News Flash: No Silver Bullets in Education!!!

Everyone's talking about "Waiting for Superman", and with good reason.  I hope they will also talk about this article in the NY Times Lauded Harlem Schools Have Their Own Problems.  Here's what I think is important about both, in no particular order:

Big Ideas in Teaching and Learning

1. Good education costs a lot of money
2. Money alone isn't an answer
3. Complex issues require complex approaches
4. There is no single answer to any complicated problem
5. There are many partial answers, and it isn't always possible to isolate the most important
6. People who want to help have many different skill sets - all of which can and should be utilized to make things better.

These Big Ideas are crucial in general education, and no less so in the Jewish educational world.  Too often we jump on a single bandwagon expecting that what works in one context will work in all.  This simply isn't true.  We should never discourage people with a passion for good outcomes, because we can never be sure what will trigger improvement in any single situation.

Things I Know About Teaching and Learning...

but turn out not to be true.  As is so often the case, 'conventional wisdom' comes up short.  According to this article, Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits, some of what you may have believed about teaching and learning seems to be less-than-written-in-stone, so to speak.

What's the Big Idea?  How can it be that what I knew was true isn't???
And WHAT DO I DO NOW????

I think you do what good teachers everywhere always did -

• you try lots of different things.  
• you have a 'toolkit' of varied and tested ideas
• you stay alert to what is working and what is not
• you are always revising, tweaking, improving based on evaluation of desired outcomes
• you remember that you won't always be successful, but you never stop trying to be better
• you study new ideas but don't necessarily throw out the old ones
• you hesitate to blindly follow every new theory
• you plan, 
• you evaluate,
• you build on success
• you remember that you became a teacher because you love learning
• you do everything in your power to encourage the love of learning in your students.

Remember the wisdom of the statement:

Lo alecha ha-m'lacha ligmor

v'lo ata ben chorin l'hivatel mimena

You don't have to finish the work - but you are obligated to begin it

History is How We Write It

A few weeks ago there was a lengthy article in the New York Time Sunday Magazine about the Texas Board of Education and its influence on textbook publishers.  The debates and hearings are now over, and the new Texas standards are now in place.
Publishers will now respond to the new standards by publishing textbooks that align to them - Texas is a huge market and the publishers need to sell their books.

I hope this will encourage educators to seek sources for their students that reflect appropriate perspectives, even if those are not reflected in the available textbooks.  That is one of the advantages (and yes, challenges as well) of the enormous amount and diversity of information available to us today.  Please click on this blog from the ASCD Smartbrief about learning in today's world.  What is true about students in the general educational world is true in the Jewish educational world as well.

And to remember that - as I wrote on February 24, 2010 in a post about Purim -the lens through which we understand history is even more important than the accumulated facts that we have about it.

Why I chose Jewish Education as a career

Recently I was waiting for a plane and happened to be sitting with someone who, it turns out, holds a pretty high position in a government educational agency.  In the course of conversation I half-jokingly suggested that she use her influence to limit the number of high-stakes tests students are obligated to take.  Her answer, more or less was this:  'You know, don't you, that educators aren't running the system these days - business people are.'

Here are two articles you may enjoy reading:

1. Business principles won't work for school reform, former supporter Ravitch says - This article has received a great deal of attention, for good reasons
2. Where the Bar Ought to Be is an op-ed by Bob Herbert in which he describes Deborah Kenny, creator of charter schools in Harlem.  I am not necessarily a fan of charter schools, but I agree wholeheartedly with this statement she made:

“I had five core things in mind for my kids, and that’s what I want for our students,” she said. “I wanted them to be wholesome in character. I wanted them to be compassionate and to see life as a responsibility to give something to the world. I wanted them to have a sophisticated intellect. I wanted them to be avid readers, the kind of person who always has trouble putting a book down. And I raised them to be independent thinkers, to lead reflective and meaningful lives.”

In most settings of Jewish learning we are not bound by the strictures of the general educational world.  We can set our own priorities.

• What are the five core things you have in mind as what you want for your students?
• Does the constituency (clergy, teachers, parents, kids) in your school share your core ideas?
• What are you doing to support these ideas?
• How does the curriculum in your school align to these ideas?
• How does the structure of your school further them?
• How does the staff nurture their development?
• How are those other than students involved in supporting these ideas?
• How can everyone involved do a better job?

What's Really Important?

We know that people learn what they perceive as important. Our challenge as teachers is to find out what that is for our learners. Here's an example from medicine that may bring a chuckle, but ultimately may help you realize the importance of motivation in learning.

Treating Sleep Apnea with a Golf Club

Big Idea:

People learn what is important to them

Essential Question:

What is already important to your learners?

How can we make that which is important to us important to our learners?

Activities teachers can do to support uncovering the Big Idea:

Read what they read, watch what they watch, listen to their music. (I don't suggest you abandon your interests in favor of theirs, but you have a responsibility to be familiar with their cultural context if you are going to craft learning experiences they can relate to)

Provide time in class for students to talk about what they are interested in - to each other and to you.

Listen to your students.

Assessment: How will you know this is working?

Your students make more personal connections to the content of the learning.

Remember - your ultimate goal as a Jewish educator is to help your learners reach a level at which their Jewish knowledge, belief and practice are an important part of their lives and identities; a level at which what they are learning and doing is important not only to you as their teacher, but to them in their lives both within and outside the institution in which they learn.

An Advantage Jewish Educators Have

Constructivist teaching is an exciting, engaging way of supporting student learning. You may be interested in reading about a teacher's experience with constructivism in her classroom here.

Teachers in general education are often challenged by the necessity of adhering to curriculum that is designed to improve outcomes on high-stakes tests. Because of this they may find it difficult to honor the principle of allowing the learner to set the agenda for learning.

In Jewish education, I would suggest, the situation is different. While there are set curricula that schools adopt and/or create, there is a great deal more flexibility in desired Jewish learning outcomes than is generally the case in the general educational world. There are - at least in the congregational or complementary schools I am familiar with - no universal desired outcomes for students learning (one might argue about the requirements for performance at Bar/Bat Mitzvah, but that is a whole other story, one I hope to address at length some other time)

The outcomes we hope for are broad, deep, and often difficult to articulate.

Certainly we want to encourage subject knowledge. One would be hard-pressed to argue against a shared body of Judaic content knowledge. What should be included in this body is of course open to discussion.

We want the products of our education to participate in Jewish life. In what ways? Again, open to discussion.

We want our learners to go further - to believe that their Jewish learning is not complete when they finish the learning programs we provide for them - that they can and should be learning Jewishly during the rest of their lives.

That last outcome is one that I believe constructivist teaching can support in a powerful way. If our learners are given the autonomy to learn what interests them, and surely there are enough options within the body of Jewish content to support many different learning streams, then I believe they will see Jewish learning as something that has the potential to meet their actual needs.

Learners flourish when they have control of their learning. In Jewish education we are in a unique position to encourage and support this kind of learning - and to hope it will lead to a lifetime of self-motivated Jewish learning.

New Year, New Thinking?

Sunday's NY Times Business Section had an article about the way companies approach their work. Welcoming the New, Improving the Old describes two very different ways to get better at what we do. One approach - Six Sigma - involves precise measurement and adjustment to reach the desired results. The other - Design Thinking - promotes "outside the box" creativity, in which everything is deemed possible.

At first, when I read this article, I thought about the implications for education. After all, we all want to improve, don't we? Which of these two ideas would work for us? What combination of the two would get us where we want to be?

And yet as I read further it became obvious to me that some of the assumptions that are made in the business world just don't work in the world of education, and certainly not in the world of Jewish education.

The business world can deal in absolutes. Problems are measurable. Solutions can be neat. An item you manufacture either works or doesn't. Procedures can be put in place to resolve problems. Money is available in the hopes that the product will increase the bottom line.

Education is fundamentally different. Some outcomes are measurable but others are not. The "product", which is what I will call the learner, can be a moving target - reacting one way on Monday and another on Tuesday.

So how do we improve our outcomes in Jewish education?

First we need to decide what we want our outcomes to be. Not so easy. Content knowledge? Group identity? Behaviors? Theological perspective? All these are parts of the outcome, and no one segment is sufficient.

When we think about our challenges we need to accept the fact that perfection is not an option. Teaching is not neat. Learning is not neat. Even Jewish thought is not neat.

As we begin the school year, and the Jewish year, I urge you to be open to new ideas, to be ready to try something you never tried before, to reflect on what you are doing, and to continue to approach Jewish education with the passion it deserves.

Here are some websites that may help you think about the upcoming year:

Teachers' New Years Resolutions - written for the general New Year, but certainly applicable for Rosh HaShanah

The Art of Teaching - by a science teacher, with a wonderful lesson for all of us

Inspiring Teachers Blog - appears to be inactive, but the posts available are valuable

Teaching Resources - provides a link to a number of Educational Resources and Videos for Rosh HaShanah

BJENY has a number of lesson plans on its website

Oprah Winfrey may not have had Rosh HaShanah in mind, but I like her attitude:

"Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right."

Telling Stories, Telling the Truth

As the school year begins for most of us, we will be asked - probably over and over - "Is this story true?" Whether we are teaching Torah narrative, Jewish history, or Midrash, we will need to understand the meaning behind the question before we can give an appropriate answer.

What does "true" mean? I believe there are multiple ways to understand this word.

• True can mean historically accurate, verifiable through scientific examination.
• True can mean fundamentally valid, with an intrinsic importance to understanding the world.
• True can mean 'what I believe' - the story from the perspective of the group to which I belong.
• True can mean 'what I want the listener to believe' - part of the narrative that defines my identity and that I hope will shape the identity of others.

With all these meanings for a simple one-syllable word, what can the answer be to the question, "Is this story true?"

Before you answer, I believe it is important to think deeply about the motivation for the question. Does the student want to know what you believe? What you want him or her to believe? Whether the enduring idea of the story has validity?

Only when you have considered these possibilities do I believe you can answer honestly and appropriately.

In this essay by Daniel Shifrin you will read about one parent's struggle with this issue. You may or may not agree with his conclusions.

The truth is that you should be struggling with the issue as well.

Thoughts on Teaching Big Ideas in Torah

Don Hewitt, the creator of 60 Minutes, just died.

He is quoted in an article in the LA Times as follows:

My idea was that television reality ought to be packaged as entertainingly as television entertainment," Hewitt said. "I believe that it all comes down to that ancient phrase: 'Tell me a story.' I think people are interested in stories, not issues, even though the stories may be about people coping with issues. In the Bible, the issue was evil, but the story was Noah."

What a wonderful trigger for thinking about teaching and learning Torah.

During the month of Elul we are close to the end of the Torah cycle, which means, naturally, that we are also close to the beginning. So perhaps in thinking about how we will learn Torah this year with our students we can remember to keep in mind that while the story is the "hook," the Big Ideas are the "issues".

Planning a lesson ought to begin, therefore, at the end:

I. Big Ideas/Enduring Understandings/What do I want my students to remember after they have forgotten everything else?

II. Essential Questions/What are the questions they need to challenge themselves to answer in order to reach these understandings?

III. Activities/What are the learning activities our students can participate in/create/view/organize to help them answer these essential questions? What are the resources to which I can direct them so they can be active participants in their learning?

IV. Assessment/How will I as the teacher be able to know if my students have learned the big ideas?

This lesson planning strategy is known as Understanding by Design, or, more informally, as Backward Design, and was popularized by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. No matter what you are teaching, it suggests that you must start with the important outcomes you hope to reach. This is a different from a model that states goals and objectives as discreet bits of content knowledge. It is about learning things that are IMPORTANT.

If you want to learn more about this strategy, you can type the words "Understanding by Design" into any search engine and read about it on the web. While most of the articles refer to meeting state learning standards and other issues in general education, the ideas for planning learning are equally relevant in Jewish studies.

I would suggest that if our students are learning Torah without the sense that what they are learning is FUNDAMENTALLY IMPORTANT, then what they may know temporarily will soon be forgotten.

What does it mean to be Jewish?

Daniel Goldfarb, a playwright, has written a play called The Retributionists. It is a story based on a historical event - a plan by a group of Jews in 1946 to take revenge on the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

You can read more about the play here at the Playwrights Horizons site.

Goldfarb has written other plays, all examining the question of what it means to be Jewish in the world today.

An interesting article about both the play and the playwright appeared in the NY Times this past Sunday. You can access it through the link here - At Ease In His Own Pigeonhole

The last paragraph of the article reads as follows:

"He said his goal is not to provide answers so much as raise questions. When pressed to take sides [about the characters in and subjects of his plays] he demurs: 'I am a big proponent of: Write what you're confused about. Being Jewish provides endless confusion.... If you are in the process of trying to figure out what it means that you're Jewish, then you're Jewish.'"

What a wonderful quotation to bring to our students in high school and perhaps middle school.

How to do this? Please share your suggestions here so we can all learn from each other.

Jewish Thoughts on War and Peace

It happens that this week's parasha, Parshat Shofetim, includes some guidelines for behaviors in war. The Israelites are given certain limits, including the requirement to invite a peaceful surrender before initiating battle, and restrictions on destruction of both people and, interestingly enough, of trees. You can read the text in Deuteronomy Chapter 20 at this link: Mechon-Mamre.

I found this particularly interesting in view of a speech President Obama gave recently, in which he referred to the war in Afghanistan as a necessary war. His words:

"This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity," Obama told the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars conference -- cautioning that the insurgency would not be defeated overnight. "Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans." (from the LA Times, reporting on a speech given Monday, August 17, 2009)

This speech can serve as a trigger for discussion of what those words - "war of necessity" - mean in the context of Jewish thinking.

Big Idea:

Jewish wisdom can be a way of understanding the world around us

Essential Questions:

1. Why does President Obama consider the war in Afghanistan a war of necessity?
2. In what way would Jewish wisdom support or not support his description?

Learning Activities:

1. Read Obama's speech. It is quite long, so you may want to divide it into sections for your students to read. Discuss what he said, focusing on his reasons for considering the war in Afghanistan a necessary war.
2. Read the articles at these links below.

• Maimonides on War
• War 101 in Jewish Thought

Compare and contrast Obama's thoughts on necessary war with those of the Jewish thinkers in the articles you read. Your students may choose to create a chart, have a debate, or express their understanding in another way. The important outcome is that they understand that they can apply Jewish thinking to the world in which they live.

The Challenge of Change

Reading yet again about the challenge of changing our health care system in the United States it occurred to me that there is a parallel to Jewish educational improvement here.

The health care system needs change.

The Jewish educational system needs change.

Change is difficult.

Systems resist changing.

Change is messy.

Meaningful change needs constituent buy-in.

And here is the BIG QUESTION!

CAN MEANINGFUL CHANGE OCCUR INCREMENTALLY, ONE ELEMENT AT A TIME, OR MUST IT BE SYSTEM-WIDE?

In the case of an educational system that exists within a fundamentally conservative setting, which I would suggest Judaism is, I believe that the necessary constituent buy-in is much more likely to support change that is incremental than that which is system-wide.

And I really believe that this incremental change can be meaningful in improving outcomes.

What can you change in preparing for the school year that can improve student learning outcomes?

What can you change about your teaching throughout the year to support improved learning outcomes?

What can you change about your class?

What can you change in your school?

Take a few minutes to reflect on these questions now, before the school year starts. You may find yourself on the way, one step at a time, to valuable change.

What are our students learning and why?

In general studies and in public schools we struggle to assess what our students actually learn. We convene committees to decide what they should learn, and why. In Jewish educational settings, what are the life skills we want our learners to have? Are we really teaching toward these skills?

The article at the link here discusses this question in terms of general education. What are the issues for our learners?

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/07/20/37oakes.h28.html?tkn=RRLF8OmkCO9%2BxzTyIQbkB9mhn96vnHkS6ICF&print=1

What it is, What it is not

Teachers in Jewish educational settings face many challenges. One of the most important is: How does what our students are learning relate to their lives outside the walls of the classroom? Do we and our students see our lives through the lens of Jewish wisdom? Does it ever occur to us, or to them, that what we are learning together for one, or two, or even six or more hours a week has any impact on how we make decisions about things that really matter? Things in our "real lives"?

The vision of these posts is to relate the two domains in which we and our students co-exist.

In linking ideas and events in the general culture with those grounded in Jewish thought we can give our students the foundation for understanding that their Jewish identity and values do in fact relate in powerful ways to the lives they live outside our direct influence.

Summer is a wonderful opportunity to think about teaching and learning without the pressure of planning lessons or worrying about classroom behaviors.

What happened this year?

What did my students learn this year that is IMPORTANT? WHY is it IMPORTANT?

What did my students learn that they will remember forever?

How do I know they learned what I think they learned?

What were some of the most successful classroom experiences we had this year?

What were some of the disasters?

Think about the questions, and come up with some answers that make sense to you. It's a great start for the upcoming year,

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.” Albert Einstein