The Kohelet Foundation announced today the inaugural year of its Kohelet Prize.

The unrestricted $36,000 prize will be awarded to educators or teams of educators, who currently work in Jewish day schools and whose work skillfully demonstrates a progressive approach to education in the following six categories:

• Interdisciplinary Integration
• Real-World Learning
• Learning Environment
• Differentiated Instruction
• Development of Critical and/or Creative Thinking
• Risk Taking and Failure

“We know there are incredible, creative and highly effective teachers doing this work in the field right now. We want to inspire them to share what they know about developing the minds and hearts of their students,” said Holly Cohen, Kohelet Foundation’s executive director.

“The first five categories are critical to excellent education. By honing in on these, we hope to surface work that demonstrates the elements that matter most in the classroom,” said Rabbi Dr. Gil Perl, the Kohelet Foundation chief academic officer.

In explaining the sixth category, Perl noted, “In schools, failures are too often seen as an endpoint, not as a crucial step toward success. To foster a growth mindset in students, we have to begin by fostering it in our teachers.” Cohen added “We’re shifting the paradigm from ‘failure is bad’ to responsible risk-taking and failure breed success. That’s a game changer for the field of Jewish education.”

To submit an entry, educators will share their work by uploading it directly to the Kohelet Prize website at www.koheletprize.org, any time starting September 29, 2016 until 11:59PM on November 29, 2016.

To promote an open source culture within the field, the Kohelet Foundation plans to create a searchable database of all entries. The database will be accessible, after the close of submissions, via the Kohelet Prize website.

The Kohelet Prizes will be awarded in early 2017. For more information, visit: www.koheletprize.org.

About the Kohelet Foundation: Established in Philadelphia in 2008, the Kohelet Foundation’s work focuses primarily on Jewish day schools and the institutions that support and promote them. By creating and implementing programs that are replicable and accessible and awarding a variety of unique and targeted grants, the Kohelet Foundation is transforming what is possible for Jewish day schools and their communities nationwide.