The Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University: Transforming Jewish Teaching and Learning

“Lighting candles” to counteract darkness and help illuminate the world with education is Morton Mandel’s aspiration for the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education (MCSJE) at Brandeis University. The Center, which opened its doors in November 2004, is dedicated to improving Jewish education by transforming the core practices of teaching and learning and pioneering new approaches to developing Jewish educators.

What would it take to improve the quality of teaching and learning in Jewish schools?

Research suggests that teachers do a better job of teaching when they participate in ongoing learning opportunities and collegial interaction that address real questions about what and how to teach. MCSJE has developed unique programs that get teachers “ready for teaching” through reinforcing the connection between scholarship and teaching. 

Preparing Teachers’ Mind and Soul

MCSJE’s DeLeT (Day School Leadership through Teaching) program partners with local Jewish schools to prepare future day school teachers for meaningful interdisciplinary work, approaching teaching as an inquiry into the minds and souls of their students. In a DeLeT class, MCSJE Director Sharon Feiman-Nemser shares two fundamental concepts of education with a group of novice teachers: “First, teaching is very much the enactment of values. Second, teaching happens in the particulars.”

As day-school enrollment in America is expected to rise by 25% by the end of the decade according to a recent study by the Avi Chai Foundation, over 200 new teachers are required annually.  Through both classwork and internships at Jewish schools, DeLeT gives new teachers the tools to focus on “the bigger ideas and why they really matter,” says Field instructor Nili Pearlmutter.

Other MCSJE initiatives for new teachers include the Beginning Teacher Network, which nurtures day-school teachers in their first year, and the Induction Initiative in Jewish Day Schools, which consults to Jewish day schools on providing optimal support for incoming teachers. Feedback from participants is enthusiastic: “the Beginning Teacher Network was one of the most helpful things I have done this year of teaching,” says one network member.

Inter-Faith Partnerships 

MCSJE’s collaborations in the quest for excellence in teaching reach beyond the Jewish world, contributing to our understanding of professional and religious identity formation through a comparative study of beginning teachers in Jewish, Catholic and mission-driven schools. Led by post-doctoral research fellow Susan M. Kardos, whose PhD is from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the research included a retreat of new teachers from DeLeT and the Alliance for Catholic Education at Notre Dame University. Intellectual cross-fertilization between teachers of different backgrounds provided insight into teachers’ identity and pedagogical approach, which will bear critical implication for teacher recruitment and retention.

Learning Never Ends: Ongoing Teacher Development

In addition to training new teachers, MCSJE provides ongoing professional development to teachers through the Mentor Teacher program, in recognition of the key role personal development plays in quality teaching. The program is creating a community among Jewish day school teachers that integrates active leadership and rigorous exchange about teaching and learning as instruments of continuous improvement. Nine mentor teachers have been imparting their experience through a cross-school learning community that helps combat the traditional isolation of classroom teachers. The program’s involvement with young teachers through DeLeT and experienced teachers through workshops and research yields a cascade effect of partnership, camaraderie and intellectual discourse that inspires an inter-generational cadre of excellence in teaching.

Bridging Scholarship and Pedagogy

Launched in 2003-4, MCSJE’s Bridging Scholarship and Pedagogy enforces the connection between Jewish teaching and the academic pursuit of Jewish Studies. The program productively engages Jewish education professionals in collaborative inquiries along questions of common concerns, developing a “scholarship of teaching” in sub-fields of Jewish studies.

The “snowballing success” of the January, 2005 Teaching Bible conference “suggested to me that Jewish educators see themselves as part of a disciplinary community,” says Program Director and MCSJE Assistant Academic Director Jon A. Levinson. The immense interest demonstrated a thirst for joint engagements of Jewish educators and university faculty in critical scholarship on particular subject areas. Such scholarship, Levinson suggests, can contribute to Jewish identity. In 2006-7, Bridging Scholarship and Pedagogy will engage in a second area of focus, on the teaching of rabbinical literature.

Community-Wide Implementation: Educators Developing Together
 
The Boston Mandel Teacher Educator Institute (MTEI) is a professional development initiative for school-based teacher learning, aimed at fostering a professional culture within each institution of Jewish learning. The intensive two-year program brought together professionals from eleven Jewish institutions of all denominations. It gave educators who rarely have the opportunity to learn about new approaches to school-based professional development, so that they and their colleagues could augment their own professional growth and enhance their students’ engagement and learning.

The initiative resulted in changed teacher roles and identities and a drastically improved educational environment, as perceived by participants. As one teacher explains: “It was insightful to probe the teaching relationship in the depth that we did; it reinforced for me how I learn and my understanding of the soul of teaching.”

Transforming the Education of Educators

MCSJE seeks to inspire a new generation of Jewish educators to merge pedagogy with passionate scholarship through reinforcing teacher identities and fostering communities of intellectual exchange. Susan M. Kardos explains: “MCSJE is the perfect convergence of things deeply central to me professionally and personally. I could not have done this work anywhere else.”