Five years ago, I had the unique opportunity to design a middle school. That kind of opportunity invites you to ask, “What if we try…,” and to creatively explore the possibilities that we often wish to pursue in education. Filled with all of the visions my colleagues and I had discussed as to what we would do if only we could start from the beginning, I sought to develop a program that encompasses the hallmarks of what we have all seen in successful educational experiences: integrated learning, authentic academic experiences that can have a broader impact, and opportunities for learning that are personally relevant and intrinsically motivating. The outcome of this quest became our Scholars Forum, a program at MILTON that explores contemporary issues through a multidisciplinary lens and that empowers students to use their learning to inform, advocate, influence, and change.

From its inception, Scholars Forum became a weekly study that allowed students to address topics and ask questions relevant to their world and their own experiences -- all in a context of learning from multiple texts, speakers, trips, and projects. In our first year, students studied the role of storytelling in memory making, using sources in TaNaKh (the Bible) that related to commandments, to remember, and to research our own school’s history for its 30th anniversary. To have an impact with their learning, students created a documentary, taking on every aspect of the filmmaking and then showcasing their film at a local theater at a formal premiere night where they shared their film and spoke about their experiences. The students told the story of the school in an effort to help concretize and share our own institutional memory, and in doing so, they brought generations of our school together, helping to underscore the power of shared memory in creating deeper unity.

As each year of Scholars Forum covered a unique topic, in later years, we examined civil rights and social justice, water access and equity in our world, and the role of the census and how we can make our own voices count. In our study of water inequity, students created case studies of areas in the United States to highlight the problems and the organizations and initiatives seeking to support our people and our environment in order to inspire us all through information and understanding. When students engaged in these studies, they delved into Jewish texts, heard from experts, and engaged in projects where they would leverage their learning to have a broader impact. These efforts included visiting the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, and then researching and writing about how different sites in the DC area played a part in our nation’s pursuit of civil rights and social justice. Our hope is to share what they have prepared as a guide to schools who visit DC on a school trip in the future. 

This year, we are studying the decennial census to inspire conversations and action around inclusivity, civic engagement, and our Jewish value of individual representation and significance. Students are examining the nuanced sources about the commandment to count B’nei Yisrael (the Jewish People) to convey that individuals matter, and to empower them. They are delving into the Constitutional source for conducting a census every ten years and examining the changes in the ways people have been identified and the questions that have been asked over the years. The students are researching which people in our country have not been counted, or have been undercounted, and the socio-economic consequences. And they are considering how they can make their voices count now -- even as middle school students -- to have an impact and to be agents of positive change in their communities and their country. 

In each Scholars Forum study, our students translate their learning into action; they use their new understanding to inform, inspire, and change. In birchot hashachar (the morning blessings) each morning, we list mitzvot that we should do daily, and we sum up that list by saying, “Talmud Torah k'neged kulam,” literally, “the study of Torah is equal to all of them.”  Some commentaries take this to mean that learning Torah must be present in all of these mitzvot, that we must engage in actions informed by study, and that it is that study that inspires and drives us to positive action. Our work in Scholars Forum derives from this precept: We are committed to social action as an initiative that derives from and is connected to thoughtful Torah study. We are committed to learning about relevant contemporary issues so that we can play a part in the discourse and activity surrounding these topics, and we also recognize that a full and authentic study must incorporate and integrate diverse subjects that all interweave in informing and shaping our experiences and our world. 

Our work on the Scholars Forum program has helped us to more fully understand the value of personally relevant, integrated studies at school. It also has helped us to discover connections across our subjects. This program has inspired our students to think differently about the role they can play in their own learning and in the world. But perhaps most of all, the Scholars Forum program plays a role as a continuing challenge to us -- as it invites us to think about how we can further transform our educational models to make even more of the student experiences at school integrated, relevant, personally meaningful, and broadly impactful.