This summer, AVI CHAI will sponsor up to 15 day school leaders to attend an institute at The Principals’ Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We encourage school leaders to apply:

Improving Schools: The Art of Leadership (AOL)
June 26 – July 3, 2012

1–5 Years of Leadership Experience
This institute helps you to identify areas of school improvement, establish priorities, develop strategies and build a base of support around a change initiative. You will explore successful models for school improvement, learn how to lead and manage change and understand how to implement curriculum innovation. Through research-based curriculum, you will focus on effective supervision and evaluation, multiple approaches to solving leadership challenges and how to best support teaching and learning in the classroom. Upon completion of the program you will have examined your own leadership challenges in the context of instructional improvement and learned methods to lead and manage your school more effectively. Click here for additional information.

Please note: To enable and support day school leaders to apply their Harvard learning to their day school contexts, we have added two components to this program:
1) A day of professional development IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the Institute (afternoon of July 2^nd through the 3^rd) that allows participants to process the overall experience and begin to think about its relevance and application to day schools.
2) Monthly conference calls during the coming academic year that each address a specific topic presented over the summer and discuss practical ways of using those insights or implementing those strategies in one’s own day school.

In order to receive AVI CHAI funding for the Institute, applicants must participate in BOTH these additional components, which will be led by a Harvard group facilitator who is herself an experienced day school principal.

What if I want to apply to Leadership: An Evolving Vision?
In years past, AVI CHAI sponsored participants in two Harvard Principals’ Center Institutes, however, this year one of the institutes begins on a Friday and so we made a decision to raise the number of funded slots in AOL and to not sponsor participants to LEV.

How do I apply?
Click here to access the online application. Incomplete forms will not be considered for AVI CHAI funding. Decisions regarding acceptance to the program by The Principals’ Center and AVI CHAI sponsorship will be sent to applicants by mid-May.

Sponsorship Details:
AVI CHAI sponsorship covers tuition and hotel accommodations (not including parking). Kosher breakfast and lunch are provided throughout the institute. In addition, AVI CHAI will sponsor select kosher dinners during the institute exclusively for day school participants. Additional dinners, or those before or after the times of the Institutes, and travel to and from Harvard, are the responsibility of the applicant.

AVI CHAI Selection Criteria:

• Educational leaders with significant decision-making responsibilities (typically school heads, principals or vice-principals);
• Size of school and number of teachers the leader supervises;
• Number of years at current school, and number of years in current position;
• Whether members of the school’s current administration have attended a summer institute at HGSE (and when).

Preference is given to Judaic Studies leaders. AVI CHAI will select a group of leaders from diverse schools to enhance the experience. If multiple leaders from a single school apply, each of their applications will be considered on an individual basis.

For questions regarding the application process, contact Clara Hill, The Principals’ Center Enrollment Coordinator at 617-495-1825, or principals@gse.harvard.edu

For questions regarding AVI CHAI funding, contact Nechama Goldberg

Application Deadline: March 23, 2012

Apply Today

There is a debate escalating in American Jewish circles between those who favor Israel advocacy and those who favor Israel education for high school and college age Jewish students.

For many years, the establishment favored Israel advocacy. It armed young Jews with the basic skills of communication and argumentation, and gave them “the facts.” It sent them back to places like the college campus in the hopes that their new-found confidence and knowledge would sway opinion in Israel’s favor. Many who favor this approach believe that Israel education that embraces critical views of the Jewish state can undermine communal unity on Israel.

Proponents of Israel education argue that the advocacy paradigm has created a “with us or against us” discourse that alienates many young Jews. They promote a more open, critical discourse that encourages young Jews to come to their own opinions about Israel’s policies, arguing that such an approach is more likely to create buy-in into the Zionist narrative. Many who favor Israel education believe that traditional advocacy is alienating and ineffective.

While the debate between these views is often portrayed as a clash of polar opposites, the two, at their best, can be mutually supportive.

Israel education, in nearly every Jewish context, is not value neutral. While Jewish educators seek to encourage critical thinking about Israel, as they would on any topic, they generally do so within a Zionist framework. They want students to believe in the justness of Zionism and encourage a strong connection with Israel. A headmaster at one Jewish day school said that Jewish educators seek to balance critical thinking with the need to instill a strong Jewish identity. In other words, Israel education involves a measure of advocacy on the part of the educators to the students.

Indeed, in the elementary school years, the objective of Israel education ought not to be comprehension of diverse perspective on Israel but instilling a strong sense of identity and commitment. Only later, in middle school and high school, should critical views be introduced.

The need to balance critical thinking and national pride is not limited to Israel education. The notion of American civic education is premised on such a balance. Paul Houston, former executive director of American Association of School Administrators, has said, “If you look back in history, you will find that the core mission of public education in America was to create places of civic virtue for our children and for our society.”

Lines between education and advocacy are further blurred by the emergence of a more nuanced form of Israel advocacy. Many Israel advocates have come to realize that they cannot mandate a simplistic approach to Israel and must allow young activists to debate hot topics, lest they risk an all-out revolt. Our experience is that when, in the context of advocacy training, students are allowed and even encouraged to think through controversial issues, from settlements to the rights of Israeli Arabs, they will usually emerge more, not less, loyal to the cause. Such findings are in keeping with longstanding theories about adolescent intellectual development. Educational researcher Sheldon Berman cites numerous studies demonstrating how teaching multiple perspectives enhances youth participation in society.

Good Israel advocacy also requires a measure of critical thinking. Young Jews exposed to varied interpretations about Israel’s policies are not only more loyal but far better at speaking with external audiences. This view is buttressed by a recent survey of college campuses conducted by the American Israel Cooperative Enterprise and The Israel Project that showed that no one talking point has wide resonance on college campuses. The once oft-cited peace message – “Israel wants peace but has no partner” – no longer holds sway among broad swaths of elites on and off campus. What does seem to work is presenting Israel as a basically just but highly complex democratic society facing unique challenges.

This is not to say that Israel education and advocacy are one and the same. The primary purpose of education is to teach students how to think. The primary purpose of advocacy is to persuade external audiences.

But neither are they mutually exclusive. The Jewish community must ensure that every child receives a first-rate Israel education in the course of their Jewish education. And it should present Israel advocacy as a viable, but not exclusive, way to express one’s commitment to Israel.

There’s plenty of room at the table for both approaches.

David Bernstein is Executive Director of The David Project.

Cross-posted on eJewish Philanthropy

We all knew it was coming.  Technology is making its way into day schools – like all disruptive innovation, it appears initially in a small number of schools, and within a relatively short time, it’s mainstream.

Julie Weiner’s balanced article on iPad use in Jewish day schools highlighted that we may be observing the emergence of a revolution.  Was this what the move from hand-copied scrolls to printed books was like in the late 15th century? Did educators then sense that, to use Lisa Colton’s phrasing, a technological invention was becoming a societal innovation?

As someone who grew up in the day school of the 1970s, I recall the experience of “looking things up,” whether in encyclopedias, large Judaic volumes (Tanakh, Mishnah, Talmud) or dictionaries and concordances.  Learning to use these texts required skills of _navigation_, honed by repeated use.  Of course, which navigation skills were needed depended on the sort of text.  Some were basically alphabetic, but required knowledge of grammar and identifying a word’s root – and also spotting other uses of that word.  Other texts, like encyclopedias, involved an additional element of thematic classification before pulling out the volume – “under what heading or topic would you likely find X?”  That was an intellectual exercise in organizing information and knowledge, realizing that this or that fact actually fit into a larger framework, which may or may not have been in my current “database.”  And finally, some texts required a sequential or chronological navigation – where would one likely find the story of Ishmael, or of the manna falling?  Jeremiah’s prophecies of doom or the story of Esther?  These searches meant developing and committing to memory a larger storyline or order of books in which to place Biblical references, legal rulings (such as in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah or Karo’s Shulchan Arukh), or Talmudic discussions.  etc.

All this searching was accompanied by a tactile and visual experience – holding large volumes, opening them up to early, middle, or later sections, leafing through them to spot key words or chapter numbers, and on occasion going back to the shelf to pull out another reference source that could help in my frustrated search to locate a passage or word.

According to several brain scientists, recent studies show how these activities help deepen the channels in the brain that make for lasting organization of the material, the creation of associations, and easier retrieval at some future date.  In other words, learning is not merely access to information, but a process closer to internalization than acquisition.

Looking back, these frameworks for remembering many things also became a source of potential creativity: with the associations established in the brain, one item or data point could lead to a host of others.  (Joshua Foer, author of “Moonwalking with Einstein” about memory, notes that both “inventory” and “invention” have the same Latin root – those with a large inventory of facts and ideas were the ones capable of inventing.)  None of us really knows what will happen as generations of students hit a few keys and up pops a source on a flat screen.  What sort of “mental scaffolding” are such students developing to organize the material they study? How do they process it, or make connections and associations when all they have to do is touch a screen and the device finishes their word for them and locates the original source?

I don’t see myself as a Luddite, nor am I advocating for keeping these advances out of schools.  But we must also acknowledge that most technological leaps forward alter our experience in profound ways, both positively and in some unexpected ways.  Technology no doubt helps many students get to the original sources, but it also robs the experience from its tactile dimensions and seems to sever those sources from their natural – and critically important – contexts.  If you’re an educator who’s used iPads in your classroom, especially for Judaics, please share what you did and how that affected students’ learning one way or the other.

Michael Berger
Program Officer at The AVI CHAI Foundation

After months of video production, promotion, and hard work, the Jewish Day School Video Academy Awards contest has come to a close with over 17,500 votes!! The competition was intense with 116 videos submitted by 68 schools. In addition to the three “people’s choice” prizes, three prizes were awarded by a panel of expert judges. The time that we’ve all been waiting for has arrived.

Drum roll please…

1^st place winners of $10,000 are:

People’s Choice:
Columbus Torah Academy for If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Expert Judging:
The Weber School – Doris and Alex Weber Jewish Community High School for Admissions Video

2^nd place winners of $5,000 are:

People’s Choice:
Lander-Grinspoon Academy, The Solomon Schechter School of the Pioneer Valley for A Gem in the Valley

Expert Judging:
Milwaukee Jewish Day School for Milwaukee Jewish Day School Trailer

3^rd place winners of $2,500 in video equipment are:

People’s Choice:
Greenfield Hebrew Academy for Put the P Back in PTSA

Expert Judging:
Martin J. Gottlieb Day School for MJGDS 50th Anniversary Video Invitation

Congratulations to our winners and to all participants! The new video production skills and expertise that participants are bringing back to their Jewish day school communities are invaluable.  Keep up the great work!

Interested in participating in the next contest? Great!  Stay tuned in early March for more details on our next video contest!

Learn more by visiting the Jewish Day School Video Academy website, join our booming Facebook group, and follow our Twitter feed at #JDSVA. (And follow AVI CHAI’s Twitter feed  and Facebook page.) 

In addition to the discussion on this forum, the question was also explored on: Mixed Multitudes, eJewishPhilanthropy, Metroimma, InterfaithFamily as well as via Facebook and Twitter.

We have been excited to read the numerous comments from parents, educators, and others interested in this question. We have learned how passionate and thoughtful many are about the decisions they and/or their parents have made regarding day schools. It is clear that this issue touches on a wide range of questions many hold dear: about instilling in the next generation a strong Jewish identity, excellent academics, a nurturing environment, and so much more.

We are delighted with the array of creative ideas suggested by readers, including, but not limited to:

• Supplementary classes for parents to become comfortable with Judaic material;
• Connecting with local Jewish early childhood programs to create natural transitions to day schools;
• Making the scholarship application process friendlier; and,
• Creating programs where prospective parents could get to know day school alumni

We suspect there are even more ideas out there! What specifically do you feel would make day schools more attractive?

One emerging theme is the importance of addressing parents’ fears around the day school decision – that day school environments are different from what parents have known or that the food, and rituals may be different than what the families are accustomed. Help us out: how can day schools or Jewish communities address those fears and make day schools a more attractive option for parents?

We welcome all suggestions – and hope you will spread the word to others who may have interest and ideas on this topic as well.

For Jewish parents, there is an additional layer of consideration in educational decisions: how to ensure your children grow up with a Jewish sense of values, identity, skills, and sense of community.

Jewish day schools of all types – Orthodox as well as Reform, Conservative, and community day schools – provide one answer to this conundrum of how to raise kids Jewishly. Non-Orthodox parents have a wide array of choices and factors in choosing schools for their children. They consider geography, finances, culture, math and science excellence, arts options, plus Hebrew School on top of a public school education.

Given this complicated array of factors and choices, the AVI CHAI and Steinhardt foundations are wondering how to make day school an option that rises farther to the top for more non-Orthodox families.

What would convince more non-Orthodox parents to decide in favor of day school? Is it an issue of a need to boost the schools’ image to align it with what the parents are already searching for to instill their children with Jewish identity? Is it a problem of marketing and reaching the target audience most likely to sign up? What ways are there to take advantage of existing trends, social networks, or current day school constituencies in recruitment efforts? Are there incentives that would be meaningful?

This blog post kicks off an exciting thought experiment. We are asking you, our readers, and people across the social web, to answer the question: What would make day schools more attractive to non-Orthodox parents? More specifically, without changing the core educational program, what characteristics, features, selling points, functions, additional program offerings, or other ideas do you have that could make day school an attractive independent school choice for non-Orthodox parents?

Do you have ideas that could influence parents’ decisions on these questions – from your own experiences as a parent making them, as a child who was influenced by them, or as someone simply interested in issues of Jewish education? What strategies do you think will work? Please respond here on this blog, on your own blog, or in the AVI CHAI facebook group.

We’re excited to hear from you!

Ken Gordon of PEJE wrote in a NAJDS blog post on the importance of real-life networking – not just because it enables us to meet and socialize, but because on a deeper level it enables us “to recognize our interdependence.”

Reviewing the #NAJDS twitter feed, I was indeed struck by the desire for collaboration which pervaded many of the observations which both participants and those tuning in beyond the conference recorded in tweets. Amihai Bannett (@israelconnect) wrote in to suggest Jewish schools around the world partner with schools in Israel. At the conference itself, Leah Meir (@lmeir) and Seth Cohen (@sethacohen33) expressed their delight that The AVI CHAI Foundation (@AVICHAIFDN) and Schusterman Foundation (@SchustermanFoun) were able to collaborate on a joint session on networks – providing a model for the very subject they were looking to explore.

There seems to be a growing recognition that collaboration between organizations and between schools may help ameliorate some of the challenges facing the educational sphere. Daniel Perla (@danperla) and @SchechterTweets shared the observation from speaker Ian Symmonds that schools should seek to attract the students who are the best fit for them rather than being “all things [to] all people.” Such a policy would help each school’s recruitment efforts while also encouraging referrals and sharing of information when schools were presented with potential students that might be a better fit at another school in the community.

How do these cross-school relationships develop? They start with the development of connections between individual educators and administrators. That is precisely why a conference such as NAJDS is so impactful. As Rachel Abrahams (@Rachelmabrahams) put it: “Relationships create innovation. Relationships influence behavior. What relationships have [you] begun/ strengthened at #najds? [To] what end?” Debby Jacoby (@debbyj18), Yehuda Chanales (@chanales), and Akevy Greenblatt (@Akevy613) all urged colleagues to connect at NAJDS, suggesting that if everyone there connected with just two others, “the [success] will be mind-blowing.”

Connecting is not only important for the sake of developing relationships, which can help everyone do our work more effectively; the possibilities for information-sharing and learning from peers are also very powerful. As Meir Wexler (@RabbiWex) enthused, “Much [to] learn from [colleagues].”

The challenge, of course, is how to continue this collaboration and information-sharing not just at NAJDS but year-round. Chanales posited, “I think we have to find more ways for teachers [to be] exposed to a [conference] like #najds. [It’s] hard to bring that energy to school.”

While conferences are one possibility, initiatives like the weekly twitter conversation #jedchat, recently featured in The Washington Post, and other online opportunities could propel us forward. Regardless of the solution, as Micah Lapidus (@RabmLapidus) tweeted from the conference, “#pirkeavot- lo aleicha: it’s not up to any one person to complete the work, but we all [must] take an active role.”

What do you think are some strategies we could use to make us more connected during the year? How do you share learning and best practices with peers, in your own school and beyond?

The North American Jewish Day School Conference’s session “What Funders Want” dealt with a few striking questions which funders – and anyone interested in deciding where to devote resources – face. One such question is whether the needs of individual schools or “the community” as a system take priority. This can manifest itself geographically: How does what is occurring on the local scene relate to the national picture? It also surfaces when considering how schools work with one another: Do schools have unique needs they need to focus on inwardly – or can they collaborate?

Three panelists – Daniel Perla from The AVI CHAI Foundation, Amy Katz from PEJE, and Holly Cohen from The Kohelet Foundation – discussed funding priorities with one another in a “fishbowl” setup of their three chairs surrounded by an outward circle of the watching audience. This audience could at certain moments influence the dialogue in the “fishbowl” by feeding it questions and observations (including via twitter).

Opening on the question of the personal, moderator Sharon Haselkorn posed the idea that everyone – both those within and beyond the fishbowl – are funders: How do we decide how to donate money? Impact (where a donation will make the greatest impact) and values (which organization’s values one identifies with the most) were the two top replies.

The panelists carried out these ideas of impact and value in discussing how they play out on a communal level. For instance, Daniel spoke to AVI CHAI’s dedication to LRP values – Literacy, Religious Purposefulness, and Peoplehood.

In terms of funders’ work with schools having an impact, the panelists agreed that it is key for their initiatives to be sustainable and replicable. On a basic level, sustainability requires that those seeking funding have a plan, including a financial plan, that they have the capacity and track record to carry out. But looking beyond individual schools, the imperative to have an impact and reach the maximum number of people is inevitably intertwined with the imperative for schools to collaborate with one another.

In practice, however, collaboration is complex. Daniel pointed out that day schools are heterogeneous: the context in which they operate matters. While schools may have certain staff positions, values, or other elements in common, there are differences in how they need to leverage and position themselves, and what works within certain communities and structures may not work in others.

Particularly in agreement were session attendees who happened to come from towns with smaller Jewish populations – such as Tulsa, Oklahoma; Birmingham, Alabama; and Charlotte, Virginia – who presented the question: How can you closely collaborate when the nearest Jewish community is a four hours’ drive away?

At the same time, these communities argued for their national relevance, as many of the children raised in their day schools become Jewishly inspired and go on to join larger Jewish communities elsewhere.

The interplay between the local and the national leads to some fascinating questions. For instance, is there a way we can take best practices for collaboration and apply them in small communities? What national networks are available to local communities? What would large communities do for smaller communities? In other words, how do we make our community a national community?

These questions are particularly salient at a time when the economic recession has greatly increased the need to come up with “innovative” approaches to the challenges facing us. Innovation, as defined by the panelists, need not be one world-changing blow. It can be something simple, or something that simply hasn’t been tried before in that particular school and community. But it does need to be something that squarely takes on the “elephants in the room.”

This issue of local versus national does seem to have been one such elephant in the session room. To solve it, however, may not require an either-or stance. National collaboration may be what is realistic for funders who are operating on a national rather than local level. At the same time, as Amy pointed out, the future of Jewish philanthropy can’t rest on mega-donors. She cited the need to give to day schools in your community as a piece of halacha (Jewish law).

Indeed, today’s day schools need to operate on both a local level, addressing their particular community’s needs, while taking inspiration from and contributing to the national level, collaborating through networks that will seek to solve common challenges. Both those within and beyond the fishbowl also need to collaborate in order to make the impact around the Jewish values that we all want to see in our community.

Cross-posted to eJewish Philanthropy

By: Joel Einleger

Much has been written recently about efforts to build and support people networks in the Jewish world, including a recent post here by my colleague Leah Meir. Network building has become sufficiently important that the Schusterman Foundation hired Seth Cohen, Director of Network Initiatives, to lead and catalyze their efforts towards this goal.

As an experiment in this arena, AVI CHAI and the Maimonides Fund recently joined forces to support the National Ramah Commission’s efforts to build a national alumni network called Reshet Ramah for their estimated 250,000 camper and staff alumni (this is what you get when you have been running camps since 1947!). Most camps hope to galvanize their alumni in fundraising and staying connected with other former campers or staff with whom they shared fond summer experiences. What’s unique about Reshet Ramah is the goal to build connections among Ramah alumni – regardless of which of the 12 Ramah camps they attended – by offering local activities and programs inspired by the Ramah camp experience that will be appealing to them today.  These are expected to include Shabbatonim, camp retreats, learning experiences conducted both locally and on-line, all adapted to the ages and interests of the alumni in each community. Some programming will link to local Jewish institutions so that these Ramah-based experiences might become part of the area’s JCC and synagogue repertoire and even attract those without a Ramah background.

A good camp experience generates great friendships and a strong connection to the camp community. Many Ramah alumni also note the impact that the summer experience had on their Jewish engagement, so it makes sense to translate those experiences and make them contemporarily appealing and relevant. And since the Jewish people continue to wander, and young adults often don’t live in the community closest to the Ramah they attended as camper or staff, connecting alumni locally with each other provides opportunities to foster regionally-based Ramah communities around the country.

In her Jewish Week article, Helen Chernikoff asks whether alumni will be willing to channel powerful memories formed at one specific camp to become part of a local Ramah network that incorporates alumni with similar experiences at other Raman camps.  No doubt this will depend on the quality of the programming offered and the success at recreating the most satisfying aspects of the camp experience. She also asks whether other movements have the potential to follow Ramah’s lead.

In a conversation last week with Simon Klarfeld, who was recently appointed Executive Director of Young Judaea , we discussed YJ’s similarities to Ramah in inspiring long-term engagement in Jewish and Israel experiences that may have begun at camp. Hopefully Reshet Ramah will enjoy early successes that will provide valuable learning for other camp movements watching the roll out of this experiment.

Joel Einleger is Director of Strategy, Camping Programs at The AVI CHAI Foundation

By: Leah Meir

I was reminded of my father when I read a recent New York Times article entitled “Big Study Links Good Teachers to Lasting Gain”.  This major study found that good teachers have lasting effects on their students’ lives that go way beyond academics, affecting life choices the students make years later. This study only confirms what many of us have felt personally. And the impact of teachers is even more crucial in Jewish studies, where we expect teachers to “lead by example” and act as role models for students in addition to imparting knowledge.

And why was I reminded of my father, Rabbi Judah Nadich z”l, when I read the article?  Because when he was 12 years old in 1924, he had a teacher who changed the course of his life, launching him on a path to the rabbinate, to serving as Senior Jewish Chaplain in Europe during World War II and Advisor to General Eisenhower on Jewish Affairs and then to a distinguished career as a leader of American Jewry. He was the kind of rabbi whose teaching had deep impact on both adults and children. His years in the chaplaincy are the subject of a current exhibit at the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, through February 7^th.

In his unpublished memoir, my father tells the following story:

Growing up in Baltimore, his Jewish education had consisted of private lessons with a European-born teacher. By the time he was 12, he was completely bored with the rote lessons (which his teacher often listened to while sitting in his kitchen drinking a cup of tea Russian-style, sugar cube between his teeth). He started to skip his lessons to play in the park with his friends. He had absolutely no interest in the Jewish studies that he had experienced. When his parents found out, his mother lamented that he was in danger of growing up to be “a truck driver”, clearly not an acceptable career choice for her Jewish son!

She had heard about the Baltimore Talmud Torah, a more “modern” school on the other side of town, and enrolled him there. He was amazed to see that his teacher was a 19-year-old Johns Hopkins student by the name of Morris Perman, only a few years older than he was!  At the end of his first day, Mr. Perman asked him what he enjoyed doing and my father answered that he liked to draw. Perman asked him whether he would draw a map of the Kingdom of David, which the class was studying, on the blackboard the next day. My father was hooked.  A teacher was interested in what he liked to do, and actually asked him to use his skill in the class! It was a small but profoundly important gesture that made a lasting impact on a young boy.

My father noted in his memoir that Morris Perman went on to a career in Jewish education, leading religious schools in a number of cities including the illustrious Talmud Torah of Minneapolis. Searching the internet, I just discovered that Morris Perman passed away in 2008 at the age of 101, just months after my father. His obituary notes: “His zeal for teaching profoundly enriched and touched generations of students, family, and friends.” It certainly did.

Thank you to Mr. Perman and to all the teachers in Jewish religious and day schools who show their students the way, through their character and behavior as well as their knowledge. How can we recruit more like Morris Perman and Judah Nadich?

Leah Nadich Meir is a Program Officer at The AVI CHAI Foundation. Connect with her on Twitter @lmeir