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Events: 2010-2011
What does it sound like when American Jewish teens talk about Israel?A post-AIS conference seminar Wednesday, June 15, 2011 |
Inspiring Teaching: Brandeis Researchers and Alumni Talk about Teaching in Public and Jewish Day SchoolsHosted by Sharon Feiman-Nemser Marya Levenson Wednesday, April 13, 2011 |
The Challenge of Progressive Education in the Jewish Supplementary SchoolLunch Seminar with Jonathan Krasner, Hebrew Union College April 4, 2011 The search for a new curricular road map for the Jewish school between the World Wars was heavily influenced by the example of progressive educators associated with John Dewey. In their desire to reproduce the educational process that Americanized a generation of immigrants, Jewish educators sought to refocus the agenda of the Jewish school from heritage transmission to enculturation. Yet the results of this experimentation were uneven at best. The application of Dewey's philosophy in the Jewish school was indicative of the struggle that progressive Jewish educators encountered in their efforts to reconcile seemingly conflicting values and priorities. At this lunch seminar, Jonathan Krasner explored this case study of Jewish educational reform and discussed its implications for educational transformation efforts today. |
Preparing Teachers for Jewish Schools: Enduring Issues in Changing ContextsLunch Seminar with Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Mandel Center January 24, 2011 In this lunchtime seminar, Mandel Center director Sharon Feiman-Nemser presented two cases that illuminate enduring issues in Jewish teacher education. Professor Feiman-Nemser looked at the early years of the Teachers Institute at the Jewish Theological Seminary, when it was under the leadership of Mordecai Kaplan, and at the Delet program at Brandeis and HUC-JIR, which prepares teacher-leaders for the day schools of today. In both cases, the creation of full-time programs of Jewish teacher preparation was derived by the emergence of a new kind of Jewish school, requiring a new kind of Jewish teacher. Professor Feiman-Nemser also outlined a research agenda to inform policy and practice in Jewish teacher preparation. |
Third Annual Teacher Forum
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The Purposes and Practices of Teaching Rabbinic LiteraturePanel Discussion, Association for Jewish Studies, Boston; 11:15 a.m.-1 p.m. Sunday, December 19, 2010 What are our goals in teaching rabbinic literature? Why do we choose to teach the texts or themes that we choose? How, aside from the selection of texts, do we attempt to enact these goals? In this roundtable, three instructors of rabbinic literature will examine their purposes and their practice. They represent diverse institutional settings for the teaching of rabbinic literature. Each instructor will introduce a particular university-level course that they teach, articulating the orientational background to the course and discussing their rationale for the curricular choices that they make. Through the presentations by the instructors, the responses of the roundtable chair to those presentations, and the subsequent discussion, we will pursue a grounded conversation about the affordances and limitations of different approaches to the teaching of rabbinic literature. By sharing our teaching in this way, the panel and the audience will come away with new perspectives on their own practice. |
Text Study, Collaborative Research and Meaning Making: Design Research in a Supplementary SchoolLunch Seminar with Orit Kent and Allison Cook, Mandel Center Monday, December 6, 2010 This lunch seminar grows out of our most recent work in the Beit Midrash Research Project, which is studying how to adapt a theory of havruta for use in professional development and classroom settings. We will describe the professional development program we created in a supplementary school and share some of the impacts of our work on teachers and their classrooms. We will also explore what we have learned as design researchers. |
How Has the Recession hit Jewish Day Schools? New Findings from the DeLeT Longitudinal SurveyLunch Seminar with Eran Tamir and Raquel Magidin de Kramer, Mandel Center Monday, November 15, 2010 Eran Tamir and Raquel Magidin de Kramer will present emerging findings from the recent 2009-2010 survey of DeLeT alumni who graduated from Brandeis University and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. The presentation will focus on new findings concerning the impact that the economic recession has had on Jewish Day Schools and the DeLeT graduates who are employed by them. We will discuss data on past, current, and future career trends and share alumni reflections on their own working conditions and their schools at large. The presentation will be followed by discussion. |
Virtual Encounters: Challenges and Questions in Coaching Schools OnlineLunch Seminar with Sarah Birkeland, Mandel Center Monday, October 18, 2010 The Mandel Induction Partnership Project, now in its second phase, works with leaders of Boston-area Jewish day schools to design and implement strong induction programs for new teachers. We began working face-to-face, but now the partnerships have gone virtual: We coach school leaders at three schools by phone, SKYPE, and web conference, using ideas and teaching tools we developed in the project's first phase. It is a strategy for reaching more than a handful of schools at a time by putting those ideas and tools onto our website, harnessing technology to reduce the intensity of necessary coaching. At this Lunchtime Seminar we will share the current version of the website, a work in progress not yet "launched" for public use, asking attendees to consider a few specific questions about its usability, organization and potential. We hope to spark an engaging discussion about the role of the web in disseminating our ideas and fostering school change. |