Events: 2006-07
July 27, 2007: Tekkes HaSiyum: A Celebration of Completion for DeLeT; & the MAT Research Project Presentation and Recognition Ceremony
Tekkes HaSiyum, A Celebration of Completion for DeLeT, was held at the Mandel Center on July 27th. There was also a mini-conference in which first-year teachers in the Jewish Day School concentration of the Brandeis MAT program presented their classroom research projects, followed by the completion celebration of the entire Brandeis MAT program.
July 2, 2007: Mandel Center Joint Advisory Team Meeting
The Advisory Board of the Mandel Center, comprised of representatives from the Mandel Foundation and from Brandeis, met at Brandeis for its regular session.
June 29, 2007: MAT-Jewish Day Schools (DeLeT) Mentorfest
Each year, DeLeT Fellows and the experienced teachers who will mentor them for the year meet at Brandeis to introduce themselves and to begin their study of practice. Topics include "The Hidden Curriculum," "Culture of the School," and "Preparing for the Practicum." This year's Mentorfest included two DeLeT/MAT alums, Meg Lederman and Jocelyn Segal (both Cohen Hillel Academy teachers), who will be the first DeLeT graduates to serve as mentor teachers for MAT teaching interns.
June 6, 2007: Portfolio Presentations by DeLeT Fellows
DeLeT Fellows each create an online teaching portfolio, with entries that feature their teaching philosophies, lesson and unit plans, student work, and classroom video clips. On June 6th, the 5th cohort of DeLeT Fellows presented their teaching portfolios to mentor teachers, DeLeT alumni, community leaders, DeLeT supporters, and Brandeis faculty and staff.
May 17, 2007: Mentor Development Induction Partnership End of Year Meeting
Teacher leaders participating in the Mandel Center's Induction Partnership, from five Boston-area Jewish day schools, convened at Brandeis for a full-day working session, facilitated by Vivian Troen. Participants revisited school progress on the induction continuum, explored a new teaching case which grapples with the absence of a vision of good teaching, and hosted an evening program for lay and professional leaders on "Enacting the Jewish Vision of the School in Teaching Practice."
May 16, 2007: Mandel Center Lunchtime Seminar; Guest Speaker: Dr. Israel Scheffler, Scholar-in-Residence at the Mandel Center
In the second of two Center lunch seminars Dr. Israel Scheffler, Scholar-in-Residence, led this spring, he discussed influential philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859-1952), whose ideas continue to both influence educators and serve as a source of controversy. Chapters from Scheffler's book Four Pragmatists served as background reading.
May 8, 2007: Philosophy of Education Research Colloquia (PERC): "A College Program for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired in an Inclusive Philippine Environment (An Educational Success Story)"
Presenter: Rosario Lapus
Discussion of an inclusive college program for the deaf and hearing impaired in the Philippines, a country that traditionally has not had strong special education programs for the handicapped. Dr. Lapus suggested factors in the success of the program, focusing on the partnership between the Southeast Asian Institute for the Deaf; Miriam College, which offers the program; and Gallaudet University, which acted as consultant and evaluator. A video presentation of the program in action was shown.
April 30, 2007: Philosophy of Education Research Colloquia (PERC): "The Emotions in Classical Jewish Sources: the Cases of Envy and Jealousy"
Presenter: Solomon Schimmel (Hebrew College)
Biblical, rabbinic, and medieval Jewish literatures discuss, analyze, and morally evaluate human emotions, among which envy and jealousy are prominent, beginning with the story of Cain and Abel. Participants studied several texts (in English translation), and explored the ways in which they are, and can be, used in educational contexts. Participants also examined these Jewish reflections on envy and jealousy in the broader context of modern psychological and sociological analyses.
April 23, 2007: Social Justice & Education Conference, sponsored by the Spencer Program for Educational Research, in commemoration of the 150th birthday of Justice Louis Brandeis
"Brown & Beyond: Schools, Education & Social Justice," featuring Susan Eaton, The Children in Room 4E: American Education on Trial; Huong Nguyen, Assistant Professor, Heller School for Social Policy & Management, Brandeis University; Marya Levenson, Director, Education Program, Brandeis University.
"Courting Educational Justice," featuring Anita Hill, Professor of Law, Social Policy & Women Studies, Heller School for Social Policy & Management, Brandeis University; Hon. Nancy Gertner, US District Court, Boston.
April 18, 2007: Mandel Center Lunchtime Seminar; Guest Speaker: Dr. Israel Scheffler, Scholar-in-Residence at the Mandel Center
What does it mean for education to be relevant? In the first of two Center lunch seminars Dr. Israel Scheffler, Scholar-in-Residence, is leading this spring, he discussed his essay "Reflections on educational relevance," from the book Reason and Teaching. In the essay, first given as a lecture at Brandeis in the fall of 1969, Dr. Scheffler sets out to question "the educational relevance of educational relevance," while acknowledging that this "may seem paradoxical, even absurd." "For if relevance is not relevant, what is it? And who in his right mind would wish learning to be irrelevant?"
March 21, 2007: Mandel Center Lunchtime Seminar; Annette Hochstein, President of the Mandel Foundation Israel: "Foundations and Education: A Practitioner's Point of View"
The world of foundations concerned with education -- both philanthropic foundations and program foundations -- is both expanding dramatically and changing in profound ways. Annette Hochstein, a practitioner of foundation leadership in her capacity as President of the Mandel Foundation Israel, explored how one foundation thinks about its work, its priorities, and its impact, in the context of recent scholarship about those larger cultural changes.
March 6, 2007: Mentor Development Induction Partnership seminar
Teacher leaders participating in the Mandel Center's Induction Partnership, from five Boston-area Jewish day schools, convened at Brandeis for a full-day working session, facilitated by Vivian Troen. Based on Mandel Center research, topics addressed during the workshop included: visions of good teaching: surfacing our beliefs and conceptual frameworks for discussing what we do; linking teacher assessment of visions of good teaching; and teams as a site for new teacher learning.
March 5, 2007: Philosophy of Education Research Colloquia (PERC): "Schooling at Home, Schooling for Society: Homeschooling and American Democracy"
Presenter: Robert Kunzman (Indiana University)
In recent years, homeschooling has expanded dramatically, especially among conservative Christian families. This phenomenon raises important questions, both about the development of personal autonomy and about the inculcation of civic virtues. Can state regulations help ensure these outcomes? Should they?
March 3 & 4, 2007: SunDeis Film Festival
The Mandel Center awarded the "Best Film, Jewish Theme" award at SunDeis, the Brandeis student film festival. The prize was awarded to "Ex Machina," by Shai Davis. Read about the film in the article "Six hours, one critic, and a litany of styles," by Kate Gardiner, in the Justice student newspaper. The Annual SunDeis Film Festival offers a forum for student filmmakers to showcase their work and interact with people who have succeeded in various sectors of the film industry, including many Brandeis University alumni. The festival culminates with a star-studded red carpet awards ceremony, that honors the best in student films along with several prominent entertainers.
February 14, 2007 (cancelled due to weather): Mandel Center Lunchtime Seminar; The New Teacher Induction -- Professional Learning Community Link: Using new teacher induction to move day schools toward professional learning communities
Induction Partnership Project Team: Vivian Troen, Pearl Mattenson, Nili Pearlmutter, Sarah Birkeland, Sue Stibel, Sharon Feiman-Nemser
The Induction Partnership is a three-year project jointly funded by the Covenant Foundation and the Mandel Center and focused on the support and development of new teachers in Jewish day schools. The project has a research and development agenda--helping four local day schools create strong systems of beginning teacher induction while documenting the factors that help or hinder schools in getting there. In this session, the project team will share some of the conceptual and practical tools they have developed to assist Jewish day schools in this work and invite feedback and discussion about the challenges of helping school partners understand the role of "big ideas" in shaping their induction practice.
February 7, 2007: Symposium and Town Meeting in honor of the 10th anniversary of Gann Academy - The New Jewish High School of Greater Boston: "Reimagining the Jewish Future: What Kind of Jewish Education Do Our Teenagers Deserve?" Gann Academy, Waltham, MA
Panel participants in this event, which was cosponsored by Gann Academy and the Mandel Center, included leaders of philanthropic foundations, community organizations, federation, Jewish education, and business.
January 28, 2007: A special event for day school teacher leaders: “What do we teach when we teach about Israel?” A conversation led by Rabbi Daniel Lehmann Headmaster, Gann Academy - The New Jewish High School of Greater Boston; with a panel of teachers from Mandel Center partner day schools.
Yes! Our students know about Israel...feel connected to Israel...understand the situation in Israel. But...What do we want them to know, to feel, and to understand? Mandel Center faculty & staff; DeLeT fellows and mentors; and heads of school gathered at the Mandel Center for a provocative conversation about the teaching of Israel.
January 23, 2007: Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Open House
One of four Open House sessions (October 18, November 15, December 12, January 23), held in the atrium upstairs at the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis, providing prospective MAT students the opportunity to meet the faculty, ask questions, and enjoy refreshments. Learn about the Brandeis Master of Arts in Teaching for secondary schools in the areas of history, English, biology, and Bible, and the Master of Arts in Teaching for elementary schools, including the Elementary MAT (DeLeT) program. Information about the Brandeis MAT programs is at www.brandeis.edu/programs/MAT.
January 17, 2007: Mandel Center Lunchtime Seminar; Guest Speakers: Judy Elkin, Director of DeLeT, and Eran Tamir, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Mandel Center
Judy Elkin, Director of DeLeT, and Eran Tamir, Postdoctoral Research Fellow and leader of the Choosing to Teach: Enacting Values in Practice study, discussed "A Beginning Profile of the DeLeT Fellow's Jewish Identity." How do DeLeT fellows describe their Jewish identity, and what is the impact of the DeLeT program on their developing identity as Jewish teachers? Eran Tamir and Judy Elkin drew on two distinct data sets to report on their preliminary findings about the role Jewish identity plays in the fellows' decision to teach in Jewish day schools and the DeLeT program's impact on their growing Jewish identity.
January 13-16, 2007: Choosing to Teach Research Team Meeting at University of Notre Dame
Choosing to Teach researchers met at the University of Notre Dame to discuss ongoing data analysis, and to plan the development of the pilot project into a longitudinal study. Also, John Watzke, Eran Tamir, and Sharon Feiman-Nemser presented a report on University of Chicago Teacher Education Program (UTEP) and discussed the findings with UTEP faculty at University of Chicago.
January 9, 2007: A celebration of the publication of Daniel Pekarsky's "Vision at Work: The Theory and Practice of Beit Rabban"
The program at the Mandel Center featured comments by Scholar-in-Residence Israel Scheffler, readings from the book, and comments and Q&A with the author, Daniel Pekarsky, as well as a book signing. "Vision at Work" is published by Jewish Theological Seminary Press (2006). This event was sponsored by the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education & the Mandel Foundation.
December 20, 2006: Mandel Center Lunchtime Seminar; Guest Speaker: Jon A. Levisohn, Assistant Academic Director of the Mandel Center
Curricular integration of Jewish and general studies has long been desired and talked about in Jewish education -- but it is often hard to know what it means, or why it is to be sought. In the paper on which this lunch seminar was based, Jon A. Levisohn proposes that we ought to focus not on curricular integration, primarily, and not even on the process of integrating, but rather on the intellectual virtue of integrity.
December 12, 2006: Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Open House
One of four Open House sessions (October 18, November 15, December 12, January 23), held in the atrium of the Abraham Shapiro Academic Complex at Brandeis, providing prospective MAT students the opportunity to meet the faculty, ask questions, and enjoy refreshments. Learn about the Brandeis Master of Arts in Teaching for secondary schools in the areas of history, English, biology, and Bible, and the Master of Arts in Teaching for elementary schools, including the Elementary MAT (DeLeT) program. Information about the Brandeis MAT programs is at www.brandeis.edu/programs/MAT.
November 29, 2006: Mandel Center Guest Speaker: Shevi Govrin, Israeli Teacher Educator, Director of Ovnayim: Learning from Teachers' Experience
A former Mandel Jerusalem Fellow, Shevi Govrin has worked with teachers in Jerusalem’s Keshet Schools, which serve both religious and secular students. Govrin discussed the collaborative, inquiry-oriented, records-based approach to professional development that she and her colleagues have developed and are bringing to Israeli schools. The project she described began with teachers observing one another teaching the weekly Torah portion. It led to teachers creating their own parshat hashavuah curriculum and writing cases about dilemmas they encountered in teaching this material to their diverse students. Eventually the teachers formed a parshat hashavuah study group for themselves – preparing to teach the weekly Torah portion by studying it.
November 15, 2006: Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Open House
One of four Open House sessions (October 18, November 15, December 12, January 23), held in the atrium of the Abraham Shapiro Academic Complex at Brandeis, which provided prospective MAT students the opportunity to meet the faculty, ask questions, and enjoy refreshments. Learn about the Brandeis Master of Arts in Teaching for secondary schools in the areas of history, English, biology, and Bible, and the Master of Arts in Teaching for elementary schools, including the Elementary MAT (DeLeT) program. Information about the Brandeis MAT programs is at www.brandeis.edu/programs/MAT.
November 15, 2006: Mandel Center Lunchtime Seminar; Guest Speaker: Elie Holzer of Bar Ilan University, Visiting Scholar at the Mandel Center (Fall 2006)
Elie Holzer (Bar Ilan University), fall 2006 visiting scholar, and co-leader of the Beit Midrash Research Project, led the third Center lunch seminar of the year. Holzer shared aspects of and artifacts from his work on the Beit Midrash Research Project, in a discussion titled "The development of hermeneutical conversations with texts and with hevruta (learning partner) in the context of teacher education: ways of thinking, ways of learning." For background, read his article "What Connects “Good” Teaching, Text Study and Hevruta Learning? A Conceptual Argument" (forthcoming in the Journal of Jewish Education).
November 14, 2006: Philosophy of Education Research Colloquia (PERC): "Arab-Jewish Youth Programs: Some Reflections on Intent and Goals"
Presenter: Harriet Feinberg, Ed.D.
Cosponsored by the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life; and the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education
November 1, 2006: Mentor Development Induction Partnership seminar
Teacher leaders participating in the Mandel Center's Induction Partnership, from five Boston-area Jewish day schools, convened at Brandeis for a full-day working session, facilitated by Vivian Troen. Based on Mandel Center research, topics addressed during the workshop included: The Induction Continuum: How well is our school supporting new teacher learning?; Mentor Moves: What strategies move teachers along in their development?; and Using DeLeT teaching standards to develop teaching practice.
October 29-30, 2006: Mandel Center Joint Advisory Team Meeting
The Advisory Board of the Mandel Center, comprised of representatives from the Mandel Foundation and from Brandeis, met at Brandeis for its annual session.
October 18, 2006: Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Open House
One of four Open House sessions (October 18, November 15, December 12, January 23), held in the atrium of the Abraham Shapiro Academic Complex at Brandeis, which provided prospective MAT students the opportunity to meet the faculty, ask questions, and enjoy refreshments. Learn about the Brandeis Master of Arts in Teaching for secondary schools in the areas of history, English, biology, and Bible, and the Master of Arts in Teaching for elementary schools, including the Elementary MAT (DeLeT) program. Information about the Brandeis MAT programs is at www.brandeis.edu/programs/MAT.
October 18, 2006: Mandel Center Lunchtime Seminar; Guest Speaker: Dr. Israel Scheffler, Scholar-in-Residence at the Mandel Center
What are the uses and limitations of educational metaphors, such as "a teacher is a gardener tending growing plants," or "a teacher is molding clay?" In the second of the two Center lunch seminars Dr. Israel Scheffler, Scholar-in-Residence at the Mandel Center, led this fall, he discussed the chapter "Educational Metaphors" (from his book The Language of Education), in which he investigates these and other educational metaphors, elaborates a stance on the definition and purposes of teaching, and explores the relationship of teaching to cultural continuity.
October 17-18, 2006: "Religion and Education: Authority and Autonomy" Conference at Harvard University
Scholars presented papers on the topics related to religious education, from historical, sociological, and philosophical perspectives. Co-sponsored by the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis, the Scholion Project at Hebrew University's Mandel Institute for Jewish Studies, and the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.
September 14, 2006: Bridging Seminar on Teaching Rabbinic Literature
Twelve educators met to launch a yearlong seminar on Teaching Rabbinic Literature, as part of the Mandel Center's Bridging Initiative. The Bridging Initiative has produced a series of working papers on Teaching Bible, as well as a set of videos from the conference held in January 2005.
September 13, 2006: Mandel Center Lunchtime Seminar; Guest Speaker: Dr. Israel Scheffler, Scholar-in-Residence at the Mandel Center
What should people in the position of making education decisions know? How should they learn it? Dr. Israel Scheffler, Scholar-in-Residence at the Mandel Center, discussed his paper "The Education of Policy-Makers," which presents a set of guidelines for the education of those educational decision-makers.