In the past years the Jewish educational landscape has deeply embraced cohorts of learners, such as classrooms or bunks at camp, creating a brit. A brit, or two-way promise, can be found throughout the Torah, when God and humans make a mutual two-way promise. For instance, God promises Noach there will not be another flood if he creates the ark and brings his family with him. The brit is shown as a rainbow, a symbol we still see today!
What better way to start gathering with a new community than thinking about the promises we make to each other for our co-created community? Typically the brit is created on day one of class or the first night at camp. At Makom Community, we take the first few weeks of school to get to know each other and then create our brit. This has a few benefits. One, it allows us to integrate the process into the first unit of our curriculum. And two this allows learners who are not as verbal or comfortable on day one to get acclimated so that their voice be part of the process. It enables educators to get to know the learners better and ensure the brit-making process uses learning modalities that inspire each learner to participate.
However, if there is no brit on day one, how do you hold expectations? At Makom, we have a proto-brit, a few baseline expectations that we hold consistently year after year. These expectations carry us before we dive into the specifics of each cohort’s brit. What are these expectations at Makom?
- We care for each other and the space (Kind, inclusive, helpful)
- We believe each other
That is it! We keep it simple and clear that these are expectations we have in our community. Recently, I had the immense joy of facilitating a professional development seminar for 50 educators brought together by the Coalition of Jewish Learning at the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. Each school present brainstormed some proto-britot they could use in their communities. They came up with:
- Be kind to people
- Be kind to the building/your surroundings
- Be respectful
- Support one another
- Make safe choices
Coming up with three or four simple elements of a proto-brit is not easy! It takes time and workshopping, but once you instill the rhythm of it, learners know what to expect each year. Then you spend the next few weeks brainstorming elements of each cohort’s brit, adding questions to each lesson plan or questions or reflections that can guide your brit building. As you whittle down your list of brit ideas, educators and learners together start to create the brit that will live in their classrooms.
Looking at the calendar this year, imagine you open school with your proto-brit, sharing it at once with the whole school and their families. Then throughout the weeks of September/Elul, you weave brit building into your conversations and learning. By Sukkot, each class’s brit is hanging in the Sukkah to show the whole community.
