Keystones: Fostering Teacher Efficacy with David Farbman

David Farbman, Project Director
DEEP Consortium

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 David Farbman from DEEP Consortium on learning from the work of the consortium on expertise and effective professional development.

David Farbman:

The big idea that I wanted to share is to create a library of video case studies where we can demonstrate the good work that is going on in day schools as regards to professional development and the kinds of things, the kinds of activities that are going on, and the kind of impact that it's having on teacher practice, and in turn on student learning.

I think there are many day schools out there where they're a little unclear on the concept of what it means to have high quality professional development. They think attending a workshop twice a year is the PD that they provide, when in fact, it is so much more and needs to be so much more. All the research suggests that there are a number of components of what makes for good professional development – collaboration, time for reflection with active feedback, coaching, a real focus on developing real strategies, not just general principles, instructional strategies. And the kinds of things that you get from a workshop, a one shot workshop is just not going to do it. It's not going to stick. And so we want to demonstrate to schools what's working and what could work for them.

So, the providers who are members of the [DEEP] consortium range from Facing History and Ourselves to the Jewish New Teacher Project to Hebrew at the Center to Institute for Jewish Spirituality to Better Lesson, really a whole range, and their individual purposes are different. 

Hebrew at the Center, obviously, focused on developing the Hebrew curriculum within a school and Hebrew expertise, teaching expertise, whereas Jewish New Teacher Project is focused on just building the instructional skills generally for new teachers. Facing History and Ourselves is focusing on civic education and on how do you build a culture of productive dialogue within the school. So very different kinds of focuses, but their methodology, or their core purpose, is the same, which is to make sure that the teachers, and beyond the teachers too, administrators too, have the expertise to be able to put in place really solid quality, high quality, excellent education, once these providers leave the building. Because if they're so dependent only on the external consultant to come in and tell them what to do, and then that external consultant leaves, and they have no ability to do it on their own, then it was a wasted effort. But if, instead, they can develop embedded expertise within the building, then the mission of the individual provider is met, and the school is meeting their mission to provide the highest quality education to their students.

To have examples of what the good work that is going on, too often people think, “Oh, it's not possible here.” School people think that, and if they can see that in other day schools, actually, you can bring about positive change in teaching practice. You don't have to say, “Well, we do it this way, because we've always done it this way.” And it may be a little bit painful at first to make that change for teachers, but in the long run, it's so much more gratifying as an educator to really know that you're reaching every student and that their learning is an order of magnitude more than they may have with the old style. 

I think that's really what our aim is, is to provide some real good models of quality professional development and really quality instruction, that's ultimately what the goal is. I think a lot of day school educators don't necessarily have a lot of experience beyond their own schools. And so they owe their understanding of what constitutes good instruction comes from a very narrow band of experience. And if we can open up that, that band of experience with a band of understanding of what else can go on, and then I think we'll be able to flip the switch within individual teacher’s minds that they can say, “Oh, I can do things differently; doesn't have to be this way.”

Research shows that the most important variable for teacher learning is the quality of instruction. Teachers are that linchpin of what a student is going to get out of school. And if we aren't focusing on making teachers the best that they can be, which that is the goal of professional development, it's not just learning, it's not just for its own sake, it's really to make teachers the best that they can be, then we're, you know, we're going to plateau at a certain level of instruction, a certain level of educational outcomes. If we can push teachers to be that much better than they already are, then the learning will be that much higher than it already is. And that will be radical improvement in Jewish day schools.

I guess the final word is that core piece of a broader movement that we want to try to seed within the day school field to make greater investments in, of time and money in professional development.

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.