Our Greatest Value Lies in...

Teaching Each According to Their Own Way

Rabbi Elliot Hecht

Principal, HANC Middle School, Uniondale, New York

When I think about our yeshiva, the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County’s greatest value, the first thing that comes to my mind is how we treat each individual. This applies to students, academic faculty, non-academic faculty, support staff and parents. Our motto is: Chanoch le-na‘ar al-pi darko, which means: Teach each child according to his own way (Mishlei/Proverbs 22:6).

When we educate, we do not just educate a grade or even a class. We individualize the instruction and tailor it to the needs of each student. We make sure that each student is able to be successful. We open pathways for that success. If we see that a student is struggling with a particular concept, we work with them until they can understand. If the student is excelling, we challenge them to go even further.

This individualization applies not only to curricular areas. We are a nursery-12th grade school that looks different at different age levels. For example, in our high school we continue to look at our extracurricular offerings and see what we can add to meet the needs and interests of our students. Some years, band may be of particular interest; in others, it is dance or Chidon HaTanakh. In order to best service our students, we need to offer activities that interest them.

This individualization extends to the parent body as well. Each parent gives us their most precious commodity, and we don’t take that lightly. Each parent has distinct needs in terms of how they want us to approach their son or daughter. We have a certain standard that we uphold; how we achieve it is individualized to the family. When parents call anyone of the HANC team, they know they are going to get a call back almost immediately. I have often heard from parents that they are amazed that they feel they have just hung up the phone or just pressed “send” and they are already getting a response. Not only is the response fast but it is unique to each parent and child’s situation.

Another one of our greatest values is NOP, which stands for New Opportunities Program. This program is for students who join our school from public school. Over the years we have heard from countless individuals that if not for our yeshiva, they would not have been able to get a Jewish education. It is so hard for someone who wants to transfer in from public school. Even though they have the motivation, they lack the skills that other students have who have been in yeshiva since they were young. In NOP, they learn the basics that allow them to join the mainstream classes in just one year, in most cases. This is another way that we individualize. In fact, for this year’s middle school graduation, the students were asked what their best memory of their experience was. One of the students said that it was his first day, because he got to learn Torah for the first time in his life.

HANC’s greatest value is our ability to work with each individual and help them become the best person they can be.

The Community “Peg”

Rabbi Laurie Rice, Board Member, and Rabbi Flip Rice

Parents, Akiva Day School, Nashville

הֲיֻקַּח מִמֶּנּוּ עֵץ לַעֲשׂוֹת לִמְלָאכָה אִם־יִקְחוּ מִמֶּנּוּ יָתֵד לִתְלוֹת עָלָיו כׇּל־כֶּלִי׃

Can wood be taken from it for use in any work? Can one take a peg from it to hang any vessel on? Ezekiel 15:3

Jewish educators are the “keepers” of our faith. They store our sacred tradition, its texts and observances, and continually open the treasure chest of Jewish meaning for children and their families.

There are many things we believe as Reform rabbis. One of them is that the Akiva Day School is the most vital Jewish institution in the fast-growing city of Nashville. It is the “peg” on which we hang our future. Because our Jewish community understands the importance of education (in a state that scores near dead last on aptitude tests), Akiva’s faculty is top-notch, its board of directors is thoughtful and effective, and its head of school, Rabba Daniella Pressner, is one of the finest Jewish scholars and leaders in the country. Its success hinges upon a spirit of innovation, a commitment to excellence and the result of using its resources wisely.

A “peg on which to hang something” usually refers to a fact or issue that is used as support. It is a reason for something said or done, or as it is used in Talmudic discourse, it is an authority upon which to base your opinion. Rabbi Akiva once said, “It is not that Eleazar knows more Torah than I do but that he is descended from greater people than I am. Happy is the person whose ancestors have gained merit for him. Happy is the person who has a ‘peg’ on which to hang.” The Jewish tradition is a scaffolding of good character. Students who attend Akiva learn not only how to be good Jews, they learn to be kind humans.

To continually believe in something—to really have faith—it must be tested. We love our three teenage children, all graduates of Akiva School. They constantly test us! Each carries different intellectual strengths and interests, but all three have strong character, which we recognize was developed not just under our tutelage. Rather, they were shaped by the values they were exposed to while studying their heritage with peers. Their sense of equality, of pride in Jewish identity, was cultivated in the classrooms and beit knesset of the Akiva School.

“What are we?” our daughter once asked as we drove her home from school.

“What do you mean?” we replied.

“Are we Orthodox or Conservative or Reform? What are we?” Funny question considering she is the daughter of two Reform rabbis.

“We are Jews,” we told her. She seemed reassured. It’s how she saw herself as an Akiva student. Jewish. Part of the larger Am Yisrael. Responsible to and descended from the entire Jewish community. As it should be.

Ruach

Rabbi Eli Mandel

Vice Principal, TannenbaumCHAT, Toronto

I was hired as a rabbinics teacher at TanenbaumCHAT, and on my first day I was assigned a Grade 10 applied rabbinics class. My mentor warned me that this was likely the most difficult class in the school to teach. Grade 10 students are enabled but not mature enough to know how to behave. “Applied” meant that they had less experience with Jewish texts; “rabbinics” meant it was a not-for-credit course. I mentally prepared for the worst and, just like the books told me to do, I walked into my classroom, creative lesson in hand, with confidence, good posture and a smile on my face.

To my shock and great delight, I was greeted by the most pleasant, well-behaved, eager-to-learn group of students that I had ever taught. They had their books open, pens in hand, and were ready to soak in my every word. This lasted the entire year and was repeated for every class that I taught in the school.

What I learned on that first day, 19 years ago, is the magic that’s in the air at TanenbaumCHAT. Our school’s greatest value lies in this quality, which can be called the ruach or school culture. The culture at TanenbaumCHAT is that “it’s cool to do well academically.” Other parts of our wonderful school culture excite our students to get involved in school life and to do everything in their power to become a school leader. Whether they are applying to become a madrich or a school ambassador, or running for a position on Student Council, our students line up eager and enthusiastic to be selected. Equally important, there is a sense of derech eretz and respect that permeates throughout the entire school community.

In “The Culture Builder,” an article published in Educational Leadership, Roland Barth describes school culture as “a complex pattern of norms, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, values, ceremonies, traditions and myths that are deeply ingrained in the very core of the organization. It is the historically transmitted pattern of meaning that wields astonishing power in shaping what people think and how they act” (my emphasis).

Once entrenched, school cultures are extremely difficult to change. For schools with weak or toxic cultures, this is bad news. Changing a toxic culture requires years of consistent small actions that are strategic and deliberate. For schools like TanenbaumCHAT that are blessed with a culture that is alive and flourishing, we must be diligent and ensure that we aren’t slipping.

Over the past two years, like everyone, we needed to implement many changes. We turned the timetable on its head, switching to quadmesters and lessons that ran for two hours. Our extracurricular programming had to be dramatically reduced, with much of it offered only virtually. More recently, teams of faculty members spent a great deal of time thinking about how to recapture all of the full in-person TanenbaumCHAT spirit that we know and love.

We remain confident that with the continued outstanding efforts of our stellar team of educators, our school culture—one that has stood the test of time for more than 60 years—will continue to bring excitement to our hallways and ruach to our community for decades to come.

Kehillah

Merrill Hendin

Principal, Portland Jewish Academy, Oregon

Kehillah (community) and shayachut (belonging): These are two key words that come to mind when I think about our school. As a pluralistic Jewish community day school, we are well aligned with the city in which we live, which leans progressive and inclusive. Having come from a larger Jewish community (Brooklyn) where Jewish day schools were mostly affiliated with a particular religious denomination and only Jewish families attended, it felt very different to me to enter PJA over 30 years ago and realize the beauty in this inclusive kehillah, where families from the broad spectrum of Jewish life, and some who do not identify as Jewish, all find a home at our school. As a teacher, parent, active volunteer and, for the past 16 years, a member of the school’s administration, I have had the privilege of being a part of the growth of our beautiful school.

PJA stands on six foundational middot: limmud (learning), kavod (respect), zehut (identity), achrayut (responsibility), kehillah and hodayah (gratitude), all of which are palpable as one moves through our halls and spends time in our classrooms. The learning is rich; students and teachers are respectful of each other and of the core value of being a Jewish day school. The children in our school, from the very youngest in our early childhood program (six weeks old) to the oldest in our eighth grade, are developing a strong sense of themselves and the world in which they live. From a very young age, they learn about tikkun, repair, whether it be their classroom, our school, their family, the city in which they live or the larger world around them. This helps to grow their sense of identity and responsibility for themselves and the world they live in.

All of this comes back to what I see as a pillar of our school: a sense of belonging to a kehillah that nurtures, educates and cares deeply for each other. One only has to walk through our halls to feel that sense of belonging as our youngest and oldest students come together in mishpachot, family groupings, to celebrate Shabbat, holidays and other special times throughout the year. For students, families and faculty, the overall feeling that PJA is their home, the place they come to every day to learn, play and interact with their community, is palpable and important. We are proud to make mensches at PJA, students who think for themselves, work for the world, and feel a deep sense of belonging and responsibility to their community.

Consistency and Coherence

Rabbi Azaryah Cohen

Head of School, Frankel Jewish Academy, West Bloomfield, Michigan

If there is anything young adults are good at, it is spotting inconsistency. As they learn to navigate a world that they are making sense of and finding their place in, anything that smacks of hypocrisy becomes fodder for critique and could ultimately undo the best of educational intentions. At Frankel Jewish Academy, we’ve taken aim at consistency and coherence by infusing our entire professional school culture with elements of pedagogy and learning (and of course our core values). In particular, learning and growth, assessment and evaluation, have become an integral part of our professional lives at FJA.

We emphasize that learning shouldn’t just be relegated to the classrooms. It should be a communal pursuit, with teachers and staff modeling the learning process and reflecting “learner characteristics” in all that they do. For nearly a decade and a half, we have focused on creating a culture of professional learning that emphasizes growth. Over 10 years ago, we established a new teacher induction and peer coaching program. The program’s aim, to ensure teacher success and growth at all levels of experience, led to the realization that unless we were engaged in our own learning and employing best practices in that endeavor, we are invoking a “Do as I say but not as I do” tack while working to inspire our students to be “lifelong learners” (the finale clause of our mission statement).

At the board level as well, we often speak of the importance of continued learning and growth. We acknowledge that trustees have much to learn about the school and about their role as trustees. Board education builds and enhances our board’s capacity and serves as an additional affirmation that we are a community that values and incorporates essential elements of learning and pedagogy into everything that we do.

We also gave serious thought to the role evaluation, assessment and data gathering plays in our professional pursuits. Just as assessment plays a critical role in students’ learning, we incorporate a variety of evaluation tools into our professional routine. Nearly a decade ago, we developed and named our system of evaluation “Supervision for Growth,” clearly articulating that professional growth is the intended outcome of evaluation. At this time, through a collaborative process, we are updating our evaluation system to reflect our newly developed “characteristics of professional excellence.” The updates will create coherence between elements we value as a professional community, and the system will continue to support skill and knowledge acquisition by emphasizing goal setting, reflecting on successes and developing strategies to overcome challenges.

Constituent surveys further highlight the importance of assessment as a learning tool. On a yearly basis, we survey staff, faculty, students and parents to understand if we are achieving our strategic and programmatic goals. Our board evaluation likewise informs trustees whether our board is knowledgeable about its role and whether it is operating with best practices in mind.

Most recently, we have established learning cohorts, where each member of our staff and faculty, regardless of role, engages in peer learning and capacity building around specific topics of interest related to our educational vision and our characteristics of professional excellence.

This year, I’ve joined a cohort related to our educational vision, tasked with “creating a learning environment where students develop a ‘failure tolerance’ and are willing to take risks in their learning.” While teachers can think about this through the lens of their classrooms—assessment, grading, classroom culture—I can think more broadly about how we develop consistency and coherence around “failure tolerance” (not a term I love) throughout our school.

How, as professionals, can we incorporate this into our practice and model the “failure-tolerant” approach for our students? In a school setting, what would it look like if our professionals saw “failure” as merely an opportunity to learn? If they saw taking a risk as an opportunity to innovate and succeed? How can our leadership team (lay and professional) model this for our staff, faculty and students, and how can we effectively communicate and partner with our parents? Will they see the stakes as too high, or will they understand that the stakes are too high not to try?

At FJA, our commitment to pursue coherence and consistency in education will, in the long term, teach our students that the path to success and growth is through employing best learning practices and demonstrating a willingness for vulnerability at every level of career or life.

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Fall 2022