News

September 19, 2012

Innovative Teaching

Amanda Gelb (“Breaking Down Classroom Walls With Resilience Theory,” Aug. 10) gets it right when she says “cross-pollination” is a key to effective education. In DeLeT (huc.edu/delet), our innovative program to prepare Jewish day school teachers, we call this “integration.” 

Mia Pardo, one of last year’s DeLeT fellows, who is teaching at Pressman Academy, developed an innovative approach to teaching first-graders about national symbols by comparing and contrasting America’s and Israel’s flags and symbols. The students became so passionate about the lesson that they began interacting with each other as if they were the symbols. They used songs and other aspects of what they were learning in dramatic renderings. The teacher recorded these improvisations, and later two of the students created a movie out of the videos. We look forward each year to seeing how the emerging DeLeT educators find new ways to make Gelb’s idea of cross-pollination a reality in day school classrooms.  

Dr. Michael Zeldin
Professor of Jewish Education
Senior National Director, Schools of Education
Director, Rhea Hirsch School of Education and DeLeT
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

Teachers from the Pressman Academy ECC are traveling to Atlanta in November, 2012, to present a 3-Hour Workshop at the Annual Conference of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) at which we will present the process that we have gone through in creating the beautiful, colorful jungle that has taken over the first floor hallway. NAEYC is “the world’s largest organization working on behalf of young children” and their annual conference draws thousands of early childhood educators from around the world.

The workshop we are presenting is called: “The Hallway Project: Using School-wide Collaborative Art as a Means of Teaching and Exploring Math, Science, Sensory Play, Language, Literacy and Social-Emotional Development in an Early Childhood Center.” It will be based on the collaborative work engaged in by all the ECC classes as we created the multi-textured jungle of flora and fauna. In our workshop we will lead participants through the process of creating a similar project in their own schools, beginning with discussions and meetings amongst the faculty, discussions within each classroom, devising a plan, and then carrying it out. We will teach the participants how such a collaborative project can enhance children's social-emotional development and serve as a springboard for teaching and exploring math, science, language and literacy. Participants will also discover how they can provide sensory, play, and process art experiences which will provide rich opportunities for exploration, discovery and creative expression. We will also engage the participants as adult learners through many small-group and hands-on activities to allow them to have these experiences themselves.

Please see the attached link to a recent Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE) publication that contains information about our Day School’s 7^th Grade Philanthropy class. It is a nice recognition of the work our school does in this area.