Keystones: Instilling Jewish Values through Planes of Development with Brocha Baum-Margolese

Dr. Brocha Baum Margolese, Head of School, Darchei Noam in Baltimore

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 Brocha Baum-Margolese from Darchei Noam in Baltimore on embracing students’ developmental stages, or planes of development, to raise Jewish global citizens.

Brocha Baum Margolese:

I run Jewish Montessori school, and it's not one specific idea, but the idea of sharing what we do so that others could take from it and bring to it is really what attracted me to this idea of coming here to talk to you about it.

Our goal in our school is to create an environment where every child can succeed and instill a lifelong love of learning. So Montessori is kind of the side note on that, and we utilize the materials and the philosophy in order to accomplish that goal. The idea being that every child, every human, grows through planes of development, and those planes of development kind of dictate how and when they really should learn whatever it is that they're sensitive to learning at that time.

So looking at things from that scientific point of view really allows a child to not just learn content, but to really become what it is that they are hoping to be, or what it is that we would love to guide them to be as they grow into adulthood. That, to me, is really the definition of Jewish education; we don't know where our children are going to go, and it's not up to us, I think, as Jewish leaders to dictate where they're going to go, but it's up to us to provide them with the tools necessary to take that to grow into global Jewish citizens.

And so when we look at a child from zero to six, and we consider their sensitivity to independence, and we utilize that time to give them a voice and to allow them to develop what it means to be a confident individual. That means that as they grow into adulthood, they'll be competent individuals.

And then we look at that next plane of development, six to 12, and they're growing their socialization, social justice. And we have all of our academics and all of our extracurricular and everything about the school, really, the whole culture is around that idea of social justice, then children become very understanding of their society and their community, and, more than that, their place in that community and in that society.

And then as they grow into, you know, 12-18, that we only serve until eighth grade, so until 14, they're really looking at who they are in the world. And where many people would view that as rebellion and acting out, we really view it as children really trying to understand – who am I as this independent, socially just and understanding person? Who am I in the world? How do I take all that with me? And so everything circulates around that, and our hope and our intention is that we're raising Jewish global citizens through those planes of development by giving them the tools that they need at the time that they need it.

So we believe that Jewish education is, the idea is to educate the child according to their current path, or as we say, the plane of development, in order that when they grow older, they will not stray from that path of Torah. And it's not really defined what does that mean? Right? And what are the actual yeses and noes, what information do they need? How many pages in Gemara do they need to study? But it's really about the person that they are and the actions that they do and, more importantly, that each person is doing the best that they can.

So everything in the school revolves around that, whether you're working on a geometry lesson or you're studying the weekly parasha. Whatever it is, you need to be doing it the best that you can do it with the tools and the skills and everything that you need in order to make sure that you can learn it to the best of your ability. And that's really the culture throughout, from our infant program through our eighth grade, where children have internal motivation and internal competition. We don't ever have prizes, and we believe that that's because of Judaism, not simply the Montessori, but really for the Judaism because we're trying to raise children that believe that a Jewish person works hard for the sake of working hard and grows for the sake of wanting to grow, not only to get to that end mark, because we don't know what our end mark is. And we all know that our job in life is to just work as hard as we each can, not knowing what that might mean, and certainly not knowing what that means for the other person. So everything that happens in the school is going through that lens.

We will utilize the idea of a sensitive period, we call it, where it's kind of like imagining the door wide open, where a child will most likely learn to walk between zero and 14 months. And that's because of the way their muscles and their bones and their body is physically developing. So that's the easiest time for them to learn it. If you're an overprotective mom, like I was with my youngest, then they probably won't learn to walk that early because you don’t put them down. But that's actually going against their nature, and that's not really giving them what they need in order to be able to grow at the right time.

Languages, children learn languages just by being in the environment; it's not by taking a written exam. And that's because the best way to learn language is through the body language, and verbal and auditory and everything that surrounds the culture of that language. So we utilize that idea of making sure that we're teaching the right thing at the right sensitive period, and then the rest kind of just comes naturally.

There are two areas that are so beneficial to the school, and they actually do a ton for the students. One of them is taking ownership of the school. So at the end of the day, in any Montessori school, children have jobs. And the idea of it is not just to save money on your cleaning crew; you usually have the cleaning crew come through anyway. But really, the idea of it is to give the children a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose and really a sense of ownership to their school. When they feel like this is mine, then they care for it more, and then they respect it. And it's a really beautiful cycle. So when schools incorporate that, and any school can do that, the children take out the trash at the end of the day, they sweep the classroom floor or vacuum, they wipe down the tables, they go to the other classrooms and help with that, or they go to the lobby and help with the communal spaces. And that's actually a privilege in our school – taking out the garbage and doing communal spaces is really a privilege that the children just created. That's such a simplistic thing to add in; it's 10 minutes at the end of your day. And it creates such a sense of warmth and belonging, but also that idea of a global citizen.

When children are in an environment where they're pushed to recognize the detail, and the caring for the environment, they walk out into the world, and they care for their environment. So it's something that they'll have forever.

The other nice one is we love our lunchtime. We don't have a big cafeteria; we eat in our rooms. We use tablecloths and set the tables with real dishes and take the time to actually talk over meals. And we teach about healthy eating habits just by setting an example. And having children sit at the table, teachers sit at the table with the children and get to talk and communicate, and it really brings about relationships and communication and healthy eating habits, healthy thinking. And really just designating time every day to take care of yourself and have that moment of stepping back. And sometimes schools have that “eat at recess while you're running around” or you know, the big noisy cafeteria where many children don't feel comfortable. And so they can't actually relax to be able to take care of their body and take care of what they need.

So those two things I think schools can do, regardless of what their educational philosophy is, that can really change the culture.

The other thing that's very common in Jewish Montessori schools is the experiential learning, where their Torah studies come to life. And when any school can do that, even if it's just one project a year, that they take on one specific parasha or one one specific thing in anywhere in Tanakh that they're learning, that then the children actually choose how it is that they want to express their learning. And when they're given that task – junior high, high school, elementary school – they really take ownership of it when they know that they can choose how they can show what they've learned, and you're not going to walk in the room and see 35 tri-folds. You're going to see all different things. And when children are giving that openness, it's incredible to see what they can actually take away.

I think one of the very important things to remember, and it's for many Jewish Montessori schools, can't speak for all but certainly for ours, is that the Montessori is a tool to really help us accomplish what we're trying to accomplish, which is the progressive education in the Jewish world and really creating the next generation of Jewish leaders.

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.