By Lisa Micley
Lisa Micley is Director of Education for BabagaNewz.com and a Jim Joseph Foundation Fellow. Contact her for suggestions for how you can innovate in your class or school.
I recently returned from ten days in Israel during which I participated in a seminar entitled, “Imagining the Possible” with the Jim Joseph Foundation Fellows. The title of the seminar intrigued me. I had always been challenged to imagine the impossible and often the impossible remained impossible even after imagining it. This seminar focused on creative, innovative ideas which can become the reality in Jewish education and allowed us to consider them and apply what we can learn from them to our work.
The Jim Joseph Foundation Fellows, a group of fourteen Jewish educators from diverse walks of Jewish education have come together to learn about leadership and online collaborative communication. Our collective work has been engaging and exciting and full of new ideas. The main takeaway for me from this seminar in Israel is that almost anything is possible. Fourteen educators with varying philosophies about education and Judaism can learn from each other and collaborate to build a strong network of learning. It is possible for us to share this learning with other educators all over the globe with the many online tools available to us.
During the seminar, we heard from educators and innovators and learned important lessons from each. We focused on individuals and groups who were innovators in Jewish history. The list included recent as well as ancient innovators, among them Joshua, King David, Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi, Baron Edmond Rothschild, and members of the Palmach. The messages and lessons were transmitted to us at the site so we learned about King David as we walked around Ir David and spoke about Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi as we strolled through Tzippori.
To feel the impact of Baron Rothschild, we visited Ramat Hanadiv and the Carmel Winery. Diversity seemed to be the theme of the sites where we remembered Baron Rothschild. The gardens at Ramat Hanadiv are full of a beautiful array of plants and they are open and available for all to enjoy. I was especially taken with the “fragrance garden” which offers an opportunity for the visually impaired to enjoy the gardens by touching the plants and enjoying their scents as they read the descriptions in Braille of these plants. The theme of diversity continued at the winery and we were overwhelmed by the varieties of wine produced in this winery.
The places we visited and groups we met with were not the usual stops for Jewish educators travelling as a group through Israel. We spent two days studying with a team from S.I.T.- Systematic Inventive Thinking- and worked with them to learn tools for breaking functional fixedness. Functional fixedness is a bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. We can apply this to education by looking at any object in our classroom and trying to think of a new use for it- think about the whiteboard, the desks, the chairs – and see if you can come up with a new use for one of them which is not the traditional one. For example, if you took the white board off the wall and put it on the floor or on a stand so it was a drawing table, would you or your students use it differently? Is there another way to use the whiteboard which does not involve writing on it? Many of us are “stuck” in our environments and if we can think about the objects around us differently it can help us to get “unstuck.”
While in Jerusalem, we spent a morning at Jerusalem Venture Partners, a leading Israel venture capital firm which brings together the profit, social profit and entertainment worlds in their work. While in Tel Aviv, we visited Google Tel Aviv and were treated to spectacular views as we toured a work space which is designed to inspire creative and collaborative work. Google’s approach to the work space has lessons for schools, community centers, camps, Federation offices and other Jewish organizations. Think about adding a basketball hoop in the corner of your classroom or a foosball game at the back of the room. Would these additions help students to learn? Would they make them happier in the classroom? How about a reclining chair facing the window for quiet reflection? Or food on a table in your classroom which is available any time during the day. All of these are part of the work environment at Google Tel Aviv and create a happy and energetic environment for those who work there.
One afternoon was spent studying at ALMA: Home for Hebrew Culture. Their values include openness, cooperation, creativity, innovation, relevance and respect. We turned texts and Jewish practices inside out as we examined Kiddush on Friday night from new points of view and shared our learning with each other in the ALMA Beit Midrash. One group was assigned to look at the formal text of the Kiddush, and keep it intact, but express new meanings drawn from it. How should we bring new ideas, thoughts and values to the ritual of Kiddush without altering the text itself? The second group was asked to read the text of the Kiddush and alter it to reflect new ideas and meanings. They replaced words with actions and shared a ‘Kiddush” with us which represented the concepts of Shabbat. This activity could be an engaging activity for your students through which they could learn about and express the meaning of Shabbat.
Two days later, we spent the afternoon at MATACH: The Center for Educational Technology and learned about innovative and exciting projects like Mikranet a text based resource for Hebrew speakers.
A few of the things I learned from this incredible seminar:
• Don’t get stuck (fixed) thinking about a program, text, class in one particular way.
• Laughter is a sign of creativity. Encourage it in your classes, meetings, and programs.
• Learning can take place anywhere and should be inspired with activities which engage and energize.
Let’s work together to “imagine the possible” and make it happen in our classrooms and other Jewish education settings.
