
By Rabbi Joshua Fenton
According to a 2013 JData article, there are approximately 1848 congregational schools in America, in addition to the other supplemental programs being run independently by JCCs and other community organizations. That’s over 200,000 students each year are enrolled in some kind of supplemental Jewish learning program. Twice as many children are enrolled in supplemental, part time Jewish learning programs in the U.S. than there are students in non-orthodox Jewish day schools. If the vast majority of children doing any formal or informal Jewish learning are doing so after school in supplemental programs, which begs the question: why aren’t more resources and attention paid to our largest demographic of youth learners?
In a recent article, “It’s Time to Invest in Part-Time Jewish Education,” Anna Marx made a few key observations about the challenges and needs facing supplemental Jewish education. First: supplemental schools and part time Jewish education in general need a lot more attention and resources. Second: the death of Jewish learning after school has been greatly exaggerated.
Anna’s article was part of a series that saw contributions from central agencies, foundations, and academic institutions. In the hope of adding to this important conversation, and contributing to what clearly must be a paradigm shift in the way we think about and value Jewish education, I am calling for a second round of articles, a response from the field. Great things are happening and we can be doing a lot more to understand and scale successful approaches.
To all the innovators among us, to those of us exploring new approaches and techniques, working in new ways to achieve transformative Jewish learning, the time has come to step out of the “innovation sector” and speak up in our communities. We need to start sharing good and successful practices, approaches, trainings, and even curricula. We have an opportunity and perhaps obligation to shape the future of supplemental Jewish education. To those direct service organizations that have recently launched fellowships, trainings, and so on: your voices are critical to building a movement of change and renewal in the field.
And I’m not just talking about those of us working with school age children. Whether you’re working in teen engagement, young adult engagement, and even adult learning, you have important experiences and expertise to share with the wider community. Good ideas that work in one part of the country, or resonate with one demographic group, just might work in another.
To start things off, I’d like to share some of what we’ve learned in our afterschool program, Edah, and why you might consider the model for your school, shul, JCC, or community. (For more information about the model and movement, check out the Nitzan Network.)
1. Kids are people, too
The elementary school kids who fill our programs, spend all day long at school. There, they must conform to structures: sit when they’re told, stand when they’re told, eat when they’re told, and stay focused until they’re dismissed. For any adult who’s ever taken a night class while working, working all day and then going to school afterwards isn’t fun. It isn’t fun for our kids either.
The afterschool model is in part about honoring the humanity of our kids. They don’t want to trade one desk for another. They need rest, agency, and the opportunity to slow down and be heard on their own terms after a long day of conforming. Our model focuses on meeting those needs first. Experiential education is preferred, frontal instruction is almost non-existent, student choice is prioritized, and “joy” and “fun” are key metrics in evaluating the program.
Most importantly, we listen to our kids, seeking to understand their needs and honoring and respecting how they want to spend their time. By embracing the idea that after school time is theirs and honoring the fact that kids are people too with their own sets of needs and interests, Jewish learning after school shifts from being an imposition to a time when the kids get to grow and develop as Jews and as people with guidance, but on their terms.
2. Parents also have needs
Scheduling is one of the greatest challenges for parents. At the beginning of every school year, parents are faced with the challenge of working out each child’s various schedules, transportation, and after school plans. Making room for, and working out transportation to and from religious school, soccer, ballet, play practice and so on is a perennial problem. The popular approach to supplemental or congregational models pits Jewish education against all the other extra curricular activities and imposes an additional transportation burden. The unintended consequence of that approach is Jewish education becomes complicated and burdensome as parents work to figure out the logistics.
By contrast, the after school model says to parents, “We’re open every day. Work out your schedule and use us to fill in the gaps.” And just like that, the program becomes an important resource to parents as they work out after school plans for their kids. When a program is able to provide transportation from school, it becomes an even more valuable resource.
As much as parents need Jewish education for their children, parents’ needs revolve equally if not more around after school care and scheduling. If you can align those two needs, as the afterschool model does, you reframe the entire family’s experiences of Jewish education in powerful and positive ways.
3. More is more
When it comes to learning, the more you practice, the longer you spend, the more you get out of it. Sure, at a certain point returns diminish, but when we’re talking about part time, supplemental learning, more is truly more; more time = greater impact. This is another huge reason why the afterschool program model should be considered by everyone. When afterschool learning is reframed, not as an extracurricular but as a five day a week resource, and when the model directly responds to children’s and parent’s needs, families engage more deeply and parents send their kids more often. Kids are happier and actually excited to go. Parents are happy to send their children and marvel at how different their own experiences in Hebrew school were in comparison to their children’s, resulting in many more hours a week of engagement in Jewish life and learning. It’s as simple as that. This translates into more learning, more joy, and more meaning as participants form communities similar to those found in Jewish camping and other immersive experiences.
If a child spends 3 ½ hours a day, four days a week in a Jewish learning afterschool program, a lot of learning and exploration and growth can happen. Even compared to some community day school models that include one period of Jewish studies and one period of Hebrew studies along with six other periods devoted to general studies, the afterschool program model might just result in a more immersive and effective Jewish learning experience.
4. Teachers are professionals
The last strength I’ll share of the afterschool movement is the impact that more days a week, longer hours, and greater stability has on educators. Afterschool programs require more full time staff. A five-day-a-week program demands greater staffing, more people and more hours. When educators don’t have to pull together five different teaching gigs to make ends meet, the message is their work matters and we want to support them to do it well.
If we want to see supplemental Jewish learning thrive, professionalizing the field has to extend beyond heads of schools. That means offering people actual career opportunities. Full time employment with vacation time and benefits sends the message that, “Your job is real and we are going to set you up to succeed because your success is important to us.” Educators know what people say about Sunday school. They know the narrative we’re all trying to change as much as anyone. Only to them it’s even more personal. When we ask them to be baby sitters, when we don’t give them the time, support, and resources to achieve the goals we set for them, we imply that the goals, the learners, and even the educators themselves don’t matter that much.
Jewish learning afterschool programs are certainly not the only new approach in town, and they too have their limitations, but they work. If you’re interested in learning more about how they work, and how it might serve your community, we love to share.
So, who is next in the series? The community needs your voice.
Rabbi Joshua Fenton is the Executive Director of Studio 70 – A Jewish Learning Laboratory in Berkeley California. Studio 70 is the home of the Edah afterschool program, the Jewish Learning Innovation Corps and the National NItzan Network.
Nicely written, Joshua, and I think more articles would be wonderful because one of the realities of the last 25 years is that supplemental learning, especially congregational-based, has been treated as the scapegoat. It has been blamed for most of the ills of Jewish education and, by extension, the larger problems of maintaining Jewish community. No one wanted to talk about it except to disparage it, no one wanted to commit to any real research on its impact and techniques that could help to improve it, and no one wanted to invest in real efforts to improve and evolve it for a new generation of families. More articles, thoughtful and thought-provoking, would help shed more light on the needs and the opportunities in part-time education.
One additional thought. You write “Twice as many children are enrolled in supplemental, part time Jewish learning programs in the U.S. than there are students in non-orthodox Jewish day schools. If the vast majority of children doing any formal or informal Jewish learning are doing so after school in supplemental programs, which begs the question: why aren’t more resources and attention paid to our largest demographic of youth learners?” In Chicago, our data shows that for every one child in a non-Orthodox day school there are ten children in a supplementary/part-time education program. 10 to 1. The question is not only begging, it is pleading.
I’m not an educator, just an interested community member, and I ask the following question not to be judgmental but because I really don’t know and want to understand: Beyond developing positive feelings of Jewish identity, what are the expected educational outcomes here, as far as imparting knowledge is concerned? E.g. by the end of, let’s say, 5th grade, how much Hebrew is a child expected to master? At what point is a child expected to know the Friday night blessings, or the rudiments of a Shabbat service, or what the Haggadah is all about? Do students get some exposure to Torah, to Jewish history, to the Holocaust, to Israel? I’m thinking back to my own Hebrew school experience, which was truly a positive force in my life, but it took place in a classroom with desks and a blackboard, and involved reading and light homework. Just trying to wrap my head around how an informal after-school program works.
Shalom Old School but Curious,
Re “developing positive feelings of Jewish identity,”so far in here perhaps only Heaven knows what that means and how that might be measured. I write this with all due respect to you and others in here.
You ask most all of the important questions that parallel those asked in here about how success is measured. You and I have a similar sounding experience with our supplementary Jewish education. Our teachers and education directors most assuredly could answer the questions you pose. I hope that Rabbi Joshua will respond.
Biv’racha,
Jordan
Hi Jordan and Old School, I’m happy to respond and also encourage you to visit the Nitzan network website as well as the Studio 70 website where a lot more information on the after school models exist, as well as some more info on specific iterations. And of course I’d be more than happy to speak in person and provide lots more info about Studio 70 and our approaches.
The general question I’m hearing is one of outcomes and measurements. While I can’t speak for all of the Nitzan network programs which can look very different from one another, I can answer for Edah, our after school program. At Edah we are very focused on outcomes and regularly assess all of the children, in all sorts of creative ways. As I tried to explain in the article, the model affords us the opportunity to explore a lot of content and Hebrew language because we see the kids for many hours a week. And we are always evaluating, quietly and behind the scenes for the most part.
For example, our Hebrew curriculum focuses largely on spoken Hebrew. We introduce Hebrew reading and writing (literacy) in the third grade in earnest. While children are exposed to Hebrew literacy earlier as well, the focus of our Hebrew language learning during grades K-3 is largely spoken. This is because of how we think about and understand language acquisition. By the time children graduate from our program they leave with a vocabulary of over 200 essential words and phrases as well as lots of practice using them in authentic settings in addition to being able to read and write.
Additionally at Edah, We explore Sipurei Tanach and Parshat Hashavua through modeling, art, and theatre for the most part. Here we look for both understandings (did they learn the story) as well as engagement. Were they interested in the exploration/was it meaningful to them or did they make meaning out of the experience.
We learn to pray in a daily minyan where we either daven the weekday Mincha or Maariv. Each child also has their own siddur which over the years becomes their illuminated manuscript. Here we also look for both mastery of the tefillot themselves which we evaluate during davening as well as engagement and deeper understandings which we use the siddurim for.
Our curricula also includes ongoing explorations of the Jewish calendar and holidays in which we look for both mastery and engagement. Our older kids (2nd – 5th) grade have a Beit Midrash rotation in which they learn the basic skills of how to learn, looking up psukim, using dictionaries and so on.
And there’s much much more. Those are a few examples of what we do and how we do it.
What you don’t see is anything about a strong identity, not because that isn’t an outcome. As I believed was mentioned in the comments above, it’s just too complicated to measure identity for starters, and I’m also not sure that’s the right thing to look for in children. Our focus is on the development of a body of knowledge and skills that will position our graduates to thrive in whatever Jewish space they find themselves in later in life.
Lastly, I’ll add that at Studio 70 everything begins and ends with three foundational ideas we measure everything we do against. They are:
Learning is meaningful and joyful
Education is serious and intentional
Community is loving and supportive.
Hope this answers some of your questions. And happy to talk more off line.
Wow, that was a powerful and eye-opening answer to my question. I am truly impressed. Thank you!
Shalom Rabbi Joshua,
Thanks for engaging. You have much about which to be proud (not in the arrogant sense, but as a parent is of her/his child(ren) ). Your response brings hope for the future of North American non Orthodox (NANO) Jews to this greying, ponytailed, aging boomer. Kol hakavod to you and your team.
Shavu’a Tov to all of us,
Biv’racha,
Jordan