Master teacher and managing director of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge, Sharon Freundel, explains the impact of Jewish education in a presentation with Momentum (formerly JWRP).
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Jewish Educational Leadership
Five years ago, I had the unique opportunity to design a middle school. That kind of opportunity invites you to ask, “What if we try…,” and to creatively explore the possibilities that we often wish to pursue in education. Filled with all of the visions my colleagues and I had discussed as to what we would do if only we could start from the beginning, I sought to develop a program that encompasses the hallmarks of what we have all seen in successful educational experiences: integrated learning, authentic academic experiences that can have a broader impact, and opportunities for learning that are personally relevant and intrinsically motivating. The outcome of this quest became our Scholars Forum, a program at MILTON that explores contemporary issues through a multidisciplinary lens and that empowers students to use their learning to inform, advocate, influence, and change.
Prizmah’s HaYidion Fall 2020 edition highlighted an article written by managing director of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge, Sharon Freundel, about how collaborating through professional learning communities can better serve Jewish day schools. The article specifically focuses on Developing Embedded Expertise Program (DEEP), JEIC’s initiative that brings educational providers together with a shared goal of achieving systemic, systematic, and sustainable change in Jewish day schools across North America.
In her article Collaborating to Serve Day Schools Better, Freundel writes, “We are cognizant that while looking at the acute needs of Jewish day school education, we must support the remodeling that is taking place before our very eyes. We believe this newfound group effort among educational providers will serve to strengthen our day schools, yielding a more powerful, impactful and enduring learning experience for our students.”
According to investopedia.com, in the investment world, a value proposition refers to a company's ultimate marketing strategy to solidify its brand with consumers based on "what the company stands for, how it operates, and why it deserves their business."
So, for instance, I may want to buy a Tesla―as opposed to any other car―because:
It looks cool.
I respect Elon Musk and his values.
It offers the cutting edge of technology.
It’s better for the environment.
No value proposition can possibly be a one-size-fits-all approach, as people may have different reasons to want to buy a product.
The paradigm of value proposition can be applied to Jewish day schools. At a stressful time of online learning and exorbitant tuition fees, why should parents choose day school over Hebrew charter school, supplementary school or no formal Jewish education at all? How will Jewish day school benefit and enhance the lives of children and their families?
We discovered that schools who created positive culture change and programmatic shifts in the past are reaping the rewards of that effort today. Each of the three positive patterns below reflects a school’s years-long investment in personnel development, culture building, and the development of a shared set of underlying assumptions.
1. The administration positioned professional development and student engagement in technology as an extension of learning tools, rather than ignoring technology or making it an end in itself.
2. The administration and teachers nurtured a deep relationship of trust and empathy with faculty and staff.
3. Parents, school leadership, and professional staff, nurtured a deep level of trust and empathy.
The Spring 2020 issue of Jewish Educational Leadership, published by The Lookstein Center for Jewish Education, featured an article on resilience written by JEIC Managing Director Sharon Freundel.
In this personal piece entitled, The Roots of Resilience, Freundel reveals lessons learned from her family and the Tanakh that gave her the strength to persevere—then and still now—through traumatic life events.