Session+7

=Session 7: Moving Forward=


 * Group Aleph: Conceptual Items || [[file:EDN Retreat Session 7 - Concept Items.pdf]] ||
 * Group Bet: Action Items || [[file:EDN Retreat Session 7 - Action Items.pdf]] ||

NOTES FROM THE FINAL CONVERSATION

1. What would it mean if all of us committed to a JESP idea for next year? It would have to be carefully crafted, with attention to age appropriateness. As a community-wide program, all the teachers would study together about Israel curriculum and could take the ideas back to their classrooms.

2. Infusing Israel throughout the curriculum means that you look at your curriculum to find Israel in it. It means that everyone has their regular curriculum, but they notice places where there’s an opportunity to infuse Israel in what they’re already doing.

3. Have a Yom Iyyun day on Israel and follow up with the workshops afterwards

4. Within the schools, support and compliment teachers who are already teaching Israel

5. Help support the shlichot – educate them better about our educational needs.

6. Directors are the more appropriate ones to find places to integrate Israel in the curriculum (as compared to the teachers). But teachers can bring it to life.

7. The more we hand to teachers, the less we’ll be changing the paradigm. TTTI has helped the teachers map their curriculum and see how Israel is found in their curriculum. If we want them to become teachers and not passer-on-ers of what someone else has thought of them, we need to empower them more.

8. Members of the Tribe – each congregation commits to and teaches the curriculum to the 8th graders and then kids join together for a social event, and then again for a shul-in. The power of these kids together is amazing. What would it mean to have at a particular grade a curriculum that’s written and taught in the school and then culminates in a retreat? We’d involve the sh’lichot, have the WOFI and AFU staff this with us, etc.

9. To do a JESP with everyone is huge and complex. One would need to touch on everyone’s curriculum. If this process doesn’t touch on what a teacher particularly does, then the teacher is going to check out (eg, if they’re teaching the shtetl and they don’t really have an Israel connection, they won’t see it as relevant).

10. There’s a lot that we can do together. It’s personal and individual to the institutions.

Julian’s final word. He didn’t feel that wrapping up is the right thing to do, but rather he offered some thoughts. We’re on journeys, too, as educators. He believes that the best educators are the ones who are struggling. When in a situation with new brainstorming, we should be careful not to say, “I’ve done it before” – an idea is new for its time.