By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Last month, a group of 21 early-childhood directors and teachers from seven schools across the greater Seattle Jewish community gathered in Temple De Hirsch Sinai’s Bellevue social hall for two-and-a-half days of learning, meeting and collaborating. This seminar was the beginning of a two-year fellowship on how to create the best possible Jewish education for the area’s children from birth to age 5.
“The goal is to bring more and more families to be part of the Jewish early-childhood centers,” said Liat Zaidenberg, the director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle’s Jewish Education Center and the fellowship coordinator. “It’s an entry point to Jewish life.”
The educators who attended are all considered leaders or rising leaders in their early childhood programs at seven school: The Seattle and Mercer Island campuses of the Stroum Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Day School, the Menachem Mendel Seattle Cheder, Seattle Hebrew Academy, Congregation Beth Shalom and Temple De Hirsch Sinai.
Many of these teachers did not know each other going in, but they came out with a better understanding of their colleagues, their colleagues’ challenges and frustrations — many similar to their own — and ideas for getting past those challenges to become better, more holistic educators. At the same time, these new relationships will allow for the schools to work together, instead of in competition with each other.
“One of the very nice things that’s going to evolve from this program is just the intercommunity collaboration,” said Rabbi Yossi Charytan, head of school at the Menachem Mendel Seattle Cheder in Seattle’s Northend and one of the fellows. “One of the biggest things that we’re going to bring back is the idea of reflective practice, how we can incorporate this concept into our philosophy, into our whole staff culture. That’s a huge thing.”
Renowned Jewish early-childhood expert Diana Ganger spoke at the launch retreat and will visit Seattle a total of 10 times over the two years to work with the educators.
“It’s very important for communities to dream big. Many places need to develop a vision of excellence in order to be able to journey forward, and people need to understand themselves in process, change and growth,” Ganger told JTNews. “We are pushing a big cultural change. Every school is in a different place on the journey.”
Ganger said she has high expectations of this group, and they will be working hard throughout the fellowship. She emphasized these educators are only beginning their journey: “Big, deep change takes five to 10 years. The two years are the beginning of the culture change, the shift,” she said. “If we can get to the culture that we’re always learning and growing, and get the people to want to learn, and have the infrastructure where people have the time to dialogue about the work, we have done well,” she said.
Jewish learning is intentionally woven throughout this culture change.
“When you look at everything in perspective, the big Jewish ideas that you apply to everything you do [are] what make you Jewish. It’s not ritual or not just a moment in time,” Ganger said.
The process, therefore, becomes a constant environment of learning, development and reflection for teachers — first within this cohort, and from them filtering to the rest of the teaching staff.
“You have to be reflective,” Zaidenberg said. “I do believe that you have to learn all the time, and when you have a direction and when you know where to go, it’s easier because there are a lot of things that you can do as the leader of a school.”
Charytan spoke with Ganger before her visit, and also brought her to his school’s new building, where he said she asked questions that made him consider how his staff could create the best learning environment.
“She’s able to help organizations really get down to the core of who they are,” Charytan said. “When I came [to the retreat] and saw the beginning and saw what the process was going to look like, it was exciting.”
As they grouped together, the teachers wrote their hopes and dreams on easels: One, “celebrating commonalities and welcoming diversity/differences,” echoed the tone the organizers were trying to set. Another, “allowing more time for reflection and intentionality,” portrayed a constant struggle for many of these teachers — and their colleagues across the country.
“For many of our early childhood professionals, they don’t get enough professional development,” said Amy Wasser-Simpson, director of planning and community services at the Jewish Federation. In addition, “they are unfortunately, usually, paid at the bottom of the educational tier of pay grade and they’re doing really important work.”
This fellowship is the first step in trying to change that. It came about as the result of a two-year, $110,000 Long-Term Community Impact Grant from the Federation. Zaidenberg spent nearly a year writing the grant, working closely with each of the schools and basing it on a study completed three years ago that recommended a $1.5 million investment in several facets of Jewish education for 0–5-year-olds. Due to economic and strategic roadblocks, only one of the recommendations, the PJ Library book program, had been implemented.
“We believe that there are really solid opportunities for growth in the area of engaging young families with children from birth to age 5,” Wasser-Simpson said. “Hopefully at the end of the two-year period we will not only have trained the teachers specifically in the program, but as part of the program they will begin training the other teachers in their early childhood centers as well.”
The teachers, however, aren’t willing to wait that long.
“After that two days I had a phone call,” Zaidenberg said. “The groups said to me, ‘We want to take it now to our schools, and basically do the same or similar exercises that we did [at the retreat].’”
Both Ganger and Zaidenberg said the collaboration among the schools is unique and that many other communities are watching to see how this group proceeds.
“There are many other communities in the country who would love to be where Seattle is,” Ganger said. “They can be a light unto the nation.”
For the teachers, however, this is more about improving the education for their own community’s youngest learners.
“I think that what we’re going to walk away with at the end of the day is going to be very, very insightful,” Charytan said, “and hopefully very visionary and practical.”