Head of School Blog

A number of years ago before I was a Head of School, I read Roland Barth's Run School Run. Barth, who founded the Harvard Principal's Center, shares in his book that he would keep a box under his desk where he would collect books to read over his summer vacation because he found he did not have the time during the school year to keep up with his reading. For the last fifteen years, I have adopted Barth's practice, adding articles and academic journals to the box under my desk.

As we enter the summer months, I want to share a few of the items from my box that will be on my summer reading list. As always, I look forward to comments and to further suggestions of reading material.

My Summer Reading List

The Road to Character by David Brooks. Brooks, the New York Times columnist, investigates values that he suggests should inform our lives and that build inner character. Brooks writes that our contemporary society often shuns these values at our own and society's expense.

Dangerous Sisters of the Hebrew Bible by Amy Kalmanofsky. Kalmanofsky is an outstanding teacher and scholar of the Hebrew Bible. In this study, she explores the role sisters play in Biblical narratives.

The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed by Jessica Lahey. In my work, I partner with parents constantly to help support, grow, and encourage students throughout the year. In today's world, parents in general have been accused of being overly protective of their children with analogies such as helicopters, snowplows, and drones being used to describe parenting in the 21st century. As a parent and an educator working with students during the critical K-12 years, I find that Lahey shares insights on parenting and addresses how teachers face many of the same concerns as parents.

Who Owns the Learning?: Preparing Students for Success in the Digital Age by Alan November. This work is focused on empowering students with meaningful work, and using digital tools to advance students' sense of ownership of learning and allow them to direct their own learning in the future.

Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Sir Ken Robinson. Robinson is a world-renowned educational thinker who is also famous for some of his inspiring presentations, including this one on changing education paradigms. This book was chosen by our faculty and staff as CESJDS's school-wide read for next school year.

Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World by Tony Wagner. Wagner, founder of Harvard's Change Leadership Group, has long been a favorite of some educational circles to which I have been privileged to belong. In this book, he explores why innovation is today's most essential real-world skill. He also addresses the role parents, teachers, and employers play in supporting young people in this 21st century environment.

Happy Reading!

Follow Mitch on Twitter: @mitchmalkus

In a recent blog post, Michael Weingrad, Associate Professor at Portland State University, asserts that the reason more American Jews don't learn Hebrew is that they don't want to. Weingrad argues that there is an "active pressure of the American Jewish psyche. American Jewish identity is based on feeling outside, on the threshold knocking at the door but never quite entering. Knocking at the door of Jewish identity, knocking at the door of American identity. To enter fully would be to lose one's identity and become something different." The reason that more American Jews don't learn Hebrew, according to Weingrad, is that we have a psychological impediment that makes it unthinkable for most American Jews to do so.

I have spent significant time studying the research and thinking about teaching Hebrew language in the United States. I was not sure that I agreed with Weingrad's thesis, so I asked a few educators at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School what they thought about this argument. Ortal Wikoff is an Upper School Hebrew language teacher and has been working closely with Hebrew at the Center on the school's move to a proficiency model of language instruction. Ortal responded that she disagrees with the author. She believes the reason that Jews in America are not motivated to learn the language is two-fold: 1) they don't see the benefit of learning Hebrew, and 2) it's not a language offered in public schools. Unlike Spanish, Japanese, or Chinese, there is no clear professional or societal benefit to learning Hebrew for American Jews—and that doesn't even get into the issue of American Jews having less of a connection with Judaism or Israel with each passing generation. In her experience, Ortal does not see self-doubt or the challenge of the language as the real obstacles. Many American Jews learn Chinese in high school, even though it's a far more challenging language to learn than Hebrew, because they think there will be future benefits for them professionally. Spanish is a less difficult language to learn, but the same could be said for the American Jews who choose to learn Spanish over Hebrew—it has professional application and it's a language that is spoken by a large number of people in the U.S.

Ortal says that CESJDS makes a point to convey the connection between Hebrew, Judaism, and Israel from the time of our student's first academic exposure. The school constantly expresses to students how important it is to learn the language, to be connected to Israel, to strengthen our community, and to maintain and enhance the very important connection with our cultural heritage. If Hebrew's worth were conveyed to the American Jewish community outside of a Jewish day school framework the same way it is expressed to our students, Ortal believes it would have a significant impact on the numbers of American Jews learning Hebrew.

I also spoke with Aileen Goldstein, the Upper School Academic Dean and a CESJDS alum, about her perspective on why more American Jews don't learn Hebrew. Aileen believes that Weingrad left out any mention of key areas in Jewish life—beyond the Orthodox community—in which Hebrew is a core value and is elevated as such. She expressed to me that Zionist camping movements such as Habonim Dror require Hebrew as a core component of the day; all announcements are made in Hebrew, half of the songs are in Hebrew, and it is the frequent incorporation of Hebrew words throughout daily life that begins to help young minds absorb, learn, and master elements of the language. Aileen feels that schools often fall short in our Hebrew language goals because we teach the language as both language and culture, without the core guiding principles of effective language instruction that are present in the study of other languages.

Aileen also shared that she agrees with Weingrad in his assertion that as a Jewish community we are somewhat threatened by Hebrew: why do we need a language to set us apart when we often feel more a part of the American community than part of the world Jewish community? She believes we would be better served to think of Hebrew as a connector, as a means of communicating with the Jewish people worldwide. As Eliezer Ben-Yehuda so frequently noted, language is part of the essence of what brings people together; were we to highlight Hebrew as the language of the Jewish people and to truly use it to connect with Jews worldwide, we might see an increased value in learning it, shifting the conversation from the fear Weingrad identified to a matter of pride and connection.

In my work on the advisory board of the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education, we have looked to seed research that will give practitioners guidance on what factors constrain and inhibit the learning of Hebrew by 21st century American Jews. In a panel discussion of Hebrew language experts, we found three potential factors. One was that there is a general indifference in American culture to learning other languages and studying other cultures. Another reason was that changing attitudes to Israel and Zionism, alongside a historic disdain for Hebrew in many sectors of the Jewish community, contributes to the lack of desire to master Hebrew. Finally, some of the experts expressed that psychological factors such as Hebrew being connected to Jewishness, and Hebrew as a disconnected communication vehicle, work against students feeling confident and capable of learning Hebrew.

As a field, there is much more to study and understand about why more American Jews, beyond Jewish day schools, do not learn Hebrew.

Follow Mitch on Twitter: @mitchmalkus

The remarks excerpted below were delivered at the CESJDS SPOTLIGHT event celebrating the school's 50th Anniversary on Thursday, May 26, 2016.

We have so much to celebrate tonight. The sense of naches in this room is palpable. But tonight is about more than naches—it's about reflection, and it's about our bright future. This milestone is a great opportunity to consider the current strength of our school, how we arrived at this fortunate position, and what we can do as a community to make the next 50 years even better than the past 50.

Two millennia ago, Yehoshua ben Gamla founded the first Jewish schools to ensure that Torah would not be forgotten in the land of Israel. Making good on the words of Deuteronomy—where it is written,

ולמדתם אותם את בניכם "and you shall teach them to your children"—ben Gamla sought to provide the children of Israel with quality education, independent of the whims of a single teacher or the presence of a learned parent. His pioneering vision was for a robust childhood education for future generations of Jewry.

In the proud tradition of ben Gamla, what is today the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, began fifty years ago as the Solomon Schechter School of Greater Washington. In the basement of the Ohr Kodesh Congregation in Chevy Chase, Maryland, seven pupils began to fulfill ben Gamla's vision in a new context. Ben Gamla forged the future of Jewish education by bringing children together, and so too did this young school. Following that noble tradition, the founders of our school sought to secure a more vibrant future for American Jewry. These young pioneers inaugurated a pluralistic model, one that embraced Hebrew and Judaic studies and traditions, but applied them to the world beyond the Jewish community through a comprehensive curriculum. Our students would be leaders in American life, not just Jewish life. And, after five decades of commitment, vision, dedication, and innovation, the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School is thriving.

The country's largest pluralistic day school, we educate 1,000 students every year, and serve as a model that Jewish schools throughout the world seek to emulate. Our more than 3,000 alumni, many of whom are here tonight, span the city, the nation, and the globe, inscribing their legacies in every sphere and every sector. And, in all their endeavors, our alumni carry with them a commitment to and engagement with the Jewish community that is a hallmark of a JDS education.

Let me tell you a brief story that demonstrates our students' compassion and thoughtfulness. Some years ago, a group of JDS students were in Poland visiting Auschwitz on their Irene and Daniel Simpkins Senior Capstone Israel Trip. Each student group that visits the camp decides for themselves how to daven, given that there are obviously many different approaches, and the students aren't able to have multiple services, as we do at school. This particular group had settled on a "tri-chitzah," with one section for boys, one for girls, and one mixed section.

While in Auschwitz, the group was reading Torah, whereupon an ultra-Orthodox man approached them. The man told them that, given that it was a fast day, custom dictated they should use two Torahs, one for the weekly reading, and one for the fast day. The students told him that they had but one Torah, and would need to roll it for the second reading. The ultra-Orthodox man responded that the students could borrow his Torah for the second reading. Conscious of the gender mix in the group, the students were initially hesitant. But then, one student stepped forward and told the man that he should know that a girl would be reading from his Torah, tactfully giving the man the opportunity to revoke his offer without embarrassment. The man replied, "who am I to stop Jews from reading Torah in this place where Jews were slaughtered for no other reason than because they were Jews? Please -- use my Torah."

And that, my friends, is a powerful reminder of the extraordinary character of our students. And it's a powerful reminder of the immense value of pluralism.

The Talmud tells us, Ein beit midrash bil hiddush ... there is no house of study without innovation. The trajectory of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School proves the wisdom of this passage, as the ingenuity and audacity of five decades of devotion have shaped this remarkable institution.

Still, we must always continue to heed this Talmudic wisdom. To remain a leading school that excels equally in imparting learning and compassion ... it is essential that we continue to innovate as educators and as community leaders. Progress will be fueled by your ideals, by your drive, and by your passion. But there is no denying the need for financial resources.

Our new Building Our Future Endowment Campaign will not only help expand our programming and offerings, but also cement our school's position as a standard-bearer in both Jewish and American education. I am delighted to announce that tonight marks the official launch of the Building Our Future campaign. Our ambitious goal is to raise $20 million to sustain our school's excellence and ensure that more students have access to the school's many gifts. I am pleased to report that we've already made tremendous progress. Thanks to the generous support of our initial donors, we've raised $15 million to date, doubling the size of our endowment from when we first envisioned the campaign. I encourage everyone in this room to consider joining these families in contributing to the campaign. Together, we will secure our school's continued vitality and excellence.

Let me leave you with one final thought. As you enjoy tonight's festivities, I invite you to find a quiet moment to reflect on our school's incredible past. Allow the richness and meaning of our school's history to sink in. Like me, I suspect you will be overcome with pride at how far we've come, and the amazing places we're going. And with that, please enjoy a short film we have produced for this joyous evening. Thank you.

Follow Mitch on Twitter: @mitchmalkus

This blog post was originally published by ejewishphilanthropy.com.

Over the past few weeks, Michael Steinhardt has delivered two speeches that could spark a national Jewish conversation about the value of Jewish day schools and how to attract more families to this option for their children's education.

First, let's review some important statistics. Whether we take the 3% figure Steinhardt cites in his talks or the approximately 20% that Professor Steven Cohen says is reflective of the most recent Pew study, the vast majority of American Jews do not choose Jewish day school education. If we look internationally, the picture is quite different. Every other country with a sizeable Jewish population sends a much larger proportion of their school-aged children to day schools. In many countries, the default option is for Jewish day school. The low rates of participation in the United States represent an aberration and are the source of Steinhardt's focus.

At the same time, there is overwhelming evidence that day schools are among the most effective forms of Jewish education, along with summer camp and an Israel experience. Day school graduates have been shown to be more Jewishly engaged, disproportionately involved in Jewish leadership roles, more likely to raise their children Jewishly, and less likely to engage in negative social behaviors in college than their Jewish public-school and private-independent school peers. There are also studies that suggest that the families of Jewish day school students benefit Jewishly from the school communities that they initially explored for their children and ultimately chose and continue to choose for their own Jewish involvement.

So why, as Steinhardt asks, given the evidence of its efficacy, are the majority of Jewish families in the United States not choosing Jewish day schools? Steinhardt's proposal is that in order to make day schools relevant and attractive to the majority of American Jews, the curriculum must be altered to offer an integrated model of education and to inspire students with the "innovative spirit and an intelligence of creativity" that led to the founding of and which still animates the State of Israel. Specifically, he would suggest that schools emphasize the accomplishments of Jews in the non-Jewish world as a way of showing students and their families not only the ability of Jews to make an impact on the secular world, but to draw upon the pride American Jews say they have despite their lack of engagement in Jewish life. While other Jewish educators and I might have a different vision of what particular approach constitutes an integrated curriculum, I agree with Steinhardt that the percentage of American Jews not sending their children to Jewish day schools represents both a crisis and an opportunity, and that an integrated model of education holds the potential to address this challenge.

Steinhardt's proposal to integrate general and Jewish subjects is not new. Since the French Revolution, when Jews gained rights through individual citizenship rather than by communal affiliation, both elite and common Jews began to rethink their relationship to the secular world. Jewish schools dating to the mid 1600's in England taught mathematics and English reading and writing, in addition to religious studies. In 1782, Neftali Hertz Weisel, an advocate for Jewish cultural and ideological change during the Enlightenment, wrote that Jewish schools should teach both Torat Ha-adam (general wisdom) and Torat Ha-shem (Jewish wisdom) as a way for Jews to gain the knowledge, morals, and behaviors needed for participation in the greater society. At the time this was a radical proposition. Today, most schools beyond the Haredi world subscribe to at least some type of curricular approach that attempts to integrate Jewish and general studies. The historian Jonathan Sarna has suggested that Jewish day schools serve as the "primary setting where American Jews confront the most fundamental question of Jewish life: how to live in two worlds at once, how to be both American and Jewish, part of the larger society and apart from it." Many educators and Jewish educational thinkers have written about approaches to integration.

Historically, the vast majority of American Jews during the 20th century opted for public school as a vehicle for rapid enculturation. This was the case even with some of the leaders and most influential personalities within the field of Jewish education. Samson Benderly, who in 1910 became the director of the first bureau of Jewish education in New York, was a passionate advocate for public education and ascribed to the "Protestant model" of education. He believed that morality, universal values, patriotism, civics, and critical skills should all be taught in state-funded public schools to a mixed body of religiously diverse students. Religious education and practice was to be mastered by members of each faith in separate denominationally sponsored supplementary schools.

Jewish day schools were founded in the United States because a large number of American Jews became convinced that Jewish identity in contemporary society was not automatic, and they realized that students needed a certain type of education to nurture their Jewish identity. Supplementary schools (as they used to be called) did not adequately embrace the complexity of Jewish life in an open, democratic society. Jewish day schools were meant to negotiate the relationship of American Jewish education to American Jewish life. In the mid 1950's Rabbi Simon Greenberg advocated that an integrated education was essential to the future vitality of Judaism within America.

So, when Steinhardt calls for a curriculum that is relevant to students' lives as a way of engaging more Jewish students in the endeavor of Jewish day schools, he is walking in the historical footsteps of many American Jewish leaders and educators.

I want to turn briefly to what might characterize a Jewish day school education that would be attractive to a larger group of American Jews. The first quality is educational excellence. Large numbers of non-affiliated and less engaged American Jews already pay high tuition for the education they want. Some observers believe that there may be as many Jewish students in private-independent schools as there are in Jewish day schools. While the most committed American Jews may be willing to subscribe for a lesser general education product in exchange for the Jewish aspects of a school, the day school field as a whole must meet or exceed the educational quality found in the best public and private independent schools. Our schools must be well rounded with a full range of extra-curricular activities; arts and athletics; programs that include all student learners; and innovative programs in STEM, robotics, gaming, and other 21st century educational initiatives.

Second, Jewish schools need to highlight the Jewish aspects of their programs that provide students with an advantage over their peers in other types of schools. The values that Jewish day schools can foster in their students must be front and center. In many communities, day schools are already perceived as being exceptional in providing their students a moral and ethical grounding to lead purpose-driven lives. Emphasizing this quality and the life-long value it affords students beyond any other high-quality public or private-independent school can be the core of a relevant education. Knowing what it means to be a good and moral person, understanding the contemporary value of 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom, and being able to apply this knowledge to the world are values and skills at which Jewish day schools excel. The second advantage Jewish schools have is that the skills of traditional Jewish education (the critical study of texts, relentless questioning, collaborative study, and analytical reasoning) are the exact 21st century skills that other schools now tout as cutting-edge and innovative. These have been deeply embedded in Jewish education for centuries.

Third, Jewish day schools need to create environments that value community. If we are going to attract the vast majority of American Jews who are not currently engaged Jewishly, we have to show the parents of our potential students why being part of our communities can be an essential component in supporting the growth of their families. Jewish day schools should seek to be the hub for Jewish education both for the families who have chosen this form of education and for the larger Jewish community. One example might be in providing Israel education, another area of day school expertise, to the larger community.

Jewish day schools also need to formulate their vision in a clear and concise manner, and market it together with the larger Jewish community. Many families who have not been exposed to Jewish day schools often view our learning communities as homogeneous, narrow, and parochial, when nothing could be farther from the truth. If our goal is to attract the majority of American Jews, we need to market Jewish day school and its value using the best methods and practices that have been successful in other industries.

Last, Jewish day schools are expensive, and we have to address this issue head-on. If excellence, Jewish values and skills, vibrant community, and vision and marketing are essential to attract the majority of American Jews who are not currently choosing day schools, making Jewish day schools affordable to the widest number of families needs to be a national communal priority. If our community could significantly increase the percentage of American Jews who attend Jewish day schools, we would see a transformative effect on the next generation of United States Jewry and a profound reverberation across the Jewish world and in Israel.

Follow Mitch on Twitter: @mitchmalkus

In January, the Harvard Graduate School released a report titled, Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and the Common Good Through College Admissions. The conversation that led to the report has the potential to completely alter both the college admission process and the experience of high school students in the United States.

Turning the Tide suggests that colleges de-emphasize standardized testing, and potentially make the SAT and ACT optional. The report indicates that the quality of extracurricular activities and advanced coursework should be considered over the quantity of experiences students list on their applications. Students would be rewarded for showing sustained commitment to community service rather than just showing a list of dozens of projects they have done. The report proposes factoring in family and community responsibilities to level the playing field in admissions by capturing the contributions of low-income and working-class students, asking students to write essays about their contributions to their families and others, and broadening the admission criteria to include public service that consistently contributes to the common good. Last, Turning the Tide counsels colleges to widen the net by emphasizing a good fit for each student rather than the notion that there are only a few elite colleges that matter.

Enacting these proposals would represent a seismic shift in college admissions thinking. As I read the report, I kept returning to the notion that the areas being championed are the exact areas that characterize Jewish day schools. Jewish day schools value tikkun olam from the moment students enter our doors. Jewish day schools ask students to consider their place and role in the world. Jewish day schools value families and making a difference in the world.

I applaud the serious thinking that went into Turning the Tide, and I would welcome such changes. I believe that emphasizing community service, making a difference in the world, and supporting a healthy balance between academics and being a good person is a prescription for a better world. If our nation's colleges can make this change, I know the country would benefit. But why wouldn't I think this way – these are areas that Jewish day schools already value and in which we excel. If these changes take hold over the next two to three years, as the report advocates, students at Jewish day schools will be particularly well-positioned to benefit.

Follow Mitch on Twitter: @mitchmalkus