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xiphiasFirst off, I like the new education director. I think he's younger than I am, which, of course, makes me wonder what I'm doing with my life, but that's not the point right now. His name's Rafi, he's a Brit, this is his first education-director job. Which is cool; we tend to do a fair bit of improvising, so that's good.
Let's see. . . we went around the table and talked a bit about who we are, so that Rafi could get to know us -- Isaac, the oldest of us (he's been teaching in one capacity or another for 50 years) can TALK, so we got a late start. But I think I finally have pieced together enough of the little hints he drops to figure it out -- I think he was a Nazi-hunter in Argentina: not the ones who gathered evidence for trial, but one of the "find-them-and-shoot-them-in-the-back-of-the-head" guys. Oddly, now that I think about it, he's the guy with the most "traditional" sort of Jewish background among the staff. Mark, who was interim Education Director last year was raised in the Ethical Culture tradition, which is sorta areligious secular humanism, and only came to Judaism when he was an adult, and AFTER he'd looked through Buddhism and so forth to try to find spirituality. Actually, Larry had a pretty typical Jewish childhood too -- he hated Hebrew school., and avoided it as much as he could.
Rafi's parents are an intermarriage, which is probably a net benefit in working at this shul.
. . . . I think that much can be inferred about our Hebrew school by noting that the five staff members' names are "Mark", "Larry", "Ian", "Isaac", and "Rafi." Of those, only "Isaac" and "Rafi" are sorta Jewish-sounding names. Two of us came from intermarriages, one of us was raised completely secularly. Also, all of us are men, which is an odd statistical quirk, since most elementary school level teachers, including Sunday School teachers, are women.
Anyway, introductions took a lot longer than expected, because Isaac can talk. Then we started doing a bit of text study, because we all feel that it's vitally important for teachers to be learners first. Rafi chose a passage from Isaiah which included the terms "madrich" and "melamed", because he wanted to talk about our job as both teachers and guides.
We'd started doing that for a couple minutes, when someone walked in the door. He was Hispanic, and wearing a clerical collar. Naturally we invited him in, and he explained, in a thick accent, that he was the new minister at the church across the street, he was originally from Puerto Rico. It was clear that he wasn't 100% comfortable in English, so Mark and Isaac switched to Spanish, which they are both completely fluent in. (Isaac lived in Argentina for a number of years, Mark spends a couple months a year in Costa Rica.) Every once in a while, one of them would break off and explain to the three of us who DON'T speak Spanish what they were talking about.
Apparently the church across the street is going to be starting up a lot of Sunday morning programs soon, and they wanted to know if they could borrow our parking lot for it. Unfortunately, their programs are going to happen precisely when ours do -- and it's not just our Hebrew School -- there's adult education classes and lots of stuff that happens Sunday mornings. Then they started talking a bit about translation issues, and Isaac offered to help them translate Biblical stuff from Hebrew to Spanish, since the translation they were working from was a Hebrew-to-Greek-to-Latin-to-Spanish translation ...
Since we hadn't scheduled in time for "get to know the minister from across the street," we were even further behind schedule. Which none of us begrudged, because there are some things that are just worthwhile, and helping other clergy is one of them, and another one is watching the look of surprise on a Puerto Rican minister's face as he discovered that it WASN'T necessary to speak in English to communicate with the folks in the shul across the street.
So, then we talked a little about what our visions of the school were. This is sort of like putting together a mission statement, only not stupid. Basically, we each talked about, if kids go to the school, what do we hope they will gain?
My answer is that I hope that we will help engender people "with the tools, desire, and permission to argue with Judaism."
Isaac wants to make sure that we have students who "enjoy and celebrate Judaism."
Larry wants kids to have "a sense of roots, belonging, and commitment," an "understanding of what it's about, and respect for it", and the "ability to participate, the tools to function."
Mark wants to make sure that we teach our students "ethics and morality," and to "care about this community, the larger Jewish community, and the world as a whole." He wants to make sure that our students learn "practical ethics" -- something they can use and will use for their whole lives.
Jane, who is on the education committe and was sitting in on the meeting mentioned that the "ethics" piece is especially important for interfaith couples. In many cases, the non-Jewish parent will recognize a need for some sort of religious education, but not really understand the specifically Jewish parts of it, so the universal parts are what keeps them involved. She was speaking as part of an interfaith marriage, with two kids in the school.
Rafi pointed out that this brought forth an important point, that we HAD to listen to what the parents wanted out of the school, but we also had to have clear ideas in our minds what WE wanted to accomplish. I mentioned that I had a hunch that, in cases where parents were really very unclear about exactly what it was they wanted their kids to learn, it would be even MORE important for us teachers to have clear ideas.
From there, Rafi talked about how many schools had sort of "group contracts". At the beginning of each year, the class would, as a group, create a list of rules by which they would interact. These rules were often proscriptive rules, and this was often used for behavior and discipline. Which he thought was fine as far as it goes, but . . .
He brought forth a distinction between "chukah" and "brit". A "chukah" is something like a "constitution" -- a set of rules by which a society can function. But a "brit" is a "covenant" -- a set of VALUES by which a COMMUNITY can live.
In general, he pointed out, a chukah tells what you can't do. But a brit tells you what you CAN do, and what you are to aspire to. He would like it if we can find a way to work out a brit for our classroom.
We talked a bit about the curriculum, and Rafi mentioned that, looking over the curriculum, he saw a hole: there was a lot on the religion of Judaism, and not very much on the culture. He suspected he knew why, too: after 1948, much of American cultural Jewish identity was tied up with Israel, and he had gotten the (correct) impression that much of the community was very conflicted about Israel, and so the school just didn't talk about Israel, which cut out a lot of opportunities to talk about cultural identity.
We all rather agreed with that assessment, and we haven't really come up with any good solutions yet: I made the comment that I'm personally so conflicted about Israel that I find it hard to teach about Hannukkah (which I percieve as the holiday of, "Our repessive theocracy threw out their marginally less repressive theocracy! Yay!"), and we talked some about that.
Then we talked a little about Hebrew instruction and why we did it -- what we hoped to gain. Rafi thinks that there are a number of things that you teach Hebrew for. One is to allow students to be functioning Jews. One is to give a sense of belonging. Related to that is the ability to consider Hebrew a living language. And, besides looking at Hebrew as a living language, we can also look at it, instead, as a ritual language and consider Hebrew to be a set of tools for prayer, and tools for study of Torah.
Most Hebrew instruction is based pretty specifically on getting the kids to be functioning Jews -- getting them familiar with the services, able to have an aliyah, and so forth. But Rafi's point was that, if you focus on Hebrew as a way to generate a sense of belonging, and a way to give tools for prayer and study, then you inherently are getting people to be functioning Jews, because that's what functioning Jews ARE. And that those are deeper, and therefore more compelling and more INTERESTING reasons to learn Hebrew than just to be able to get through the service.
So, that was basically our first staff meeting. Lots of interesting things to think about. Mark and I intend to get together some time during the week to practice guitar and get back into the Hebrew School Songleader groove.
Let's see. . . we went around the table and talked a bit about who we are, so that Rafi could get to know us -- Isaac, the oldest of us (he's been teaching in one capacity or another for 50 years) can TALK, so we got a late start. But I think I finally have pieced together enough of the little hints he drops to figure it out -- I think he was a Nazi-hunter in Argentina: not the ones who gathered evidence for trial, but one of the "find-them-and-shoot-them-in-the-back-of-the-head" guys. Oddly, now that I think about it, he's the guy with the most "traditional" sort of Jewish background among the staff. Mark, who was interim Education Director last year was raised in the Ethical Culture tradition, which is sorta areligious secular humanism, and only came to Judaism when he was an adult, and AFTER he'd looked through Buddhism and so forth to try to find spirituality. Actually, Larry had a pretty typical Jewish childhood too -- he hated Hebrew school., and avoided it as much as he could.
Rafi's parents are an intermarriage, which is probably a net benefit in working at this shul.
. . . . I think that much can be inferred about our Hebrew school by noting that the five staff members' names are "Mark", "Larry", "Ian", "Isaac", and "Rafi." Of those, only "Isaac" and "Rafi" are sorta Jewish-sounding names. Two of us came from intermarriages, one of us was raised completely secularly. Also, all of us are men, which is an odd statistical quirk, since most elementary school level teachers, including Sunday School teachers, are women.
Anyway, introductions took a lot longer than expected, because Isaac can talk. Then we started doing a bit of text study, because we all feel that it's vitally important for teachers to be learners first. Rafi chose a passage from Isaiah which included the terms "madrich" and "melamed", because he wanted to talk about our job as both teachers and guides.
We'd started doing that for a couple minutes, when someone walked in the door. He was Hispanic, and wearing a clerical collar. Naturally we invited him in, and he explained, in a thick accent, that he was the new minister at the church across the street, he was originally from Puerto Rico. It was clear that he wasn't 100% comfortable in English, so Mark and Isaac switched to Spanish, which they are both completely fluent in. (Isaac lived in Argentina for a number of years, Mark spends a couple months a year in Costa Rica.) Every once in a while, one of them would break off and explain to the three of us who DON'T speak Spanish what they were talking about.
Apparently the church across the street is going to be starting up a lot of Sunday morning programs soon, and they wanted to know if they could borrow our parking lot for it. Unfortunately, their programs are going to happen precisely when ours do -- and it's not just our Hebrew School -- there's adult education classes and lots of stuff that happens Sunday mornings. Then they started talking a bit about translation issues, and Isaac offered to help them translate Biblical stuff from Hebrew to Spanish, since the translation they were working from was a Hebrew-to-Greek-to-Latin-to-Spanish translation ...
Since we hadn't scheduled in time for "get to know the minister from across the street," we were even further behind schedule. Which none of us begrudged, because there are some things that are just worthwhile, and helping other clergy is one of them, and another one is watching the look of surprise on a Puerto Rican minister's face as he discovered that it WASN'T necessary to speak in English to communicate with the folks in the shul across the street.
So, then we talked a little about what our visions of the school were. This is sort of like putting together a mission statement, only not stupid. Basically, we each talked about, if kids go to the school, what do we hope they will gain?
My answer is that I hope that we will help engender people "with the tools, desire, and permission to argue with Judaism."
Isaac wants to make sure that we have students who "enjoy and celebrate Judaism."
Larry wants kids to have "a sense of roots, belonging, and commitment," an "understanding of what it's about, and respect for it", and the "ability to participate, the tools to function."
Mark wants to make sure that we teach our students "ethics and morality," and to "care about this community, the larger Jewish community, and the world as a whole." He wants to make sure that our students learn "practical ethics" -- something they can use and will use for their whole lives.
Jane, who is on the education committe and was sitting in on the meeting mentioned that the "ethics" piece is especially important for interfaith couples. In many cases, the non-Jewish parent will recognize a need for some sort of religious education, but not really understand the specifically Jewish parts of it, so the universal parts are what keeps them involved. She was speaking as part of an interfaith marriage, with two kids in the school.
Rafi pointed out that this brought forth an important point, that we HAD to listen to what the parents wanted out of the school, but we also had to have clear ideas in our minds what WE wanted to accomplish. I mentioned that I had a hunch that, in cases where parents were really very unclear about exactly what it was they wanted their kids to learn, it would be even MORE important for us teachers to have clear ideas.
From there, Rafi talked about how many schools had sort of "group contracts". At the beginning of each year, the class would, as a group, create a list of rules by which they would interact. These rules were often proscriptive rules, and this was often used for behavior and discipline. Which he thought was fine as far as it goes, but . . .
He brought forth a distinction between "chukah" and "brit". A "chukah" is something like a "constitution" -- a set of rules by which a society can function. But a "brit" is a "covenant" -- a set of VALUES by which a COMMUNITY can live.
In general, he pointed out, a chukah tells what you can't do. But a brit tells you what you CAN do, and what you are to aspire to. He would like it if we can find a way to work out a brit for our classroom.
We talked a bit about the curriculum, and Rafi mentioned that, looking over the curriculum, he saw a hole: there was a lot on the religion of Judaism, and not very much on the culture. He suspected he knew why, too: after 1948, much of American cultural Jewish identity was tied up with Israel, and he had gotten the (correct) impression that much of the community was very conflicted about Israel, and so the school just didn't talk about Israel, which cut out a lot of opportunities to talk about cultural identity.
We all rather agreed with that assessment, and we haven't really come up with any good solutions yet: I made the comment that I'm personally so conflicted about Israel that I find it hard to teach about Hannukkah (which I percieve as the holiday of, "Our repessive theocracy threw out their marginally less repressive theocracy! Yay!"), and we talked some about that.
Then we talked a little about Hebrew instruction and why we did it -- what we hoped to gain. Rafi thinks that there are a number of things that you teach Hebrew for. One is to allow students to be functioning Jews. One is to give a sense of belonging. Related to that is the ability to consider Hebrew a living language. And, besides looking at Hebrew as a living language, we can also look at it, instead, as a ritual language and consider Hebrew to be a set of tools for prayer, and tools for study of Torah.
Most Hebrew instruction is based pretty specifically on getting the kids to be functioning Jews -- getting them familiar with the services, able to have an aliyah, and so forth. But Rafi's point was that, if you focus on Hebrew as a way to generate a sense of belonging, and a way to give tools for prayer and study, then you inherently are getting people to be functioning Jews, because that's what functioning Jews ARE. And that those are deeper, and therefore more compelling and more INTERESTING reasons to learn Hebrew than just to be able to get through the service.
So, that was basically our first staff meeting. Lots of interesting things to think about. Mark and I intend to get together some time during the week to practice guitar and get back into the Hebrew School Songleader groove.