Religious School
January, 2009 Messenger- Hebrew High @ TBI
3/26/2009
One of the unplanned side benefits of TBI's participation in the NESS (Nurturing Excellence in Synagogue Schools) Initiative over the past 2½ years has been the revamping of our post-B'nai Mitzvah education program. The NESS Initiative, administered by the Auerbach Central Agency for Jewish Education, is focused on the improvement of Jewish supplementary schools in grades K-7. One of NESS's central goals is to create an educational structure and program in each synagogue that fosters a high degree of engagement and satisfaction in the students who attend supplementary religious school.
Although NESS does not focus on the educational program after the Bar/Bat Mitzvah year, our educational leadership determined that we wished to employ the NESS model in improving our post B'nai Mitzvah education offerings to the students who complete 7th grade. So, when we began to unfold our participation in NESS, we created a subcommittee of our Education Committee. It's task was to research and develop a revitalized Hebrew High program for grades 8-10, as well as integrate USY activities into a post B'nai Mitzvah education program at TBI.
The task of retaining Jewish youth after the Bar/Bat Mitzvah year is a daunting one. In both the Reform and Conservative movements, the retention of post B'nai Mitzvah youth in any synagogue-related education program has historically been a severe challenge, given the amount of public school homework and the multitude of secular extracurricular activities that vie for the available time of these students. A JESNA (Jewish Education Service of North America) 2000 survey found that across North American Reform and Conservative synagogues, weekly participation in formal Jewish education declined steadily, from 60% in 7th grade to 22% in 11th grade, with somewhat more girls participating than boys. The paradoxical bottom line that we face along with other synagogues in our area is that we struggle to keep our youth involved Jewishly, at a time in their lives when Jewish learning and socializing can make the greatest impact.
Against this backdrop, we formed our subcommittee in late 2007 and have been working under the leadership of co-chairs Joanne Linevsky and Joanne Harker to create both short and long-range goals for our post B'nai Mitzvah program at TBI. We have also been blessed to work with our ACAJE facilitator, Dr. Josh Yarden, who has guided us through the process of defining our vision of what we want our post B'nai Mitzvah participants to "know, do and feel" as young Jews leaving TBI and moving on to the college years.
After conducting focus groups of students and parents, and looking at other program models, we evaluated our past programming and unveiled our current Tuesday evening program which features a series of 2-3 session units (from 6:45-8:00 p.m.) on various topics of Jewish living with particular relevance to teens. This program for our current 8th and 9th graders (a total of 42 students in these grades this year) includes units on:
Personal Jewish identity and community responsibilities through mitzvot
Learning the importance of inclusion: Accepting every person regardless of learning abilities and differences.
A comparative religion unit where our students will interact with students of a Catholic church in the area. Our students will learn about Catholicism through a visit to the church. And then our students will teach our visiting church group about various aspects of Judaism and examine similarities and differences.
A unit on prayer in which students explore personal feelings about prayer and learn prayer skills in order to feel comfortable about leading prayers, especially in our Tuesday evening minyan.
An exploration of modern Israeli life including electronic communication with teens in Israel.
Personal Jewish genealogy where our students will research their own family history in American Jewry. This unit will be highlighted by a field trip to New York and include a visit to Ellis Island on March 22 led by Rabbi Kalev.
Our 10th grade Confirmation class meets with Rabbi Kalev during this time period, studying a variety of subjects that will lead to their end-of-year Confirmation service in May. All grades begin their evening with dinner and social time with the generous help of Susan Pullman-Weiss, and end the evening participating in our TBI minyan.
Our retention rate of 7th graders into the Hebrew High program has increased steadily over the past three years in gradual increments from approximately 50% to 60%. We want to keep that number increasing each year as we work to constantly improve the program that we offer our TBI teens.
The addition of Hilary Yohlin as our USY Advisor positively points to our improvement in our USY programming in the next few years. And I am very proud to report that TBI is the recipient of a matching grant from the Limmud Foundation, a locally based foundation whose grant helps us to continue to work with Josh Yarden in directing our long-term planning for youth programming.
One of our goals in this planning is to maximize the number of Jewish teens with whom our TBI teens have the opportunity to interact in both formal and informal educational settings. This is one of the immediate challenges our subcommittee is working on with Josh. Another goal is to engage the parents along with the teenager in Jewish learning. This year we have begun Family Education programs aimed at this families of teens with our recent program titled, "Growing Up Online". This workshop looked at aspects of how the Internet has affected the lives of teens and parents and tied in various Jewish values in helping families address such problems as cyber bullying.
I am confident that in the coming years, we will build upon the foundation we have created, in retaining and engaging our Jewish youth in continuing their Jewish education after the Bar/Bat Mitzvah year. We welcome your thoughts and input as always.
Donald Cohen
Education Director
eddirector@tbibluebell.org
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