An Ironic, Post-Modern Passover Anecdote

Since junior year of college - that's more than 20 years ago - I've been celebrating the second seder with friends. Most of us hated our parents' seders - rushed, boring Maxwell House eat-fests - and we wanted something a little more meaningful for ourselves.

For the first ten years, there was only one rule: No parents invited - and then we had to do away with that rule too, as we started becoming parents ourselves. So now there are no rules.

The seder is run as a pot-luck: Everyone brings a dish, a bottle of wine, and contributes some cash towards rental of tables and chairs and such. The amount of text from the haggadah that gets read has declined dramatically as the number of kids at (or near) the table has surpassed the number of adults - although as the median age of our children climbs, I'm sure they'll take a more active role in shaping the evening.

For many years, the seder would be held at whoever's apartment was the biggest - for the past few years, we've been consistently in the same Park Slope brownstone. This year, however, at the last minute (the night before Erev Pesach), we had to suddenly find a new location.

This turned out to be a challenge: Most of our apartments can't accommodate around twenty adults and an equal number of kids, many under the age of two. One couple was traveling back from another country that afternoon, another had just moved into a new apartment and hadn't unpacked, a third was hosting the first seder and then working all day on Pesach, a fourth lived in - gasp - New Jersey.

But here was the most amusing complication: You see, most of us who come to this seder don't keep a kosher kitchen (especially those of us who aren't Jewish). So one couple couldn't host because they had kashered their apartment for Passover. In other words, because their place had been made ready for Pesach, it was no longer possible to have a seder there. If you ask me, that's the irony of post-modern Jewish life.

Don't worry - that friend's mom has come to the rescue, and we're hosting it at her place - if she comes, she'll be the first grandparent we've had at the seder.

Chag Kasher v'Sameach!

Good Teachers Make a Difference. No, Really?

The NY Times finally tells us what we've all known all along - and does it really, really well. I can even (almost) forgive the writer, Elizabeth Green, for ending a sentence with a preposition:

"When researchers ran the numbers in dozens of different studies, every factor under a school’s control produced just a tiny impact, except for one: which teacher the student had been assigned to."

[The photo to the right is copyright Benjamin Norman for The New York Times.] The article begins by noting that paying higher salaries does help to attract and retain the best and most qualified teachers.  However, it also notes that we need to simultaneously be focused on improving pedagogy and content knowledge through professional development,  because of the vast number of teachers that the education system requires to operate (and especially at a time when the baby-boomer teachers are retiring).

The main focus of the article is Doug Lemov, author of an as-yet-unpublished, 375-page long taxonomy of 49 essential teaching techniques (apparently, he distributes it at training seminars, and it will be available from this spring).  Much of the piece describes effective classroom management techniques that the Times illustrates with videos narrated by Lemov. I suspect that every one of our Religious School teachers would benefit from watching these brief videos - and especially the Hebrew teachers.

The article is on-line as of this morning, and already is getting much buzz around the blogosphere (a term I use derisively, btw.  Nothing better than reading a piece in which the author writes "I haven't finished reading this article yet, but I had to post...").

You'll want to read the whole article so that you can read in context little gems like these:

"All Lemov’s techniques depend on his close reading of the students’ point of view, which he is constantly imagining. In Boston, he declared himself on a personal quest to eliminate the saying of “shh” in classrooms, citing what he called “the fundamental ambiguity of ‘shh.’ Are you asking the kids not to talk, or are you asking kids to talk more quietly?” A teacher’s control, he said repeatedly, should be “an exercise in purpose, not in power.”"

"...One [student] is playing with a pair of headphones; another is slowly paging through a giant three-ring binder. Zimmerli stands at the front of the class in a neat tie. “O.K., guys, before I get started today, here’s what I need from you,” he says. “I need that piece of paper turned over and a pencil out.” Almost no one is following his directions, but he is undeterred. “So if there’s anything else on your desk right now, please put that inside your desk.” He mimics what he wants the students to do with a neat underhand pitch. A few students in the front put papers away. “Just like you’re doing, thank you very much,” Zimmerli says, pointing to one of them. Another desk emerges neat; Zimmerli targets it. “Thank you, sir.” “I appreciate it,” he says, pointing to another. By the time he points to one last student — “Nice . . . nice” — the headphones are gone, the binder has clicked shut and everyone is paying attention.

"Lemov [explains] “Imagine if his first direction had been, ‘Please get your things out for class,’ ” he said. Zimmerli got the students to pay attention not because of some inborn charisma, Lemov explained, but simply by being direct and specific. Children often fail to follow directions because they really don’t know what they are supposed to do."

The article also notes that "content can’t be completely divorced from mechanics" and that different types of knowledge - mathematics, reading, science - require not only general skills but also ones unique to the subject. The implications for Jewish education are clear: There are skill sets that make for effective teaching of, say, Hebrew, that aren't necessarily the same as teaching about holidays or transferable if you can effectively teach French. Teachers need to be able to deeply understand the material and then be able to effectively share that knowledge with a room full of students who have diverse ways of thinking and learning.

"“If I’m asking my students a question, and I call on somebody, and they get it wrong, I need to work on how to address that,” [fifth-grade math teacher Katie] Bellucci explained in February. “It’s easy to be like, ‘No,’ and move on to the next person. But the hard part is to be like: ‘O.K., well, that’s your thought. Does anybody disagree? . . . I have to work on going from the student who gets it wrong to students who get it right, then back to the student who gets it wrong and ask a follow-up question to make sure they understand why they got it wrong and understood why the right answer is right.”"

Interestingly, although Lemov's taxonomy, or a similar mathematics-content-driven approach developed by Deborah Loewenberg Ball at the University of Michigan, can be used as a metric to observe what makes for effective education, there isn't clear evidence that these skill sets can actually be taught.

"Jonah Rockoff, an economist at Columbia University ... favors policies like rewarding teachers whose students perform well and removing those who don’t but looks skeptically upon teacher training. He has an understandable reason: While study after study shows that teachers who once boosted student test scores are very likely to do so in the future, no research he can think of has shown a teacher-training program to boost student achievement. So why invest in training when, as he told me recently, “you could be throwing your money away”?"

Which brings us back to the original point: Now that we may be able to assess what skills are evidence of effective teaching, we need to offer salaries that will attract and keep the most qualified people in the classroom.

I'm encouraging all of my school faculty to read the article, and especially to watch the videos that the Times has posted. This is some good stuff.

The more things stay the same . . .

I thought this was as good a time as any to share with you a few choice quotes from David Resnick's terrific article, The Current State of Research in Jewish Education, which appears in Studies in Jewish Education, Volume III:

"... There is no deep-seated desire on the part of educational consumers to improve educational effectiveness. This is not to say that Jewish parents do not care about their children's Jewishness. Indeed, Jewish education for many American Jews serves as the key expression of their Jewishness, rather than as an instrument of educational mastery. 

"The nature of the dissatisfaction expressed by parents about school programs is usually more about the appeal of the program to the child, than about its failure to achieve particular subject matter goals.

"... Attending school, rather than achievement in school, is the primary, even if implicit, goal of Jewish education  —  at least in its supplementary form... The desire for identification rather than instructional effectiveness characterizes the culture of the Jewish school.

"Furthermore, community preoccupation with a host of other quasi-research issues — censuses of Jewish students; calculations of percentage of eligible students receiving a Jewish education; drop-out rates; retention rates; successful outreach programs — indicates concern with getting and keeping students in the educational system as the primary goal. Enhancing the instructional effectiveness of that system is not a priority.

"... Since failure to achieve even minimal learning levels has next to no social consequences (aside from mastery of Bar Mitzvah skills), there is little need for research related to the improvement of educational attainment. In this regard, it is worth bearing in mind that much of the recent push for excellence in general education has been at the behest of private industry and higher education, both of which bear the brunt of ineffective schools. No comparable institutional demand exists in American Jewish life."

This article was published in 1988.

Why my Students were Texting in Class

This story has been making the rounds - I keep hearing people referring to it - so I'm posting the link in case you haven't yet heard this idea for using technology in the classroom from Rabbi Karen Reiss Medwed. Here is an excerpt:

In designing my lesson plan, my hope, as a constructivist educator, was to create an active learning experience that would engage the students by using tools that were familiar and comfortable for them. At first my plan was to play a game, something like "Mitzvah Jeopardy." But I needed something different, something new, which would push my boundaries as an educator. Answering a text on my phone in the midst of my planning, I found my inspiration: text messaging in class as a tool for collaborative learning.

"How many mitzvot are there? Let's text a sister, a friend, Dad, as many ‘lifelines' as we want." My students eagerly clicked on their cells, and the numbers started coming in. "Do we have to fulfill all the mitzvot?" A quick yes/no text poll of everyone sparked an engaged conversation about the different understandings of commandment as obligation.

Comments from our lifelines punctuated our conversations: "My mom thinks that the mitzvot we fulfill are about making our lives feel more connected to other people." "My dad thinks we can't do mitzvot that have to do with the Temple." One friend remembered that there was "something about Israel" and how that changed which mitzvot we do.

This original post appeared on the Jewish Education blog of Boston Hebrew College, and thanks to David Wolkin for forwarding this to me in the first place.

My Favorite Quotes: Steve Lorch

This is from the January 2010 (Vol. 3, No. 4) issue of "Lev Ha'inyan," published by the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan:

...schools are not, first and foremost, academic institutions at all! Cognitive learning is not primary, and physical, social-emotional, and moral-spiritual learning are not an afterthought. No, schools are institutions of healthy human development, which means that they are institutions of learning of every kind, and the way to decide which type of learning should be prominent at any given moment is by carefully attending to the healthy-human-developmental needs of the learner or learners who are participating in that moment.

To subscribe, or read the full article, email communications@sssm.org.

Neuroscience research shows that Big Bird was right: Praise effort, not ability

I am just lifting this wholesale from a review of the book "How we Decide" by Jonah Lehrer, appearing on Boing-Boing:

"...mistakes are critical to good decision-making, as they are our best tutors. Lehrer describes a famous study from Stanford psych research Carol Dweck, who administered easy tests to 10-year-olds, who did well on it. The control group was praised for 'being smart.' The experimental group was praised for 'trying hard.'

With only this difference, the two groups were then administered progressively harder tests. Dweck discovered that the 'smart' kids did worse: they believed their initial good result was due to some innate virtue beyond their ken or control, and feared that a failure would show that they lacked this intangible. But the 'hard-trying' group had been rewarded for taking intellectual risks, and so they continued.

Afterwards, the 'smart' kids rated the hardest tests as their least favorite; the 'tryers' rated it as their most favorite."

Read the full review, by Cory Doctorow, for more about dopamine, meta-cognition, introspection, and how having too many choices leads us to make poorer decisions.

Dawn of the Chimpanzee! (Relax, folks, they're just a metaphor)

Hurray for Eli Valley, and for Makom and Ha'aretz being brave enough to post this comic onto their website, writing:

"More than its blunt critique of Israel, Israeli policy, and Israelis, the cartoon points an accusing finger at all aspects of the Jewish establishment of the United States. Eli Valley is clearly no outsider to the Jewish community. The cartoon jabs at Jewish schools, camps, Israel advocacy programs, and even pokes fun at a sociologist whose work is well-known in the Jewish world. Valley himself is a regular cartoon contributor to The Forward newspaper.

We may disagree with the cartoon's sentiment, but we cannot accuse it of ignorance."

Here's the link to the comic, Dawn of the Chimpanzee!, in its original home on Gawker, where the comments forum is surprisingly thoughtful.

Thanks to Alex Sinclair for the tip-off on this. Voonga...Voonga!!

Staff Appreciation: The Value of Informal Recognition

This is from Mifgashim Volume 8 Issue 69:

As staff appreciation events are taking place or being planned, schools might find worthwhile the results from a study of office staff recognition.

The top five most appreciated forms of recognition are:

• verbal recognition (42%)
• cash bonuses (19%)
• additional time off (9%)
• training or seminars (7%)
• cards/notes (6%)

To view a slideshow presentation of the methodology and results, see http://www.slideshare.net/stuartwingate/officearrow-recognition-research-420099.

According to the findings, informal (generally verbal) recognition is most meaningful when it is timely, spontaneous, personal, and genuine. Other kinds of informal recognition that are widely appreciated include having a boss who is open to suggestions, having flexibility in managing one's schedule, being recognized in meetings with the management, and being asked to stretch by taking on new responsibilities and special projects. These kinds of recognition let staff members know that their input is valued and their skills and abilities are trusted and respected.

The Mifgashim List is a project of The Lookstein Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora, The School of Education, Bar Ilan University.

Best Practices: Holocaust Memorials

In honor of Yom Ha-Shoah, this is a guest post from Leah Zimmerman, the Director of Education at Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles, California and Temple Beth Israel in Pomona:

Two of the most active and distracted boys in my Kitah Zayin (7^th grade) class stood together in front of a room full of their peers and their parents and presented their Holocaust Memorial. A single tree in the center of a field with a single headstone alongside it. Around the perimeter of the field was a barbwire fence. They explained the simplicity of their design and the way that it remembered all the people who had died. The moment of their presentation was quite noteworthy. But it was the fact that they had met on their own time outside of class to create this entirely of wood that totally floored me. Why hadn’t they just goofed off and blown off the assignment or the idea? Why did they take it to heart and create something genuine?

In another project, three statues surround reflective pool: a Jew, a homosexual, and a gypsy. “We made these statues colorful for a special reason. The Nazis wanted everyone to look the same (blonde hair, blue eyes, Christian, etc.) so by making them colorful we are showing that even though everyone looks different we are all equal.”

I asked the students, “What motivated you to do these projects? Why do you think you did such a great job?” The students told me that they loved the opportunity to be creative and work with art materials. When we reflected on this experience and why it had been valuable, the students told me that it gave them a chance to make the material meaningful. I too noticed that their projects demonstrated what they had each personally connected to most. For one group of students it was the stories of surviving and how hard the surivors had worked to find a way to live. For another group of students it was stories about the partisans who had fought against the Nazis despite the odds. Some students thought more about how to create symbols of memory and others about how to create something that would engage the audience and require the audience to experience and learn.

The students have told me many times that they learn more when they get to work together in groups. As they planned, designed and created their projects I could see them huddled together leaning forward towards each other listening, watching and sharing their ideas. In their small groups they talked about what was important to them, shared ideas back and forth and came to consensus about what to do. Each group did something unique and different. While some students took a stronger leadership role in the design or assembling materials, each student contributed ideas and helped to create the final product. As I watched the groups working I could see how one student sharing an idea or an insight sparked another student to share another idea. Groups of students emerged as teams as their common goal and common purpose brought them in synch with each other.

The students impressed themselves and each other with their creations. By seeing what they could create and what their friends created, they realized how much they had learned and its relevance for our community. The same is true for the parents. Majority of the students felt that sharing the projects with their parents helped them to show the parents what they learn in Hebrew school. “Because when they ask you what did you learn today, I just say “nothing.”

Having a communal moment where the students, parents and I all revel in what has been learned brings us together as a community and builds our commitment to working with each other. In creating memorials for our community, our students had created for themselves an memorable event of learning and reflecting.

Telling Jokes in Auschwitz

This comes from my friend Hal Cohen, on behalf of his friend Mikal Reich:

I am writing to all my friends for a bit of help...

Please vote for this short film about my dad, called "Telling Jokes In Auschwitz."

Please vote today. If it gets enough votes it will air on PBS this Saturday. (I think it would make my dad really happy and I don't do that a lot.)

It's behind by 200 votes right, so we need all the clicks we can get [editor's note: It is behind by more than 400 votes at the time of posting].

Here's the link...
http://www.thirteen.org/sites/reel13/category/vote/

(It's the film in the middle.)

And if you can, please post/send this link to your friends. If you have already, thank you. If you don't, don't feel guilty, but 6 million...

Thanks so much,
Mikal

It's spring, and funding is in the air

Legacy Heritage Programming LLC announces two new exciting non-denominational funding opportunities for synagogues in North America seeking to (1) strengthen congregants' engagement with the State of Israel or (2) integrate music throughout congregational life:

Legacy Heritage Innovation Project: Israel Engagement supports synagogues using an integrated approach to deepening adults' and/or children's connection to the State of Israel. While Israel advocacy may be an aspect of the approach, the primary purpose to support connection with the people, culture, and history of Israel.

Legacy Heritage Innovation Project: Music supports synagogues strengthening Jewish identity through the creative use of music in multiple aspects of congregational life and in programming for different age groups.

Grants: For the next funding cycle (8/09-7/10), the Legacy Heritage Synagogue Innovation Project will award grants of up to $25,000 to selected synagogues. Grantees may be eligible to apply for additional funding of up to $25,000 per year for up to two additional years. In any given year, congregations may apply for funding only from one Legacy Heritage Innovation Project track (Congregational Education, Israel Engagement, or Music).

Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of the following criteria, among others:

• Extent to which the proposal integrates Israel or music into programming for different age groups and across multiple aspects of congregational life, e.g. Torah, avodah, gemilut hasadim. For example, preference will be given to proposals which incorporate Israel awareness or music frequently and regularly into congregational prayer, study and action. Grants are not intended to support one-time or "stand-alone" programs.
• Degree to which the proposal is sustainable (maximally uses funds to develop capacity within congregation, training existing staff and lay leaders, targeting reusable resources, integrating approach within existing structure of congregation, etc.).
• Extent to which "best practices" are exemplified in the proposed initiative (the possibility of the proposed program being adapted by other congregations, organizations, etc.).

Online grant applications and more detailed information may be obtained at www.legacyheritage.org, or by contacting Rabbi Marc Margolius, Project Director, at 212-578-8190 (ext. 106) or marcm@lhfl.net. The deadline for completing the online application is Monday, May 11, 2009.

The project is sponsored by Legacy Heritage Programming LLC, an affiliate of the Legacy Heritage Fund Limited.