By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Shoshana Bilavsky has a straightforward educational philosophy: “I’m very big on making sure the kids who come in here feel safe,” said Bilavsky, the new head of school at the Seattle Jewish Community School. “When you feel safe emotionally and socially, then you can learn and the sky’s the limit. And that’s the key, I think, in education — the kids need to feel loved and safe in this environment. The rest is easy.”
Bilavsky arrived at SJCS on July 1 from the Boulder Jewish Day School in Colorado, where she served six years as head of school.
According to SJCS board president Yonah Karp, part of what made Bilavsky feel like a good fit was her ability to embrace the bigger picture. In the three weeks since her arrival, Bilavsky has already rolled up her sleeves both inside and outside of the school grounds. She has met with community rabbis and leaders and has reached out to supplementary school administrators.
“She wants to make those community connections. She sees our school as part of a big picture of being Jewish, of being in the community,” Karp said.
While Bilavsky said she looks forward to building upon what SJCS has already created, she also knows there are some issues she’ll need to address, mostly in the economic realm.
“We need to be sustainable financially — it’s the outcome of enrollment. It’s flat,” Bilavsky said. “You need to grow, and the challenge is the economy for all of us. People are afraid to commit.”
Karp believes Bilavsky’s enthusiasm and community outreach will help to improve the enrollment and fundraising, however.
“I think that she will help us to achieve those goals because she’s really personable and her heart is in the right place,” Karp said.
Bilavsky will also work to speed up the school’s accreditation process with the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools.
“It’s an external measure of the quality of the school,” Karp said. “We’re in the class that’s closest to accreditation. We’re close, but we’re not there.”
From what she’s seen so far, Bilavsky said she is excited about the enthusiasm on the part of both faculty and parents about SJCS.
“The parents really love the school. They’re really happy with the school,” she said. “The one question is, how do you transfer that to the wider community?”
Bilavsky takes over the head-of-school position from Debra Butler, a founder of SJCS and one of the two heads of school in its 19-year history.
“I feel as though I’m leaving a school that’s in good shape. When I came on there was no head of school and no site,” Butler said. “Now we have a building, we have a school that people want to work in and apply to. So I feel proud and I’m ready to turn over the reins to the new person.”
The other principal, Joyce Shane, died July 2.
As an educator, Bilavsky believes in the integration between general and Judaic studies. That in part is because of how she sees the Jewish component of the education: “Judaics is not a subject. It’s a way of living, a way of thinking,” she said.
She pointed to SJCS’ 5th-grade Judaics teacher, Beth Huppin, who was named earlier this summer as one of three winners nationwide of the prestigious Covenant Award, as one example.
“Most of the teachers, as far as I know, are really involved in the community. That’s wonderful. That’s what you want,” Bilavsky said.
She will spend the first year as an observer before making any big-scale changes.
“This year is actually a learning curve for me. It’s Rebbe Gelt, they call it,” she said. “It’s learning more than implementing. I really need to know in-depth — not just the perceptions — of what’s going on.”
She has brought one major tool with her from Boulder: The Tal Am Hebrew language program, which is based upon neurological research of how children learn non-native tongues.
The program’s structure, according to the Tal Am Web site, uses multiple types of media and “is based on the notion that the best learning environment for children is one in which knowledge is acquired through a variety of activities, using each of the five senses.”
Bilavsky grew up in Ashkelon, Israel, and holds both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Jewish education. She first came to the U.S. in 1993 to teach the Judaics curriculum at a day school in Memphis, Tenn. What was supposed to be a two-year commitment has stretched into nearly two decades, with some time spent in Cleveland before her six years running the Boulder Jewish Day School.
What she has found in her years in the day school movement is that the hardest part of helping children form their Jewish identities can be resistance from their parents.
“When you’re talking Jewish education and Jewish life, it’s a very loaded emotional subject for many, many Jews,” she said. “We’ve brought so many good things to the world, and to lose that, it’s a shame, in my opinion, and for me it’s important to keep the Jewish identity.”
A big part of Bilavsky’s job — and of everyone on her faculty — is to make sure that everyone, regardless of their own knowledge, feels welcome in the halls of her school.
“No one wants to feel stupid or out of touch. You have to remember that all the time, and make sure that your faculty remembers that, no matter what we do, that you’re sensitive and inclusive all the time,” she said. “That’s what community is.”
That philosophy is one that has served SJCS throughout its existence. A comment Bilavsky made to Karp in the interview process, while discussing the minutiae of running a school, about how everyone is created in the image of God, brought a tear to Karp’s eye.
“To have that reminder on a regular basis is so helpful,” she said.
Bilavsky referred to a quote from a friend of hers in Boulder who survived the Holocaust as her motivation for dedicating herself to Jewish education: “Our obligation to the Jewish children is to really give them their understanding of who they are, and never to let anyone else remind them who they are.”