A Textbook is a Collection of Programs

In honor of Israel’s 60th birthday (and the upcoming publication of Artzeinu: An Israel Encounter) we’re going to be taking some space in the TAPBB to talk about some real Israel issues. This is the fourth in a series of essays about how Israel fits into the school curriculum.

by Joel Lurie Grishaver

Who wants to teach Israel from a textbook?

Israel is an exciting, real place full of interesting people and cool things to do and see. If our goal is to get our students excited about Israel, then what teacher in their right mind would pull out a textbook to teach Israel?

Textbooks sometimes get a bad wrap. Some educators are afraid of them because they think that teacher will have their students read them out loud. Some teachers don’t like them because they are afraid it takes away their freedom and flexibility. All of those can be valid concerns. But we make textbooks because we believe in them. This essay is designed to explain how we imagine our textbooks being used, and to illustrate how textbooks can be part of engaging, interesting, and exciting experiential learning.

Textbooks, good text books, offer a lot of advantages in today’s congregational school environment.

Questions and Answers About Jewish Art

by Laurie Bellet

I’ve been writing this column — ideas on art projects and how to integrate quality arts education into your curriculum — for a few years now. One thing about being a Jewish arts expert is that you get lots of questions from people. This is a column of questions and answers. The questions (five of them, in true Carol Starin style!) are those I am asked most frequently:

• “Do you have a project for _____?”
• “How do you get your ideas?”
• “Where do you shop?”
• “How do you balance process and product?”
• “Does your administration support the arts?”

So, without further ado, here are the answers to my most frequently asked questions.

Let Me Count the Ways: Great secular websites for Jewish teachers

by Carol Oseran Starin

In our last column, we talked about Jewish sites for Jewish teachers. This column is a little different. It’s a collection of secular sites for Jewish teachers.

There’s a lot here (the “5 Things Advisory Group” really came through), and to make it all more digestible, I’ve taken these 31 websites and put them into five categories. They all come with the “Let Me Count the Ways” Seal of Approval. I spent hours going through them. And, you will too. Enjoy!

Let’s begin with Kathy Shrock’s site because it is the site for sites: http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/. It’s a categorized list of sites useful for enhancing curriculum and professional growth. Kathy Schrock, is a pioneer in using the web and technology in education. It’s easy to use and to the point with things like clip art and lesson plans. It’s designed for secular education, but with lots of tools for Jewish educators.

Now, on to our categorized list:

Teaching Israel without Politics Probably Isn’t Possible

In honor of Israel’s 60th birthday (and the upcoming publication of Artzeinu: An Israel Encounter) we’re going to be taking some space in the TAPBB to talk about some real Israel issues. This is the third in a series of essays about how Israel fits into the school curriculum.

by Joel Lurie Grishaver

One of the “big ideas” that is at the root of our Israel curricular work is:

“Israel education should not reflect a political point of view but should provide information on those issues that ideological points of view focus on.”

In other words, teachers should not teach Israel from a specific political point of view (e.g. Meretz or Likkud) but need to help students to understand both the actions of Israel and the rhetoric against Israel. This means that it is not the job of the teacher to say either, “Israel should not return any of the territories,” or “Israel should give back all of the territories.” Rather, in teaching Israel in most contexts, it is impossible to avoid the word “territories.”

For us, the real question is “How can we teach the real Israel while at the same time building a loving connection?” What do we do about politics, territories, terrorists, and inequality, when at the same time we want our students to think of Israel as their spiritual homeland?

As we’ve developed our most recent Israel materials — notably Whole School Israel and Artzeinu: An Israel Encounter — we’ve given a lot of thought to this issue, and e’ve identified two distinct challenges. First, teaching Israel is problematic because our students see Israel as a problematic place, and in the end, those problems are unavoidable. Second, teaching Israel is problematic because our students (and their families, perhaps) are apathetic. Here are our thoughts on addressing these challenges.