Listening to Students’ Voices

Sivan Zakai

Meet Maya, Stephanie, and Alex. All three are actual high school students at Jewish community day schools. As they speak with me, an educational researcher and outsider to their school, they are attempting to articulate what about their Jewish day school education has value to them. These are their real words.

“I go to a Jewish school because I love feeling like every person is important and means something,” Maya explains. “When I’m here I feel like what I say matters to my teachers, to my peers. It gives me a feeling that when I wake up in the morning there’s a purpose for me going to school rather than trying to get good grades. Sometimes it scares me that my life could revolve so much around getting a good grade on a test, but at a Jewish school there is something more. There is an emphasis on grades, but at the same time there’s an emphasis on social action, on community, and that’s important to me that there is that something greater.” Finding meaning and purpose in quotidian life is of utmost importance to Maya, and she believes that her school helps her in this quest. By focusing on Jewish values—and not only academic excellence—her community day school helps her feel that her actions in the world matter to others.

For Stephanie, the true value of a Jewish education lies not in helping her connect to those around her, but in linking her to a rich and storied Jewish past. “What’s the point of all this Jewish education?” she wonders. “Ideally it is about learning you’re connected to your roots, you have a 2000 year old history.” She continues, “My own reason for getting a Jewish education has to do with my grandfather. When I was in 7th grade he was killed [in a terrorist attack on Jews] and when he died, I felt I kind of owed it to him to learn more, to create a Jewish identity because I know how important Israel was to him and he was a very passionate Jew and I wanted to make him proud. So that is my big motivator.” Stephanie’s connection to the past is both communal, relating to the history of the entire Jewish people, and deeply personal, connecting her to her grandfather and carrying forth his legacy. Like Maya, Stephanie sees her Jewish learning as an opportunity to be part of something greater than herself.

Alex, on the other hand, views his Jewish education as explicitly connected to the self. For him, Jewish education is not about learning to carry the torch of tradition, but about learning to navigate his own, uniquely personal Jewish path. He explains, “I think the great thing I find in Judaism is that you’re able to do whatever level that you’re comfortable with and that you find your own interpretations of it. So I guess I would say that for me getting a Jewish education is about deciding what Judaism means to me, like what I do that to me is Jewish, and why I don’t feel the need to go to services every Friday night. Jewish learning is getting more of an explanation for myself, and I’m committed to that.” His Jewish learning is intrinsically linked to what Steven Cohen and Arnold Eisen call “the sovereign self,” a personal journey for Jewish meaning and practice. Alex cares about getting a Jewish education because he believes it can help him forge his own way in the world.

In reading the words of these articulate Jewish teens, it is easy to imagine them repurposed for admissions brochures or website blurbs touting the benefits of day school education. And yet, the reason these students shared their thoughts with me was not for the purpose of marketing or public relations. These students, quite simply, wanted to be heard. If we listen to their voices only as an opportunity to showcase the successes of Jewish community high schools, then we miss the educational lessons that the Maya, Stephanie, and Alex’s words can teach.

Lesson One: Students Have Different “Big Motivators” for Learning; Cultivate Those Differences

Stephanie referred to her grandfather’s death as her “big motivator” for Jewish learning. Alex found motivation for his Jewish education in being able to make his own decisions about what aspects of Jewish practice to accept or reject. Maya was driven by her desire to find purpose and meaning in her life. That students differ is a basic truism of education. Schools provide a variety of course offerings and extracurricular activities for students to pick among. Teachers design differentiated lessons to tailor learning to the different styles and interests of students.

Yet many Jewish day schools have a single “portrait of a graduate” that details a uniform set of attributes that all students must possess. These portraits are useful for building positive school culture and guiding “backwards planning,” but they gloss over very important differences among students that schools should be cultivating, not ignoring.

Rabbi Zusya, a chassidic master of the late 18th century, is known for telling his students, “When I get to the heavenly court, they will not fault me for not being Moses. They will not ask me, ‘Why weren’t you Moses?’ Instead, they will ask me, ‘Why weren’t you Zusya?’” The goal of Jewish education is not to help students become scholars like Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides), innovators like Moses Mendelssohn, or philanthropists like Moses Montefiore. The goal, rather, is to help Maya become her own scholar, Stephanie her own innovator, Alex his own philanthropist.

One way to honor and encourage differences among students would be to provide students an opportunity to develop a “self-portrait of a graduate.” A self-portrait, which could easily coexist with an existing schoolwide “portrait of a graduate,” could provide students an opportunity to reflect on their own “big motivators” for learning, and to use what drives them to imagine the kinds of students and people they hope to become by the time they graduate. Like Maya, Alex and Stephanie, students who have an opportunity to think and talk about the reasons they care about Jewish learning (and the moments when they may not care about it) are better able to chart their own course to personal and communal meaning and responsibility.

Lesson Two: Don’t Confuse Students’ Motivations for Learning with Teachers’ Motivations for Teaching

Just as students’ motivations for learning differ from one another, so too do they often differ from the motivations of teachers. Even as teachers and students come together to learn, their reasons for doing so are often surprisingly dissimilar.

Stephanie’s Jewish studies teacher, for example, frames the value of Jewish learning in terms that would not resonate with her. Rabbi Stein, a teacher with whom Stephanie has good rapport, explains what he thinks is of primary importance in his students’ learning. He says, “I’m really interested in seeing Jewish texts and traditions as a resource for people in the process of identity formation.” Stephanie wants to learn about Judaism because she believes it will help her carry forth her grandfather’s legacy, and she’s particularly interested in lessons focused on Jewish and Israeli history. Her teacher cares most about preparing his students to read and find meaning in the Jewish textual tradition. For him, “the multivocality of our texts around core questions [of Jewish identity]” is what is most appealing about Judaism, and therefore most important for his students to learn.

Problems arise not when teachers and their students differ—after all, recognizing differences among Jews is one of the hallmarks of the Jewish community day school—but when teachers don’t realize that students’ motivations for learning are often quite different from their own motivations for teaching. Teachers, even those committed to differentiated learning, cannot actually design student-centered or student-tailored lessons without understanding where students do (and do not) find their own motivations for learning.

It is possible to understand why and when students are committed to Jewish learning, and to plan lessons and programs that help students develop their own ideas, passions and commitments, only by listening to students’ authentic voices. It is their words (and not only those of the adults so committed to their learning and development) that can shape the Jewish leaders of the future and the schools that educate them today.

Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, editor of the Mishnah, is known for saying, “I learned much from my teachers, more from my colleagues, but most of all from my students.” In order to truly learn from students, schools and the people who inhabit them—teachers, administrators, students and parents—must make time and space for students to give voice to their thoughts, and to be honored for them. For, as once Maya said to me, true learning comes from “listening really carefully and intently.”♦

Dr. Sivan Zakai is director of research and teacher education at the Graduate Center for Education at American Jewish University. She can be reached at [email protected].

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HaYidion Whole_Student Winter 2012
The Whole Student
Winter 2012