The Mishnah tells a story about Rabbi Nehunyah ben HaKanah. It shares that he offered a brief prayer when he entered the Beit Midrash (House of Study) and again when he left. When he entered, he prayed that no mishap would happen because of him, and when he left, he offered thanksgiving (Mishnah Berakhot 4:2). Two years ago, I started…
Category: Jewish Placemaking in the Field
The Cornerstone of Non-Violent Communication
For the first time since designing our Makom Making Accelerator, we welcomed three Philadelphia-based Education Directors into our Lab School, to foster continued relationships with other education directors who are doing the holy work of Jewish education and engagement of Jewish families. We created a professional development experience for the directors of this year’s Jewish Placemaking Accelerator centered around observing…
The Roadblock of Curriculum
Remember back in June, when you had a document open asking yourself, what should each grade level learn? We are here to help with that daunting task! As part of Makom Making, where we share the best educational and operational lessons from our Makom Community Lab School, we work with Jewish educators across the country. We often hear that curriculum…
Makom Community: A Lab School
Welcome to 5784/2023-2024 Jewish Enrichment year at Makom Community! We are so excited to welcome your whole family back to our Sansom Street Lab School and to our community! For those of you who read our writing with a fine tooth comb, you may have noticed we have been referring to our Jewish Enrichment program as a Lab School. For…
Joy in Bloom at our 2023 Summer Conference
Makom Community’s 2023 Summer Conference, entitled Jewish Placemaking: Planning for Joy, sought to explore joy through the principles of Jewish Placemaking. After two very full days of schmoozing, learning, teaching, and playing, it is safe to say that the over thirty educators who attended the conference were reminded of the joy of radical approaches to education and inspired to integrate…
Jewish Placemaking in the Ya’ar
16 months ago I was sitting with Beverly Socher-Lerner, Executive Director & Founder of Makom Community, and they explained that there has been interest for the Makom Community model to be implemented in other communities. As a board member, I was excited, knowing the high-quality education and community-building principles Makom embraces. I saw the possibility of us impacting the field…
Educators Creating Culture
Enthusiastic! Novel. Growing. Inclusive and welcoming. Fun! Intergenerational. Spiritual. Warm. Communal. Diverse. Adaptive. Joyful! These are some of the words our Jewish Placemaking Accelerator participants used to describe their Hebrew schools and synagogues in our April seminar on Creating Culture. After brainstorming some of the ways to describe the current culture of these institutions, we looked at their respective mission…
Most of All, I Have Learned From My Students
I have the privilege of working with Makom Community’s classroom educators, Makom lab school students, and Jewish educators from all over the country. As Makom Community grows, I get to share my love of Jewish wisdom and Jewish Placemaking not only with children and teachers in our Lab School, but also bring the tools of Jewish Placemaking to educators all…
Bringing Jewish Placemaking to a Learning Space Near You
Over the last few years, teaching has demanded lots of creativity and flexibility from educators. Participants in our recent Jewish Placemaking Accelerators have bounced around to different classrooms inside their respective synagogues, outside their respective synagogues, and online. We started our December seminar together by brainstorming some challenges and opportunities presented by four different learning spaces: indoors, outdoors, shared, and…
Learning from Our Learners
Every educator has a different reason for being passionate about working with children. However, the core of that drive is almost always the kids themselves. In my case, I am drawn to this work because I’ve always found that there are many days where I am not the one teaching. In many instances, the kids teach me and open my…
New Employee at Makom Community
From the first time I read about Makom Community in an email from my sister, I knew it was a special place. Never before have I seen so many pedagogical practices that I resonate with used in one place. As an educator, I have grown attached to this idea of global citizenship, and I’ve come to view it as the…
Communication for Success
Ever had a tough moment with a student and worried about whether or how to loop in their parents? But now think about all the fabulous moments you’ve had with students. Have you told parents about those moments either? In March, the Jewish Placemaking Accelerator participants took a hard look at parent communication – why it’s important, how to do…
The Process of Creating Culture
What do we want people to associate with when they think of our schools? How do we want them to feel when they leave the building? In February, the Jewish Placemaking Accelerator participants took the starting steps toward wrangling with the current culture at their respective institutions and imagining and planning for what it could be. What five words describe…
Jewish Placemaking in Every Class
Whether we like it or not, COVID has forced educators to think outside the traditional classroom to bring students together for community building and learning. And it’s been hard work! We opened our January Jewish Placemaking Accelerator Seminar by asking participants to brainstorm some of the challenges and opportunities presented by a variety of learning spaces: indoors, outdoors, shared, and…
Being the Change We Want to See in Our Schools
What do you think of when you imagine change? Chaos? Growth? Improvement? Discomfort? Stress? Resistance? Excitement? Change is personal and always accompanied by some amount of loss, which can make it really tough! In our January Jewish Placemaking Accelerator seminar, we explored how to effectively come at change to make it a little easier to manage. We started with a…
Setting Goals for Successful Learning
What makes Jewish text compelling and relevant to learners of all ages? How do we as educators know what to focus on when there’s SO MUCH content and SO LITTLE time?! Our November seminar on Lesson Planning and Goal Setting provided our Jewish Placemaking Accelerator cohort with some guidance on these questions and more. Our Accomplishments We started off the…
Design Thinking: Education from a Place of Empathy
We kicked off our first Jewish Placemaking Accelerator seminar exploring how to bring empathy into our classrooms and schools. In keeping with the Makom Community’s pedagogy, we ended up applying the principles of Design Thinking to our learning spaces, and we got there through Jewish text. What is Empathy? Participants started out with brief introductions and a small get-to-know-you prompt,…