Viewing entries tagged
Relationships
Amanda Pogany, Head of School at Luria Academy of Brooklyn, began a journey to create an environment of unconditional respect among students, parents and other schools, applying design thinking in a year-long process that resulted in ‘Four Commitments,’ a framework for “how we communicate and how we function in relationship with one another in our school community.” They came up with four commitments: I will be Kind * I will be Strong * I will be Curious * I will Contribute
Recently, I attended a conference workshop devoted to tefillah teaching in schools. One of the explicated tensions concerned the intersection of learning the Matbeah Tefillah (the structure and words in the siddur), having a deep relationship with God, being fluent in tefillah concepts, and understanding how to accomplish this in a short span on a daily basis. The tension increases when thinking about the way tefillah happens in local synagogues where duration matters and good personal behavior may not manifest well as communal paradigms.
To further complicate teaching tefillah in schools, most teachers lack training and focus on compliance, and, as a result of those two elements, create an environment that feels less like a spiritual process and more like a police action. This often results in tefillah being a negative experience for students that hurts their relationships with teachers, Jewish learning and experience, Jewish communal members and, ultimately, the Divine. Unfortunately, in the Jewish day school world, this story is not new.
Recently we hosted a meeting with a small group of Korean Christian ministers and students. They drove a long distance to meet with us to explore the promise of havruta, specifically for their Korean cultural and religious context. While this group gained helpful insight about havruta, our own gleanings from this encounter were unexpected and even a gift. Explaining the meaning of havruta to people outside the Jewish community required us to share more than just the history or mechanics of studying in pairs. We felt compelled to convey the deep Jewish sensibility that learning in our tradition is often inherently rooted in the personal relationships we build and nurture.
