success was seen in the growth and development of our communities, as Bergen County has grown from a handful of shuls, three schools, a few kosher food establishments, and no local mikvah in the mid-1970s, to the amazing array of institutions, services, and organizations (even multiple Shomer Shabbat sports leagues) that we are so familiar with today.  Asking for accommodations due to one’s religion was once a risky proposition; today it earns supportive national coverage for our Yeshiva sports and mock trial teams. Thankfully, the vast majority of our children have rarely, if ever, had to sacrifice in order to maintain their observance.

And therein lies our challenges, both as educators and as parents.  How do we instill in our children the sense that all that they have inherited was built for them so that they may do something even greater with it?  How do we teach them that there is more to do, when so much has been done already?  How can we help them find meaning in something that was simply presented to them?

So many recent innovations in what takes place in schools flow from an attempt to answer these questions.  From looking for teachers who are as inspirational as they are intellectual, to color war and chagigot, to Friday night onegs and winter break kollels - all of these and more are efforts to touch the souls of our students and to provide them with opportunities to push themselves religiously and spiritually.  It is a monumental and never-ending task in an increasingly distracted age, and it is a task that cannot be accomplished by schools alone.

As parents, we have to ask ourselves if we are doing everything we can to inspire our children to continue to strive religiously.  Do we make the same effort to get them to shul that we do to get them to little league? Do we encourage them to admire and have as role models people who exude middot, or celebrities whose morals may be far from our ideals? Do we send our children to learn in Israel, while silently praying that they don’t become “too frum” while there?  In short, do we know what we want for our children, or do we assume that raising them in a strong and vibrant community is enough to ensure that they will come out fine?

John Adams was wise to clearly articulate his vision.  His son, John Quincy Adams, would follow in his
footsteps to the presidency, his grandson, Charles Francis Adams, would become an ambassador,
and his great-grandson, Henry Adams, would author one of the most important and celebrated
American memoirs.  The task before us is to do the same - to articulate, first to ourselves and then to
our children, on an ongoing basis, our vision and dreams for their spiritual and religious growth and
development. By doing so, we will hopefully instill in our children the passion and commitment that
our predecessors possessed.

(Originally published in the New Jersey Jewish Link, May 17, 2018)

Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein ob"m - Ish haEmet

Much has been said and written over the past week and a half concerning the legacy of my teacher and Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein.  His vast Torah knowledge, his familiarity with English literature and other academic pursuits, his sterling middot, and his ability to always be the adult in the room, to always be the individual who could weigh multiple sides of a complex issue and come out with a position that you may not have agreed with but that you had no choice but to respect.  These aspects and many others have already been covered by those who knew and understood Rav Lichtenstein far better than I ever will.

So what can I add?  Perhaps not much.  However, one aspect of Rav Lichtenstein seems to have been covered only en passant, and perhaps my two cents can be useful in the continuing efforts to fill out the portrait of this towering figure.

I do not recall the question that he was answering, but somewhere during a sicha to American students during my first year at Yeshivat Har Etzion, I distinctly recall Rav Lichtenstein beginning a response by saying, "The Stoics say - and it's also a Gemara in Bava Batra..."

My natural first reaction at the time was to wonder who the Stoics were, and to simultaneously be impressed that Rav Lichtenstein cited their thought (of course, this is something that all of Rav Lichtenstein's students soon got used to).  My second reaction was to marvel over the fact that this great Rosh Yeshiva was citing the Gemara, which made up the very air that we breathed in Yeshiva, as a secondary and ancillary source to a school of Greek philosophy.

Over time, I came to realize that Rav Lichtenstein was not showboating, he was not showing off his knowledge of Greek philosophy, and he was not attempting to prove his Modern Orthodox bona fides or flaunt his worldliness by highlighting the secular source before the Torah one.  Rather, this was just one of countless examples of Rav Lichtenstein's strict commitment to truth in everything that he did.  For Rav Lichtenstein, every field of knowledge that he knew, every one of the seven or so languages that he had at his disposal - every bit of it existed to further elucidate the world of Torah and Avodat Hashem, and he recognized that sometimes Greek philosophy or English literature or the French language contained a word or an idea that could be expressed better by those thinkers or writers than could by done by the Tanaim and Amoraim and Rishonim.  It took effort to be straining to understand a complex two-hour shiur in Hebrew and then to realize that a French phrase had been slipped in, but Rav Lichtenstein did so not to show off his French (he was born in France, after all), but because his pursuit of precision, of whole and unvarnished truth, virtually forced him to make use of whatever shred of knowledge he had in his vast mental storehouse in order to come as close as possible to that truth.

Many of us who teach or write or speak publicly are prone to name-dropping and the need to make cultural references.  Sometimes it is because we feel it will make us look more sophisticated and educated.  Sometimes it is because we are trying to connect to our audience, and we feel that a good quote from the Simpsons or Mad Men - not quite the height of culture - might possibly do the trick.  I believe that Rav Lichtenstein raised the bar for us in this regard.  He taught us that our involvement with worldly culture should ultimately be for the purpose of improving our commitment to Torah and Avodat Hashem.  Rather than indulge in lower culture with the excuse that it will help our teaching, that we have to bring ourselves down to our students so that we can then elevate them, Rav Lichtenstein's example was that we can immerse ourselves in the "best that has been thought and said" in an effort to challenge and inspire those who we teach to expand their horizons in the pursuit of  God's truth.  I suspect that many of Rav  Lichtenstein's students developed reading lists and chose college majors at least partially in order to understand his references, and hopefully we are able to remember that our goal is not to name drop, but to use those expanded horizons for the noblest purpose of all.

Despite what everyone says, Pesach really is wonderful

Starting a few days after Purim each year, my Facebook feed begins lighting up with tales of woe and prophecies of doom.  Pesach is on the way, and that means that everything that is bad and wrong about being an observant Jew is about to descend upon us - from the scourge of kitniyot, to overzealous shiurim of matza and maror, to the need to clean every bathroom tile, to the problem that after two generations of Yeshiva education we somehow have tables full of people who want to offer Divrei Torah, thus producing an all-too-long Maggid.  If Jewish social historians a thousand years from now were to uncover only blogposts as evidence of the way we lived, I shudder to think what they would make of us.

What's funny is that most people I know enjoy Pesach.  Few people complain about being underfed, most people realize that eating even the strictest shiurim is still not all that much (especially when you have not eaten for upwards of three hours), many people realize that they are using Pesach as an excuse for spring cleaning (and there are probably more men helping with the cleaning than were doing so fifty years ago), and most people I know have a Maggid that is appropriate for their seder, balancing the various needs of all of the people at the table.  Most people I know look forward to the chance to reconnect with family, to create some of the most important and lasting memories for themselves and their children, and to take a break from their busy lives to reconnect religiously (although my accountant friends tend to seem a bit stressed).

So what is all of the rage about?  Perhaps, playing to stereotype, we simply like to complain.  Perhaps some of the frustration is real, as food prices seem a bit too high and the rise in double income families means less time to get all of the cleaning and cooking done.  Or, perhaps, if I may engage in some armchair psychology, the complaints are really proxies for larger issues (e.g. dissatisfaction with Rabbinic Judaism, the "turn to the right", a breakdown in tradition, the "turn to the left", a blind adherence to tradition, a love of kidney beans, etc.).  Since Pesach is a time when everyone is paying attention, as everyone wants to make sure that they are doing everything right for the holiday, now is a wonderful time for everyone to flex his or her agenda and create a little buzz around the kiddush table.

Either way, it is important for us to ask ourselves what the cost of all of the protests are.  As I wrote four years ago, our children hear our complaints even if we do not intend for them to.  Impressionable teenagers can and do open up the Jewish Week or get forwarded blogs from the Times of Israel where we self-righteously publish one-sided columns deriding venerable practices as if our entire existence is threatened by having to eat a little extra matza or not eat green beans (I admit, I don't understand that one.  On the other hand, I don't really like green beans, so I break even.).  We have to remember that there are two opportunities here that we dare not miss.  First, we can teach our children and students to become educated consumers of halacha, knowing when to ask questions, how to ask those questions, and who to ask those questions to.  Second, we have to make sure that we are presenting Pesach, and mitzvot in general, as opportunities to improve ourselves and to strengthen our connection to God.  We might not always agree with every detail, but if we miss the forest for the a few of the trees we may put the future of that forest in jeopardy.

Wishing everyone a happy and meaningful Pesach.

The Triangle Offense and Packaged Curricula

Phil Jackson is a certified basketball genius.  He has won more games as a coach than all but four other men, more NBA championships than anyone else, and his teams have a higher winning percentage than those of any other coach.  He is renowned for being the architect and chief implementer of the "triangle offense", an offensive system that supposedly is part of the key to all of his success.

So, when the New York Knicks were searching for someone to help them out of a decade-long funk, they brought in Jackson, who played for the Knicks in their championship heyday of the 1970's, to serve as the team president.  Sure, he would be able to work his triangular magic on a team that had seen few winning seasons of late and seemed to be increasingly dysfunctional.

Except that it did not work.  Jackson took over the Knicks in the middle of a lost season last year and promptly replaced the coach with one of his former players, Derek Fisher.  He then laid out the plan - the Knicks, a team made up of one superstar, one former superstar, and a collection of lesser lights, would follow their rookie coach as he directed them into the triangle offense and on to victory and back to the playoffs.  Sadly, this plan did not work, as the Knicks won only 5 of their first 41 games this season and Jackson has now publicly acknowledged that something went amiss.

How could this be?  How could something that worked so well for so long suddenly fall flat on its face in New York?  It's not as if Jackson coached in low-pressure smaller markets before this - his championships came in Chicago and Los Angeles, the next two largest media markets in the country.  If the system was designed so well that it merely needed to be installed in order to work, then why did it not work once installed?

Of course, there is another component that may have had something to do with Jackson's previous success.  His Chicago teams featured a couple of Hall of Famers named Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, and his Los Angeles teams included future Hall of Famers Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.  In other words, each of his rings can be attributed to at least two mean who are arguably among the 50 best to ever play the game.  The triangle offense may have helped, but it may not be enough to turn a mediocre team into a champion.

The tale of Jackson and the Knicks resonated with me as reminiscent of the thoughts that run through my mind every time someone pitches a new educational product or curriculum my way.  So many products promise eye-popping results, guaranteeing that my students' abilities and motivation and outputs will be massively increased, that test scores will go up, that Nobel Prizes will be coming their way because of the method that has just been perfected or the online portal that has been carefully designed or... you get the point.

Education, like sports, is a people business.  Our goal as educators is to create the conditions that will allow the most number of students to succeed to the greatest degree possible.  And when those efforts do not work, or do not work for some of our students, our next goal is to tweak the approach, or find a new approach, that will allow them to ascend the ladder of success a little further than they had before.

That is why teacher training is so much more valuable than purchasing programs that include training in how to use the program.  Our teachers need to know how to sense what their students need and how to respond when the best laid plans are not working.  For Phil Jackson, that means finding some other geometric construct.  For our teachers, that means slowly but surely developing an ever-deeper pool of resources and instincts that they can call upon when the situation calls for it.

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.

The Real Purpose of PBL

Like many of you, I took biology in 9th grade.  Never having taken another biology or anatomy course in my educational career, I am ashamed to say that there is much that I have forgotten.  One detail that pops into my mind every once in a while is that a mitochondria is the powerhouse of a cell.  I am not sure exactly what that means, or how the mitochondria works, or how something as small as a cell has so many smaller parts to it, but I am pretty sure that I am correct about that fact.

Why do I remember that fact?  Is it because my biology teacher was amazing? Perhaps.  Is it because I remembered some mnemonic such as "mighty mitochondria"?  Could be.  Is it because Julie Mitochondria was the name of the girl that I secretly had a crush on throughout high school?  Unlikely.

No, the real reason that I remember this random fact is that at some point I stayed up late studying for a biology test, memorizing all of the parts of the cell and their functions just well enough so that I would be able to regurgitate that information the next day on the test, and probably again six months later on the final.

Fast forward to today.  Like most other teachers, I still give tests from time to time.  Being a reasonably good teacher, I try to pack my tests with questions that will test not only my students' ability to memorize, but also their ability to think, to process the material and use it to answer a question that is somewhat different than the exact way that we learned the material in class.  However, I inevitably find students who are capable of providing answers that touch on the correct information, that come oh-so-close to actually demonstrating real understanding, but who nevertheless produce a response that shows that they are still collecting information points without truly comprehending what connects them into one larger system.  In my earlier example, I can explain the function of the mitochondria and the nucleus and the ribosomes, but I cannot quite explain (in my own words, of course), how a cell functions.

To my mind, this is ultimately the most important contribution of Project Based Learning (PBL) to the business of teaching.  My biology teacher (note - she was a wonderful teacher; I'm just picking on the subject since it is an area that I completely avoided, regrettably so, for the rest of my academic career) wanted me to understand cells, so she tried to build my understanding from the bottom up, hoping that by understanding each part, I would understand the whole.  Project Based Learning, by contrast, starts from the end and works backwards.  A driving question for that cell unit would be something along the lines of "What are cells and how do their discrete parts work together to sustain life?"  A culminating project that asked me to consider various diseases that afflict cells and how they do so would drive me to understand each part and what a deficiency in that part would mean for my overall health.  There is no way that writing down a few key words in the right place would get me "partial credit" for an assignment such as that.

When reconfiguring existing units to be PBL units, my longest stretches of creative thinking focus on exactly this point - what am I really trying to teach in this unit?  As a teacher of religious and legal texts, the answer is not always so obvious since the texts (Torah, Talmud) are not always divided up topically as easily as a Biology or a History textbook might be.  At times I need to combine parts of what were previously distinct units or break apart one unit into smaller pieces so that I can focus my students on one or two essential areas for understanding.  difficult as this sometimes is, it is also highly rewarding.  I emerge from the process with a much richer understanding of what I am trying to teach, and ultimately my students are engaged in a richer and more meaningful educational experience.  They are no longer working their way from one Biblical verse to the next, from one Talmudic page to the following one, but rather they are tackling defined units of knowledge and seeking to master and understand them.

Much has been made about the motivational advantages of PBL.  I have always contended that people can only be motivated, at least long-term, to do something that they feel that they can understand and can be successful doing.  A student with a great memory can perhaps be motivated to memorize lists of facts and dates and names.  But any student can potentially be motivated by the opportunity to not only seize control of their learning, but to do so in a way where the path to mastery lies clearly before them.

A Jedcamp of Our Own

I have spent considerable time on this blog over the course of the past year writing about Jedcamp.  I have been amazed at the power of the Edcamp model to bring people together, to stimulate fresh ideas, and to encourage open discussion in a fully non-threatening environment.

However, I have always wondered about the limitations of the model.  By definition, a Jedcamp is populated by a coalition of the willing.  People who come to Jedcamp are people who want to come to Jedcamp, and thus they are probably aware of how the day should run and are possibly even prepared to present or lead a session of their own.

But what about a Jedcamp where not everyone has chosen to be there?  In other words, what if a Jedcamp was like most professional development days, where people are there because their school has mandated that they be there?  Would such a Jedcamp have the same energy and excitement?  Would teachers be as willing to be involved?  To put it another way, does the Edcamp/Jedcamp model have the potential to supplant traditional professional development, or is it doomed to remain a niche phenomenon, enticing a certain type of teacher while failing to reach the majority?

We put this question to the test this past week at Yavneh Academy, where I serve as a teacher and administrator.  For our Election Day in-service, we divided the day into four parts, some for development and some for housekeeping.  For an hour and a half after lunch, we devoted the time to an in-house Jedcamp for our entire faculty.

Knowing that not everyone was familiar with the model, I had sent out several emails in the weeks leading up to the event explaining some of the rules, and I used some time during lunch on Election Day to review the major points.  A sign-up board was placed in the lunch room, allowed for two 35-minute sessions and up to five rooms at a time (we had roughly 80-90 faculty members present).  After a slow start, the board quickly began filling up, with topics as diverse as teaching through movement, balancing life as a teacher and a parent, and how to handle the convergence of Thanksgiving and Chanukah (which happens this year and not again for almost 80,000 years).  Once the board was filled and teachers had a chance to choose their first session, I stood back, held my breath and...

Success.

Within minutes, each room was bursting with colleagues who do not always have the opportunity to interact, getting to know each other and enthusiastically tackling the topics at hand.  As at the actual Jedcamps that I have been privileged to run, it was difficult to end the sessions, as teachers wanted to continue discussing and analyzing the issues that were raised in each room.  When the second session came to an end and everyone proceeded to their other meetings for the day, there was a noticeable buzz in the hallways, and several teachers came over to me to express their satisfaction with and enjoyment of this out-of-the-box approach to professional development.

So, what were my takeaways from this experiment?

1. The Edcamp model can work even when the participants "have to" be there.
2. Schools should consider a change of pace for some future PD day and allow the faculty the opportunity to make use of this model to discuss the issues that they want to talk about.
3. Hopefully, the next time I post that a Jedcamp is taking place, more teachers will be aware of what that is and may even try it out.