Keystones: Cultivation Mindsets for Now and the Future with Shira Deener

Shira Deener, Head of School, JCDS in Boston

Sharon Freundel:

I’m Sharon Freundel, Managing Director of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC). Welcome to JEIC’s Keystones Podcast Series. The keystone is the central stone at the summit of an arch, locking the whole together. We believe that a strong Jewish Day School education is what holds the Jewish people together as we look towards the next generation.

In today’s episode, we will hear from Shira Deener from the Jewish Community Day School in Boston on using the wisdom of our sages, through Habits of Mind and Heart, to set up students for success in school and beyond.

Shira Deener:

I want to talk about our Habits of Mind and Heart. Pluralism is the backdrop for that. If you're familiar with Diana Eck, who is at Harvard Divinity School, she created something called the Pluralism Project, where she really talks about pluralism as a verb, as a stance. It's something that is something you have to lean into and engage with, and it really needs to be explicit, not implicit. So our habits are really the engine behind pluralism.

As a result of an engaging pluralism project that we had back in 2016, where JCDS faculty and leadership explored and listed all the kinds of habits they can imagine that they wanted to see reflected in their students, teachers were tasked with relating to each habit, both personally and professionally – which felt most natural for them? Which felt like a stretch? Which ones felt snugly already in their curriculum that they were teaching? And which would need more elbow grease to actually happen?

Seven habits emerged. And if you come visit us at JCDS, you see posters of the seven habits all over. It's on our website. It is something we talk about all the time with donor families. We remind our existing faculty about this; it is something that is living throughout the whole school experience.

The seven habits are, number one: curiosity. We really lean into developing a culture of questioning. Our understanding; our kids’ understand that learning is centered on leaning into questions, not seeking easy answers.

The second is problem solving. All the way from kindergarten through eighth grade, we get our students to see themselves as problem solvers. If you peeked into a second grade class this year, they were learning about parachutes, and they developed parachutes outside, and they were throwing the parachutes from on top of the slide to see what velocity looked like, what would it look like if you angle that differently, if you added a weight in a different way. They were problem solvers when the parachute didn't open up correctly. And that was just part and parcel of the learning through design process, as an example.

The third is perseverance and resiliency because they're going to get things wrong and wrong. And they have to be able to lean in and not see it as failure.

The next is reflecting, and you see a lot of reflection in students’ writing. In the front hallway, the eighth grade mission statements (that's their reflections on the school's mission statement). And they also, when they graduate, they engage in a very deep reflections project that really helps them think about what their journey at JCDS provided for them spiritually, academically, Jewishly, and also emotionally.

Next is multiple perspectives and empathy. So let's just look at, you know, specific examples of that. In our eighth grade Israel curriculum, it is really important that students engage with multiple perspectives around different moments in history. So even going back to the question of what is Zionism, students understand that you can't answer that with one answer. Really the response is which Zionism I am talking about; there are many Zionisms, and they embody by doing research projects and then going on a panel – Zionism of Achad HaAm and the Zionism of Herzl and the Zionism of Jabotinsky and Alef Dalet Gordon. They understand that, “Oh, people engage with Israel and this concept of sovereignty and self determination from very different perspectives.” In our Tanakh (Bible) program, multiple perspectives is part and parcel of our Pedagogy of Partnership through the Hadar Institute. That is the engine behind our Tanakh and Toshba (Rabbinics) curriculum.

Also, in terms of discipline at JCDS, I would say multiple perspectives and empathy is part of our collaborative problem solving. We have really adopted that as our main avenue to explore with students why they didn't necessarily do the best job that they could, and they didn't bring out the best version of themselves. Collaborative problem solving really flexes that muscle of flexible thinking, of, “Oh, I didn't realize that when I was talking in class, and the teacher was trying to get everybody quiet; by me talking, that wasn't actually the best thing to do.” That's really part of the learning.

Evidence is the next one. In a Tanakh class, for example, students are always asked before they share their own opinion, to show evidence, which leads to integrity.

I would say integrity is something that is woven throughout the entire experience at JCDS, but just one small anecdote, [a child] took a key to a cabinet that had all the games and some of the special snacks, and he hid it, and the teacher kind of suspected it was him, but instead of disciplining harshly or instead of getting angry at the student, she kind of asked people, the whole class, if anybody knows anything about this stolen key, “Just know, I can't get into that cabinet. I'm not able to bring out those games. I'm not going to do all the fun things you want to do.” And the child came up to her afterwards and said, “I'm really sorry, I did this.” So integrity is part of what we celebrate and we expect.

How do we know this is working? Initially, back in 2016, the goal was to actually have assessments, written assessments about this. We don't have that yet. We're working on it. We certainly talk about it as part of our whole child approach during parent teacher conferences. And again, you'll see posters everywhere throughout the school. And it is a common language that faculty uses, the students use, parents use; we can use with donors, we could use with board members, and board members can then use it talking about the school. So it's really making the implicit very explicit.

2016 was a time when this small group of faculty and leadership really dove in on that incubator level, like what is it that we want our students to walk away with? And from that emerged these seven habits, and I think what has transpired over the last, however many years, is it's becoming more and more explicit. It could have been something that just wound up on a shelf in a binder as like a great idea back in 2016, but it wasn't living. And this has continued to be a living document that every year gets revisited, new teachers get brought into the culture of the school through our approach with the habits.

So, when I talk about whole child, I mean, both Jewishly, spiritually and academically and social-emotionally, and they really all live together. So if they're going to be talking about their Jewish customs or traditions at home, then another person in a pluralistic environment is going to have a different set of customs at home. Having those Habits of Mind and Heart help guide those conversations, you are opening up students’ capacity to make room for difference and walk a different pathway into Judaism. And you, that doesn't happen, necessarily, if it's not explicitly expected of the students and if the teacher doesn't actually have the training.

I've watched this happen, even this year. I was in a fifth grade Toshba class, and we're talking about Yom Kippur, and they were talking about the different stages of asking for forgiveness. And one student said, “Well, this is super important to my family. We go to shul, and we talk about this.” And another said, “We don't go to shul on Yom Kippur.” And it could have been a lesson that could have quickly gone awry, teacher wasn't prepared for holding that conversation so that no one felt more than or less than – it's just an appreciation for the different approaches into their Jewish identities.

I actually think our sages were really smart, even before they knew it, and that this was going to be something that was going to be a pathway for what good civic democratic, pluralistic, engaging, wonderful, a wonderful society can look like. And I do think it's inherently Jewish. I don't think it's only Jewish. I think lots of people can name that. I mean, Diana Eck is not Jewish and she's at the Pluralism Project at the Divinity School at Harvard. But I think we absolutely can claim that within our tradition, we've had these seeds planted many, many centuries ago.

I see it as a lens. I see it as developing that lens, so that when you finish JCDS, and you leave the comfort of this very nurturing, warm environment, you take that lens with you, and that lens helps you make sense of the news, politics, COVID practices, different people's family identities and structures, your Jewish practices, how you're going to engage with tikkun olam (transforming the world). I mean, it's endless. It is a lens, and we're hoping that you take it with you, that our graduates, they don't park it at the door, and I feel really excited about that. I think it's a wonderful thing about the school.

I think, like so many things, once there's language given to saying like a concept like the habits, it becomes real, so anyone listening to this podcast, I think once you hear the language of these seven habits, you will see that you actually do them in your school, that it won't take much to surface what's already there. Once you make it explicit, and you talk about it and it becomes this, all of the different stakeholders can hold and own and feel proud of, it will continue and enrich the school environment.

Sharon Freundel:

To find out more about this topic and other ways to catalyze radical improvement in Jewish Day Schools, please visit our website at JewishChallenge.org.