Education & Careers

A Jewish Golden Age On Campus

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:08:56 +0000

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller

Special To The Jewish Week

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Popular opinion in the Jewish community has it that the campus is a hotbed of anti-Semitism and widespread anti-Zionist activities. Many believe that the wellbeing of Jewish students is threatened and that, confronted with an orgy of hate, Jews have felt a compulsion to hide their Jewishness and cover up any outer symbols of identification.

Getting A Handle On Educational Change

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:06:00 +0000

Jane Slotin

Special To The Jewish Week

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

At PELIE, the Partnership for Effective Learning and Innovative Education, we receive a great many calls from people asking about best practices, effective models, new innovations, current trends, and investment advice in the field of complementary (part-time) Jewish. What is the best methodology? Best curriculum? How can we most effectively invest our time and money?

Why Jewish Kids Need Values-Based Sex Ed

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:01:17 +0000

Mara Yacobi

Special To The Jewish Week

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Last spring I walked into a sixth-grade classroom where the girls welcomed me with squeals of delight, excited to show me the dance routine they had created to the rap song “Take It Off.” The lyrics include:

“Now we’re looking like pimps in my gold Trans-Am

Got a water bottle full of whiskey in my handbag...

There’s a place downtown where the freaks all come around

It’s a hole in the wall, it’s a dirty free for all

And they turn me on when they take it off...”

Moses’ Speech Issue, Jonah’s Learning Disability

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:59:00 +0000

‘Esau’s Blessing’ looks at biblical heroes through the lens of special needs.

Steve Lipman

Staff Writer

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

It takes a sensitivity to both the words of Torah and the lives of its major characters to describe familiar figures like Isaac and Joseph, Moses and Samson, in current clinical terms, as people with disabilities and personality disorders. That’s what Ora Horn Prouser does in “Esau’s Blessing: How the Bible Embraces Those with Special Needs” (Ben Yehuda Press).

Jewish Educators Turn To Mentoring For Growth, Support

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:54:49 +0000

Three mentoring or coaching programs offer helpin fighting teacher attrition and advancing the field.

Doug Chandler

Jewish Week Correspondent

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Adele Chabot’s first year of teaching seemed like a nightmare to her, says the 22-year-old educator at the Barkai Yeshivah, a school in Flatbush serving Sephardic Jews.

“Everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” she says, recalling that she faced not only discipline problems, but also the overwhelming nature of adjusting to a new job and a new environment.

Professional Ethics Tinged By The Holocaust

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:52:51 +0000

Programs here and in Houston have doctors and nurses considering the moral implications of their actions.

Steve Lipman

Staff Writer

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

A Ghanaian medical student at Emory University in Atlanta, Pierre Ankomah had a Jewish roommate with whom he’d often discuss how their profession “seriously erred” during the years of the Holocaust, how doctors and nurses were complicit in mass murder.

They spent many hours “questioning why people were able to, en masse, buy into the hideous ideas that were perpetrated by the Nazis,” he says. “Why were there such few and muted voices of dissent?”

Edu-Tourism In Israel

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:51:00 +0000

Summer trips help young teachersbuild community, find inspiration.

Gabriela Geselowitz

Editorial Intern

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Lindsay Ganci, 25, had always wanted to go to Israel, but never Lhad the opportunity.

Last summer, she joined other congregational schoolteachers on a Birthright trip that combined tourist hot spots with visits to Israeli schools and opportunities to network with Israeli teachers.

The Bible, Take Two

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:49:00 +0000

The G-dcast team looking to bring its playful Torah videos to a wider audience of students and teachers.

Julie Wiener

Associate Editor

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

With its lengthy roster of rules concerning animal sacrifice and food, Parshat Shemini is not generally considered a crowd pleaser.

But the text from Leviticus is such a favorite among Sarah Zollman’s fifth graders at Carmel Academy in Greenwich, Conn., that one student, upon learning it was to be her bat mitzvah Torah portion “was so excited.”

The Technion Takes Manhattan

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:47:00 +0000

Cornell partnership cements a reputation for high-tech research and development that’s been building for 100 years.

Michele Chabin

Israel Correspondent

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Jerusalem — When Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced last month that the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, and Cornell University had won a bid to create a state-of-the-art technological campus on Roosevelt Island, it confirmed what Israelis already know: that the Technion, with its reputation for innovation and Nobel Prize-winning scientists, is as respected abroad as it is in Israel.

New Developments In The Classroom And Beyond

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:45:47 +0000

Ramaz taps ‘outsider’ as headmaster; Touro professor wins three Holocaust research fellowships; Israel education push at UJA-Fed.; ORT to open third school in Buenos Aires.

Julie Wiener

Assistant Managing Editor

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

For the first time in its 75-year history, the Upper East Side’s Ramaz School is bringing in a headmaster from outside.

Education January 2012

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:38:00 +0000

Getting Behind Educational Change
The Technion takes Manhattan; playful Torah videos expanding; new mentoring push for teachers.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Enchanting Education: What Harry Potter Still Teaches Us

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:35:00 +0000

Moshe Rosenberg

Special To The Jewish Week

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

As the lines to see “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” thin out, and the final movie of the remarkably successful series makes its inevitable way to pay TV channels and DVD shelves, millions of Americans who grew up with Harry, Ron and Hermione are experiencing Wizarding Withdrawal. The prime symptom of this malady is acute anxiety at the thought that there will be no more Potter books forthcoming and no more movies in the offing. Even J.K. Rowling’s mysterious Pottermore website has not sufficed to soothe the afflicted.

Are We Prepared For New Approaches To Learning?

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:29:59 +0000

Welcome to the boundary-less classroom, and the challenges it poses.

Rabbi Dr. Gil S. Perl

Special To The Jewish Week

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Stephen Heppell, professor of new media environments at Bournemouth University in Southern England, recently predicted that the current generation “will see the death of education … and the dawn of learning.” Bold as the statement might be, I don’t think he means that the next 10 to 20 years will bring an end to classrooms, teachers and schools and the onset of an age of computer-driven autodidactism.

Reaching Out Before Birthright

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:28:00 +0000

Newly launched iCenter starts teen internship and works to improve Israel education for the k-12 set.

Tamar Snyder

Special To The Jewish Week

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been allocated to encourage young Jewish adults to participate in a free, 10-day Israel experience. Now, attention is being paid to the pre-Birthright set: teens who visit Israel as part of a day school, camping or youth group trip.

This fall, the iCenter — an organization begun three years ago that sees itself as the national address for k-12 Israel education — will launch the MZ Teen Israel Internship, a national leadership program for American Jewish teens returning from summer Israel experiences.

Finding Common Ground In Cultural Heritage

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:26:07 +0000

Technion program wants to instill in region’s teens a love of the past and spur intercultural dialogue.

Ruth Eglash

Special To The Jewish Week

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Jerusalem — In theory, nothing about the program dubbed ELIACH (Educational Linkage Approach in Cultural Heritage) is unusual. In essence, it’s an ongoing course and educational tool kit created by some of the Mediterranean region’s most renowned conservationists, archeologists, historical architects and other experts who are united in their passion for preserving the past.