In this blog article about making change, JEIC managing director Sharon Freundel echos three phases of changemaking and three roles that people play at various times, originally identified by Rabbi Justus Baird of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
“As we consider our major initiatives at JEIC, we realize that this is what we have been doing unconsciously all along,” said Freundel, naming the recent “God Expansion” initiative as just one way that JEIC is making change in Jewish day schools.
In this blog, Rabbi Dr. Jay Goldmintz maintains that, “Now, more than ever, there is a need to help students find their personal connection to the Torah they are learning, to find themselves but within the context of tradition and community.”
“This requires a shift in pedagogy,” he relates, further expounding on how he envisions this shift.
In this thought-provoking piece, Anthony Knopf maintains that “Given the prominence of ethics in Jewish tradition, an important barometer of our schools’ success should be whether those graduating have been taught to understand, internalize, and apply Judaism’s ethical values.”
He suggests several ways that practitioners can make use of a variety of approaches to help students engage more meaningfully in chesed projects and other character education activities, and urges that “Much more work needs to be done to develop innovative and integrated models for ethics education to help our students understand, internalize and apply Jewish ethical values.”
Heraclitus, a 5th Century BCE Greek philosopher has been quoted as saying, “The only constant is change.” Conversely, an early 20th Century executive at 20th Century Fox averred that “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” Even in modern times the CEO of Microsoft expressed disbelief in the constant nature of change. He once remarked, “There’s no chance that (Apple’s) iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”
I think we can all agree that nothing stays the same. Given that, the inevitability of change should apply to educational principles, as well. Why, then, are some Jewish Day Schools so resistant to incorporating change into their approaches to curriculum, pedagogy, and human development (especially social-emotional learning)?
