|
|
  
An Internal Periodical of Chabad-Lubavitch Educational News
Shvat, 5769 - Vol 3, Issue 2
|
|
| |
|
Dear Rivkah,
|
The objective of this newsletter is to give exposure to the kind of things of which חז"ל say: קנאת סופרים תרבה חכמה with the hope that we will indeed see the fulfillment of those words. This will only be possible if Mechanchim and Mechanchos will forward their news items to the Chinuch Office. You are cordially urged to submit your own items for publication in the next issue.
Rabbi Nochem Kaplan
Director
|
|
|
|
In Memory
|
 Projects Started in Honor of the Kedoshim
Following the tragic deaths of R' Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg HY'D, schools united to add more light into the world and took on the following projects:
(1) Girls are reminded to light Shabbos Candles b'hidur every week by lighting on time, dressed in Shabbos clothes and remembering to give tzedaka beforehand and think about the Geulah.
(2) Boys in grades 5-8 are learning an extra mishna every day.
(3) All students are participating in school-wide Ahavas Yisroel projects.
We know that the best direction to move after tragedy is upwards and hope that these projects have helped both students and teachers.
|
|
And The Winners Are....
|
 The winners of the Annual National Menorah Essay Contest were Chaya Mushka Turk, a fifth grader from Chicago and fourth grader Chaya Sherman from Philadelphia. The contest is sponsored every year by American Friends of Lubavitch in Washington, D.C. and the winners get to read their essays at the special lighting ceremony for the National Chanukah Menorah on the Ellipse, across from the White House. The girls read their essays, entitled 'What Chanukah Means to Me', in front of thousands of people who attended the lighting on Sunday, December 21, the first night of Chanukah and the Kiddush Hashem was very significant. "The reading of the winning essay by the children is always a highlight in our annual program," said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of American Friends of Lubavitch in Washington.
|
|
|
| |
|
Timely Information and Ideas
|
| |
|
What Do Your Students Do All Day?
|
 Keeping Parents Updated
Parents really do like to know exactly what their child does for eight hours every day at school. Rabbi Yisroel Rubin of Maimonides Hebrew Day School in Albany, New York has a creative way to keep parents involved in what goes on. Every two-three months, a short newsletter is published, complete with many full color pictures of goings-on at school, some concise and informative updates, and a Highlights page, where interesting happenings are listed by category. It's a great way to get kids to remember and talk about what they did at school and parents love seeing their kids in pictures. The newsletter is fast and easy to both make and read and really makes parents feel confident that their child is learning and having a good time. You can see a sample newsletter by clicking here.
|
|
Early Childhood Findings on Reading, Some Surprises
|
|
Reported by The Christian Science Monitor
Early-childhood education has been expanding in many states, and during the presidential campaign, Barack Obama proposed $10 billion a year in additional investment. New reports on preliteracy indicate the proposal is well-timed.
The National Institute for Literacy examined patterns from about 500 research articles on the skills and teaching approaches that predict later success in reading, writing, and spelling. The institute will share the results on its website and in booklets designed for audiences such as teachers, policymakers, and parents. "People are willing to take the time to things correctly if they understand why," says Andrea Grimaldi, a senior program officer at the institute.
One indicator of the need for stronger early literacy is the fact that by fourth grade, one-third of students haven't reached a basic level of reading achievement, according to the 2007 National Assessment of Education Progress. The picture is even starker for students from non-English-speaking homes or low socioeconomic status, who tend to start kindergarten behind in pre-literacy skills.
Some of the reports reviewed common methods of teaching pre-literacy skills in the preschool classroom. One practice, for example, which doesn't fare so well against the report's findings, is having kids memorize lists of words. It's creeping into a lot of preschools. It turns out that it's much better to also know word meanings and exhibit skills such as listening comprehension. Another, completely opposite, strain of educational philosophy posits that such young children should simply play, with no intentional instruction, and learn through . But that view represents less than 20 percent of early education now, estimates Susan Landry, a panel member and director of the Children's Learning Institute at the University of Texas in Houston. "The biggest challenge now," she says, "is to not go to the other extreme, making it too highly structured."
|
|
Merkos Chinuch Office News
|
| |
|
Accreditation News
|
SANDS SHIFT UNDER ACCREDITATION FOUNDATIONS
Accreditation is an American invention. The very idea of peer review, that validated scholarship is a review by colleagues rather than superiors, is a democratic idea which developed in the late nineteenth century. For more that one hundred years becoming accredited meant doing a self study and having the resulting data validated by peers, followed by the development of a strategic plan for the future. The accrediting agency set standards of what was to be expected and the process required a school to meet the standards, know where they were as an institution, and where they expected to be in the future.
There are interesting developments in the accreditation world which are changing the very nature of accreditation. They are the direct result of a movement toward national rather than regional accreditation, and the belief that education should be seen a process, not measured as a product. For a hundred years, the country was divided into six regions, working cooperatively through a superagency called CITA, each of them accrediting schools independently. In the last few months, the Southern SACS and North Central NCA regions combined efforts and now represent 32 states under the super agency called AdvancED www.advanc-ed.org (we have done cooperative accreditation with both SACS and NCA). Both the Middle States Association and the North West Association are in negotiations to join AdvancEd. It is not a matter of if that will occur, but only when. AdvancEd will then represent 42 of 50 states.
Under the leadership of a nice Jewish fellow from Atlanta, Dr. Mark Elgart, AdvancEd has developed a new and different process for accreditation. It focuses more on the process of continuous improvement within a school, rather than the product of a self-study and strategic plan. It is less about what the school is and what it is doing than about how it is doing it and what the outcomes are. AdvancED has now decided that it will work cooperatively with other agencies only if they too will adopt the new Continuous Improvement model of accreditation.
At a recent executive meeting of NCPSA (which Rabbi Kaplan attended as vice president), there was a discussion among national private agencies about what to do cooperatively with regard to these new circumstances. The Merkos NAB decided to create a new accreditation track which will offer a Continuous Improvement model of accreditation, in addition to the standard model still favored by most agencies. In this way, Merkos NAB will continue to be able to work cooperatively with all other accrediting agencies.
While there is much to be said, at least with regard to Yeshiva/Day schools, for holding a school to very prescriptive standards, and this has indeed been our approach, we will now also have the capacity to focus more on the processes which produce better education. As such, Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch NAB is working on a new accreditation model which will be complete by spring.
|
|
Training Sensitivity
|
|
By Rabbi Nochem Kaplan
 I wrote a piece about the need to teach our children how to think sensitively and how to make decisions using a moral compass; it stirred the pot a bit and I got some lively responses.
The idea of learning to think with sensitivity requires more than just learning to distinguish right from wrong; it requires a disciplined educational approach to promoting ethical and sensitive thinking. One would assume that at faith-based schools this issue is a basic component of the curriculum. This piece will concentrate on a parental perspective...Click here to read more!
|
|
|
Your comments, ideas, and especially news from you school are most welcome.
Sincerely,
|
|
Rabbi Nochem Kaplan
Director
The Merkos Chinuch Office
|
|
| |
|
|
The Chinuch Office | 705 Montgomery St. | Brooklyn | NY | 11213
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
