Jewish Enrichment

How We Work

A Typical Day at Makom Community

We fit Jewish education into the busy lives of urban families. We pick children up Monday through Friday from area elementary schools, on a flexible schedule. They walk or travel on SEPTA back to Makom Community at 24th and Washington Avenue for a snack and Jewish education until parent pickup by 6:00pm. While they are with us, children also have time with friends and mentors and can begin homework or have some much needed downtime with their favorite book.

Our Innovative Pedagogy- Jewish Placemaking

Jewish Placemaking has a few key goals:

• Embracing self-efficacy: Self-efficacy is the ability to look at a task, assess the skills needed to take on that project, and reflect realistically where we have the skills we need, where we can grow, and where we need support.
• Cultivating Empathy: Even very young children are deeply empathetic. As children, parents, and educators learn to slow down enough to engage in self-reflection, they can shift away from checking things off the to-do list and getting to the next scheduled activity. Instead, we aim to be present with each other as we move through that day’s increment of becoming.
• Planning for a Range of Emotions: We are ready to support kids after a full day of school! That means channeling energy toward learning, finding accessible and playful modes of learning, and generally supporting kids through all the emotions that pop up each afternoon.
• Grounding in the fullness of Jewish wisdom: Torah, in its broadest sense, is all of the intergenerational wisdom collected by the Jewish people across generations. Being grounded in Jewish wisdom does not mean accepting every word of Jewish wisdom as perfect. It does, however, mean admitting that even the blemishes, the painful parts of our collected tradition have a great deal to teach us and absolutely have bearing on our lives today and how we are becoming.

k-4 Sample Schedule