Religious School

A house is built by wisdom; it is made firm through understanding.

Proverbs 24:3

In the 2010-2011 school year, we entered into a new way of working with teachers and providing professional development.  For the first time in recent memory, teachers engaged in text study on Thursday evenings while working on professional skills and competencies on Sunday afternoons. They began cooperatively constructing curriculum through carefully following UBD (Understanding By Design) principles.  In thoughtfully designed settings, our teachers routinely joined together to reflect on their successes and challenges in teaching at Temple Israel.  As such, the focus on teacher professional development operated in agreement with our overarching cultural goal of building an interactive and dynamic learning community at all levels of our school.  In other words, the teaching and learning that the faculty engaged in among itself served as a model for the teaching and learning that we attempted to practice in our classrooms with our students.

And so we continue into a second year of change and growth as we pursue a communal vision of a congregation-wide education program that is dedicated to -- and directed by -- the tenets of what is termed, Life-Centered Jewish Education (LCJE).  Its tenets:

I. Jewish education should be relevant to the lives of students. ¹

II. Jewish education should deal with the whole person and the full set of human concerns.

III. Jewish Education must be grounded in experience.

Our ability to build upon the success of last year is predicated upon the wisdom and experience of our teachers, as well as the continuity of our faculty. Eleven of our teachers have returned from last year; two of our teachers, Dinah Super and Emma McAfee-Hahn have been promoted from being aides. Both Nechama Cheses and Shahar Colt have returned to our faculty after hiatus of several years.  We also have two new teachers on our faculty, Ira Blum and Laura Reader, and we look forward to learning from them and to engaging them with our vision of education.

And as always: as much as our success will hinge on the abilities of our teachers, so too is a strong partnership with parents a necessity in order for us to achieve our goals.  I invite your full participation in this exciting process and am eager to discuss with you any questions or concerns regarding our educational vision and its curriculum.

L'Shanah Tovah u'metukah: May 5772 be a year of sweet and transformative learning.

Rabbi Jeremy S. Morrison