Empowering Teen Change by Studying Technology Law and Policy
Rebecca Cohen Skulnick

Morah Hanna is the Head of Judaic Studies at Hillel Community Day School in Rochester, NY. She has a master’s degree in Jewish history and a teaching certificate in Hebrew as a second language. Hanna has been a teacher and educator for over 10 years. In Israel, she taught Hebrew, history, heritage, and the Bible in elementary and high school. At Hillel, she teaches Hebrew, holidays, Torah, and prayer to grades 1 & 2.

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Sonia Newman

Sonia is the Principal of Hillel Community Day School in Rochester, NY. She possesses a wealth of knowledge in Secular Education, Special Education, and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Her training in America’s Choice, a renowned national program for standards-based education, further enhances her expertise. With a permanent certification in Pre-Kindergarten through Middle School from New York State, she holds a Master of Education from SUNY Brockport and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Hunter College in New York City.

Prior to her remarkable journey in public education, Sonia excelled in executive retail leadership and customer service in the bustling city of New York. She also spent seven years as a dedicated instructor at a nationally recognized school of modeling and personal development in both New York City and San Francisco.

Sonia and her husband Keith are proud parents of two Hillel alumni who graduated from the school in 2010 and 2014.

Strengthening Engagement With Israel and Our Community

We were all shocked and pained by the events that occurred in Eretz Yisrael on October 7.

Since the majority of our school’s Judaic studies team are Israeli educators who came to teach at a Jewish school in the US out of a sense of duty and a desire to unite, support and deepen the connection between American Jewry and the State of Israel, we were seriously discussing how to move forward. While we are going through a tough period, we believe that we can make a positive impact and reinforce the bonds of belonging between the State of Israel and its citizens, as well as between the students, parents and greater community.

 

Embracing Our Jewish Mission for Israel

We regard our objective as a worthwhile and crucial mission that will mold and shape our people’s future generations as well as Jewish history. The relationship between the State of Israel and the Jewish communities around the globe, in the United States and in our neighborhood is currently very important, and to support our Israeli brethren at this trying time, we must be strong and unified. We communicate to our community that our power lies in our unity and oneness as Am Yisrael.

Last Tuesday, we began the school day by educating our students about the current war in Israel in an age-appropriate level, informing them that our soldiers serve as the State of Israel’s guardians and protectors. We included a special prayer for the State of Israel and its soldiers with our daily prayers. We also made cards to send to the Israeli soldiers, hoping to provide them support during this trying time. 
We also sent encouraging letters to kids in Israel. We distributed Shabbat candles to our community on Friday. Our students composed messages for Israel’s peace on a miniature replica of the Western Wall that we had constructed. Our longer-term plans include our students recording a special song in our podcast room, which we hope to share to help lift the spirits of the Israeli people. We are also going to begin gathering donations for the State of Israel, which we will then forward to the Israeli soldiers and civilians.
As a result of the love and encouragement we receive from our community, families, parents, students, teachers, and staff, we feel even stronger than ever.

 

School Ties to the Jewish Community

There are close relations between the local Jewish community and Hillel School. Among the initiatives we run are the following:

  • Our older students go to a nearby Jewish preschool to read Hebrew stories to the children, celebrate festivals with them, and do many other activities.
  • One of our programs involves the school’s pupils visiting a nearby senior Jewish home. We gave the locals a happy new year and Jewish holiday season with a parade in the run-up to Rosh Hashanah.
  • The children helped create our enormous Sukkah, which we welcomed the community for supper on Sukkot. 
  • We went on an annual Sukkah Hop, which involved visiting the Sukkahs of several local synagogues in our neighborhood.

The educators that make up our Judaic team are driven to impart knowledge of Hebrew, Torah, daily prayer, Parshat Hashavuah, Judaism, Israel, and Jewish history to the children. The future generation’s devotion to the Jewish faith, the Torah, its values, and its commandments, as well as Israel’s legacy, are significantly influenced by our department of Judaic studies.

The faculty of Hillel School prays for the restoration of peace to the State of Israel and its population, for the troops of the State of Israel, and for all our Jewish brethren around the world. May all the soldiers and captured civilians return speedily and in peace.

.ה’ עוז לעמו ייתן, ה’ יברך את עמו לשלום
May the Lord grant strength to His people, May the Lord bless His people with peace. (Psalms 29:1)

Am Yisrael Chai!

How AI Will Truly Transform Schools
Sandra Nagy
Wrestling With the Future, With Curiosity and Empathy
Ariel Raz, Dan Glass
Multimedia: A Way to Increase Inclusivity in Diverse Classrooms
Eliene Augenbraun
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Dr. Cousens works with Jewish educational organizations on innovation, strategic research, impact, and evaluation. She has been with The Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund (Bay Area), The Jewish Federations of North America, and Hillel International. Beth is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Brandeis University and lives in San Francisco.

Tell a New Day School Story in the Bay Area

"What we want in our Jewish day schools is for people to see that people are far less concerned with what I’m doing wrong Jewishly than with what I’m doing right and with what is compelling and meaningful to me as a human being in the world. Marketing and branding are ways for us to get past some of those hurdles. People can realize that day schools provide a way for you to share something profound with your children that doesn’t have to be about feeling not part of something because you felt like there was a right way to do Jewish and you weren’t part of that.” - Dr. Dan Glass, Head of School, The Brandeis School of San Francisco. 

Our twelve day schools in Northern California are used to working together. The heads of school have met regularly for decades, exponentially more so in the pandemic. We have created joint professional development days, shared sports programs for students, and more. When The Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund (of the Bay Area) issued a call for pandemic recovery grants rooted in collaboration, we saw the marketing and branding of our schools—after a pandemic-related enrollment surge—as a valuable area for experimentation.

This initiative was buoyed by a research project supported by the Jim Joseph Foundation and conducted by Third Plateau, which found that for their particular target families, some of our schools are too Jewish; for others, not rigorous enough; and according to a different segment, not Jewish enough. We know, of course, that there are places in our schools for those not otherwise Jewishly engaged, for interfaith and dual-faith couples and families, for those looking for advanced science and math or Talmud. We know that we seek out innovative curricula, environments of curiosity and growth for our teachers, and audaciously hospitable communities that support and welcome all families. How could we tell those stories?

Working together, nine of our schools—mostly K-8 or K-6, with a few preschools or pre-kindergarten programs and one stand-alone high school —built an RFP, employed a full-service branding and marketing firm (MediaCause), and put together a project to tell a new day school story in Northern California. With the firm, we:

  • Conducted research with families who chose our schools despite deep uncertainty and reservations, or who, more generally, represented the audience we were targeting for growth. 
  • Built a full branding campaign rooted int he idea that “There’s More Here”; There’s more community, there’s more curriculum, there’s more learning, there’s more growth (a few of the 20 taglines the firm developed and shared below).
  • Built a shared website, a landing page, with data on our schools and links to admissions pages.
  • Ran a social media and internet ad campaign during October-November, targeting a list identified with their search choices and zip code, and then flipped that campaign to a school-related campaign, sharing open houses with those who saw the first ads. 
  • Sent a series of emails to those who saw the first ads, sharing school-specific information.

In the end, we reached 12 million people with impressions and other e-connections. And we learned important lessons about messaging, marketing, and working together. 

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Generating new interest is not the same thing as rebranding our schools. 

Techniques that generate leads are, simply, not exactly the same as rebranding techniques. At the end of the campaign, we were surprised to see that we could track very few direct enrollment leads to this campaign (even while we could track some inquiries). We realized quickly that we had been so focused on telling a new story—and on the story we were telling—that we sacrificed some obvious lead activities for that larger message. If we do this again, we’ll use the branding materials in specific lead generation activities, sharing our reframed story with a very specific audience.

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We will take time to identify our common story. 

We have a set of data points that we want to talk about relative to our 12-school collective. But each of our schools is not accustomed to collecting data in the same way. Moreover, we understand Jewishness differently (related to Jewish parentage). Some look methodically at STEM programs, others at Jewish Studies programs. We see a common story, but it will take time to talk through our different frames and lenses and to build the muscles needed to look at teacher retention and credentials, curriculum, and student bodies in the same way. The best version of this project will not be implemented quickly.

Similarly, it will take professional time to identify our common story. 

For most (but not all) of our schools, social media and Google marketing are not allocated significant professional resources. Identifying data and stories and communicating with the larger collective takes not insignificant time. Working across even the nine schools engaged in this project—let alone the full twelve—involves enormous give-and-take. We need to identify the best way to manage the work that each school needs to produce.

The unique work of the collaborative is that of enrollment growth.

Most of our students come to us through relationships, through word of mouth. What we can do as a group is reach families who have never heard of our particular schools or Jewish day schools or who may be intimidated or disinterested in Jewish schools. Our collateral—soon to be in-real-life and web-based—needs to reach new families, and then send them to a website that walks them through the thinking involved in school choice. Other work—new media stories, telling the schools’ best stories—is also necessary, but can be done school by school, targeting friends of our friends.

We know we have something good here, but we also know that it will take time and attention to get it right. We are building new capacities for our schools, in our collaboration and also in the precise use of these tools. We look forward to the hard work and to building these resources together.

Lauren is the director of admissions and enrollment management at Pardes Jewish Day school in Phoenix Arizona. 

Amy is the outreach and engagement manager at The Davis Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Jessie is the director of admissions at Jewish Community Day School of Greater New Orleans in New Orleans, Louisiana

Engage: Creating Partnerships for School Success

Phoenix: Playing Together 

Lauren Kreisberger, Director of Admissions and Enrollment Management, Pardes Jewish Day School 

Pardes Jewish Day School and PJ Library Phoenix received a very generous gift from Prizmah’s Engage program, allowing us to create authentic relationships and partnerships to enhance community engagement. The aim was to foster greater involvement and interaction within the community. This involved not only the students, faculty and staff but also broader relationships and collaborations. 

We had the opportunity to partner with a diverse range of organizations, such as the Center for Jewish Philanthropy, Arizona Science Center, Bureau of Jewish Education, Jewish Free Loan, and community clergy, among others. These collaborations allowed us to pool resources and expertise and maximize our collective impact. Why spread the community thin with four separate events, by four different organizations with the same goal, when we can have one larger, well-planned one? 

The collaborative efforts had a positive impact on recruitment and retention efforts and contributed to the growth and, hopefully, the sustainability of our organizations. Our emphasis on community building, Jewish traditions and values, from preschool through young teen programming, demonstrated a dedication to inclusivity and ensuring that our community members of all ages felt welcome and engaged. “Havdalah Under the Stars” and “The Rabbi Slurps Spaghetti” events are great examples of innovative and fun ways to bring people together. 

This attracted new families to campus that may not have otherwise come. These events provided an opportunity for newcomers to see our beautiful campus, meet our amazing teachers, interact with our outstanding student ambassadors and learn about our educational philosophy, all while experiencing the warmth of our community. 

We really feel we have started something that is contagious in our community and we look forward to seeing where it takes us next. “Those that play together, stay together!”

Atlanta: Kehillah 

Amy Helman- Darley, Outreach and Engagement Manager, The Davis Academy 

In my work for Nurture, our school’s program that engages, connects, and supports families with young children throughout the greater Atlanta community, one of the first words that comes to mind when thinking about partnerships is kehillah. Kehillah, a term rooted in the Hebrew word for community, beautifully encapsulates the essence of unity, mutual support, and collective responsibility. Its wisdom can breathe life into our partnerships with other organizations, infusing them with deeper meaning and purpose. 

For the last year, Pam Cohen, PJ Library Atlanta Manager, and I have been working together to strengthen the Atlanta Jewish community through monthly programs showcasing the value of kehillah. The support of Prizmah through Engage allowed us to strengthen our partnership and develop more community-focused programming.  

PJ Library and Nurture are two initiatives that share similar values and missions that support and engage families with young children in the Atlanta Jewish community. We understand that families are looking for opportunities to connect with others in a similar age and stage, and together, we are offering programs to support them through fun, meaningful, and Jewish-themed experiences. 

Our Li’l Shabbat: Hanukkah Around the World is a signature program that highlights the diversity of the Jewish community in a welcoming environment. During this program, families participate in a preschool-aged Shabbat service, and then they “tour the world” by visiting different tables hosted by Davis Academy and PJ Library families who immigrated to the United States from different countries. Each host family shares special Hanukkah traditions that are unique to their homeland. Building on the success of this program last year, we are excited to expand and engage even more families this upcoming Hanukkah.

By working together, we can build on the strengths of each organization and combine them to bring high quality programming to the community.  In the spirit of kehillah, we truly are stronger when working together.

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Davis Academy PJ Library

New Orleans: Community-wide Programming 

Jessie Dowsakul, Director of Admissions, Jewish Community Day School of Greater New Orleans 

A community is strengthened by its differences and brought together by a common goal. To that end, our school and PJ Library have partnered in creating inclusive, dynamic programming. Coming out of the grips of the pandemic, our population has been eager to rejoice together. Our school’s partnership with Prizmah has awarded us with opportunities to reach out to synagogues, Jewish Federation, PJ Library, JNola (Federation’s young adult group), Jewish Community Centers, and much more. By creating and fostering friendships with these organizations, we have been able to collaborate in creating dynamic programming aimed at the inclusion of all.

Our annual Family Fun Fest puts these relationships on full display. This is our biggest event of the year, and its success is contingent upon collaboration with community partners. When we chose to expand our collaboration and invite the wider Jewish population, some challenges surfaced.

One of these challenges was adhering to a level of kashrut that would be more inclusive; while the school lunches come from a Chabad-supervised kitchen, food brought in for events has typically been held to the standard of Orthodox supervision, which would exclude the many Chabad families in our community. This entailed staff learning more about what that heightened level of kashrut would look like as we sought to host events that truly included everybody.

New Orleans’s PJ Library’s local representative, Bonnie Lustig, meets with us monthly. In our meetings, we strategize the planning of our upcoming community events as we work creatively and innovatively to create fun, engaging programs. Moving forward, Bonnie and the school have created a friendship of collaboration that will hold well beyond our current work. We have every expectation that Jewish Community Day School will continue to create community-driven collaborations. We hope you can join us at our next event: a Shabbat challah making party.

A Double-Edged Sword: Keeping Technology for Children with Disabilities Both Safe and Beneficial
Rabbi Dr. Yisrael Rothwachs
Embrace the Change: AI is Ours to Own
Mark Shpall, Glenn A. Sonnenberg

Nancy is a STEM/Design Teacher and Instructional Technology Coordinator. She has led webinars on Uncommon Test Prep for EdWeb.net and Common Sense Media and Teacher Tech for PBS SoCal. She was published in Teaching in the Middle magazine, Association of Middle Level Educators, ISTE point/counterpoint, and PBS SoCal Teacher Blog. Nancy founded Girls Building STEAM and is a local award winner for the National Council for Women in Information Technology and a 2019 honorable mention for the STEM Excellence award from ISTE. She is a 2022-2023 participant of the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Research Program-Vietnam.

Partnership for Smarter EdTech

Close your eyes and think of a problem you have at your school or organization. Now imagine a team of people coming together to discuss the problem, dissecting it from all angles, then working together to create a solution that benefits all of the stakeholders. That isn’t just a dream scenario, it is a reality thanks to a partnership between Miami’s Center for Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE) and MindCET, a world leader in the edtech ecosystem based in Yerucham, Israel.

MindCET uses its experience in research and design to help edtech startups find their footing and grow their business ideas. They help connect the entrepreneurs with educators, researchers, programmers, students, and industry professionals to guide, build, and launch their products. CAJE professionals Julie Lambert, senior educational consultant, and Valerie Mitrani, director of day school professional development, learned about MindCET and developed the idea of creating opportunities for teacher entrepreneurship.

From Miami to Yerucham and Back 

The idea became a reality through the Miami-Yerucham Partnership, a program of Jewish Agency and the Greater Miami Jewish Federation (GMJF). According to GMJF, 

The purpose of the Miami-Yerucham Partnership is to build meaningful relationships in order to strengthen both communities and to foster and develop a love of Judaism, Israel and the Jewish people. The Partnership encourages people-to-people relationships between residents of Miami and Yerucham. It also promotes mutually supportive initiatives, connecting resources and expertise to achieve sustained spiritual, social, cultural and economic growth for both communities.

In January 2023, the inaugural MindCET Miami partnership kicked off with bi-monthly Zoom meetings where MindCET’s experts in program design, management, and education met with educators from across Miami-Dade Jewish day schools to explore the design cycle, a process that takes ideas from problem to solution. Participants looked at the big picture, broke down issues into smaller bites, and began to form solutions that could provide short-term and long-term benefits. In July, the Miami MindCET team traveled to Yerucham where they met with MindCET’s team of programmers, designers, and managers to build their initial solutions. 

The commitment of five hours of monthly meetings and a week in Israel is a significant investment of both time and resources. Why would schools and teachers rearrange class schedules, dedicate time to additional work, and allocate funds to subsidize an idea that may or may not have success? For me, the opportunity to work on the ground floor of concept through design and product building helped me experience what my students face and feel during the Genius Hour unit I lead with my fifth grade students. 

Learning to articulate ideas clearly, struggle to compromise, and figure out how to fix the problems that arise provided a first-hand understanding which will help me better empathize with students struggling with the same concepts. Our school, Scheck Hillel Community School, was happy to partner with CAJE and MindCET in this undertaking, sending both me and Rabbi Elias Hochner, Judaic studies teacher, to the program. Scheck Hillel believes its teachers are their best resource, and helping empower teachers to reflect, create, and problem-solve benefits not only Scheck Hillel but can have a far-reaching impact on other schools and organizations in the Diaspora.

Project #1: Curricular Integration 

EdJEWcator is one of the solutions developed by a team of two educators from The Innovative School at Temple Beth Shalom, Barbara Schpilberg and Miriam Cruz Jackson, and myself. The problem this team brought to the table was one that Diaspora schools with dual curricula in general studies and Hebrew/Judaics often face. These curricula are separate entities and often do not integrate across the classes. General studies teachers would like to incorporate Jewish values, holidays, and ideas into their curriculum, and while the desire is there, the challenge of dual curriculum, dual calendars, and multiple subjects makes it difficult to fully integrate all areas of study. 

To help solve this issue, the EdJEWcator team aims to develop a website/app where teachers will get email reminders two weeks before a Jewish holiday with ideas to integrate their subject area and the holiday. Teachers will be able to search for ideas to incorporate values, beliefs, and other Judaic content within the subject areas. During our visit to MindCET, the EdJEWcator team met with programmers and designers who helped develop their beta-testing product, which focuses on the email reminders about upcoming holidays and integration ideas for subject areas. 

Additionally, the three of us created a website and Google Drive folder for each holiday and each subject area within general studies. We used ChatGPT and their own lessons to populate the folders that are available to teachers who signed up for their beta-testing. More information on the holidays, values, and additional lesson ideas will be added during the beta period and as the work on the programs continues this school year.

Project #2: Judaic Studies Advances 

Rabbi Ari Karp of Hebrew Academy of Miami Beach and Rabbi Elias Hochner both focused on student engagement in the Judaics classroom, but took different approaches to their solution and design. Rabbi Hochner worked on developing an app that would provide an immersive environment for students to learn collaboratively (chavruta) and develop Talmud skills. Rabbi Karp created a program called Gemara Linked to help teachers properly assess their students’ understanding so they can personalize lessons for each student. 

Rabbi Hochner left with a product that he can actually use and begin to evaluate its usefulness. He hopes to go further and receive the necessary funding for an immersive Virtual Reality app that can have a significant beneficial impact on students.

Project #3: Forging Deeper Connections in Israel 

Our Israel week was not just for working. The participants also were able to visit the Negev desert, take a scorpion night tour, have breakfast with the Miami-Yerucham partnership group, and have dinner with one of the culinary queens of Yerucham. These cultural experiences provided the team with connections to the community and a chance to gather information for teaching their students back at home. 

Touring the city with stops at various schools as well as the Yerucham Science Center strengthened connections that had begun with other Miami-Yerucham partnerships in robotics. Rabbi Hochner was amazed and inspired to see how a city with seemingly limited resources is so invested in the education of its children. The Miami team also had the opportunity to visit an arts center where women meet with artisans to learn crafting skills that help to build opportunities for business and industry for the Bedouin and Israeli women in the community. 

This valuable experience will continue into the current school year, where the groups will take the results of their beta testing and look for ways to improve their app/website. Teachers from the initial cohort will model this entrepreneurial mindset with other teachers from their schools who will also look for problems to solve in their classrooms and continue the innovation mindset as they look for and build solutions. 

If you are interested in testing and providing feedback, you can email me ([email protected]) and I will send you the information to sign up for each beta testing program.

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