Ma nishtana halailah hazeh mikol haleilot? Why is this night different from all other nights? This question is asked at the Pesah Seder table by the youngest person in attendance, highlighting the importance of asking…
What Should I Be Learning? The Place of Student Voice in Designing a Jewish Studies Curriculum
In 2012, a team of curriculum specialists at The Lookstein Center were approached by a large Jewish day school. The school felt that the content of their existing curriculum was not adequately fulfilling its educational…
Freedom Through Communication in Jewish Education
In the creation narrative, each act of cosmic proportions is preceded by the Almighty’s verbal declaration – vayomer (“He said”). The power of the word is immeasurable. It can be understood that speech is the catalyst of…
The Power of Candid and Open Communication between Funders and Grantees
In an iconic scene from the film The Princess Bride, two characters engage in a battle of wits. One must determine which of two goblets of wine contains a tasteless, odorless fatal poison. He will drink from the goblet of…
From the Desk of the Rosh HaYeshiva: A Model of School-Home Connection
Certain truths are self-evident for those of us in hinukh: we all feel and preach about the need for parents and educators to partner in the moral and intellectual education of our students; and we all agree on the…
Using Jokes to Improve Students’ Fluency in English and Hebrew
Purim is just a few weeks away, and most schools program a school-wide celebration. However, the spirit of Purim provides other opportunities…
Commitment and Recommitment to Tefilla
As an educator and a parent of teenagers, I am interested in hearing about practical suggestions for how to educate for commitment to the requirement to daven daily…
Dealing with Anxiety and Depression in Yeshiva Day Schools
In both my professional and personal experiences, I have been seeing more cases of kids having their normative academic careers taking hits because they are suffering from anxiety and depression.After decades in the field of education, I do feel that this is becoming a more pervasive problem, but I am not under the impression that mainstream yeshiva day schools have any way of helping students other than kindness and suggestions of outside resources for families.I am also not aware of any non-mainstream yeshiva programs geared to students who have emotional issues but not educational ones.Is anyone else also experiencing these frustrations? Is this a trend? Is the yeshiva day school system in the loop on this and prepared to deal with it or is this destined to be outsourced to secular boutique schools?
The Israeli Elections as an Educational Opportunity
National elections will be held for the 21st Knesset in Israel on April 9, 2019. The elections are an educational opportunity to connect the lives and fate of our students…
The Dress Code Struggle
A common struggle for day schools is adherence to a dress code or uniform. These are some of the challenges as I see them…