A ‘quest’ for educators to achieve high marks
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Quest for Teaching Excellence was developed under the guidance of consultant Elizabeth Penney Riegelman, center, former head of school at Newark Academy; she is shown on the Kushner campus with head of school Susan Dworken and Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School principal Rabbi Eliezer Rubin in the fall of 2010, when she visited all three area day schools. Photo courtesy JKHA
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December 7, 2011
The MetroWest community and private donors are embarking on a $1 million “quest” aimed at bolstering academic excellence in the area’s three Jewish day schools.
The Quest for Teaching Excellence, a four-year program of the MetroWest Day School Initiative, has been launched to support and enhance the work of educators at Golda Och Academy in West Orange, Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy/Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, and Nathan Bohrer-Abraham Kaufman Hebrew Academy of Morris County in Randolph.
The program, which is being administered by the Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life, is the result of a collaboration of the three schools under the guidance of consultant Elizabeth Penney Riegelman, a former head of school at Newark Academy in Livingston. “Schools focus so intently on their students that they too often cannot invest as much as they would like to in the growth of the teachers who are at the core of their educational missions,” Riegelman said. “The Quest for Teaching Excellence will provide a modern, research-based blueprint for schools all over the nation to focus on the optimal function and growth of every teacher,” said Riegelman, who will make a presentation on the program at the North American Jewish Day School Conference, scheduled for Jan. 15-17 in Atlanta.
The program is being funded by the Paula and Jerry Gottesman Family Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest, as well as the MetroWest Day School Community Fund of the JCF, which was established as part of the MetroWest Day School Campaign, a $50 million effort to support affordability and excellence in the day schools. The Day School Community Fund is overseen by an advisory council comprising educational experts, JCF leaders, United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, the Partnership, and private donors.
“Investing in teachers is the most valuable contribution that we can make to further advance the quality of our children’s education,” said Paula Gottesman of Morristown. “No school is better than its teachers, so it is critical that we provide them with the resources to do their jobs most efficiently. They are the central focus of the Quest for Teaching Excellence program, as we seek to continually improve excellence for our Jewish day schools while we strive to make them affordable for our children.”
The $1 million in funding will support four major areas: a part-time “faculty dean” at each of the schools to coordinate professional development, observation, and assessments; a pool of grants to enable teachers to build on their professional skills through workshops, continuing education, and other activities; the preparation of new, comprehensive faculty assessment systems; and a new centralized marketing position to better promote and celebrate high-quality teaching in the schools and community (see sidebar).
The schools will together host a “Teach-In” conference a year from now, on Dec. 7, 2012, whose aim will be to allow teachers to share and learn from best practices in their fields.
The Quest for Teaching Excellence program is part of a broader plan of the Day School Advisory Council, which has been active since 2007.
“It’s wonderful to see these three schools working so closely together to plan such a smart investment in teacher excellence, which directly affects students in the classroom,” said Max L. Kleinman, UJC MetroWest executive vice president. “I applaud the Gottesman Foundation and the MetroWest Day School Advisory Council for having the foresight to make this investment. It will have impact for years to come.”
Coordinating the initiative
A new position has been established to get the word out about the MetroWest Day School Initiative. As marketing coordinator for the initiative, Rebecca Hindin of West Orange has the major responsibilities of identifying and communicating news through the media and through social media outlets.
She is charged with writing features and other stories about the educational excellence of the schools and will promote the impact of the Quest for Teaching Excellence and the MetroWest Day School Initiative on students, their families, the schools, and the community.
The job was developed with input from the heads of the area day schools and from Elizabeth Penney Riegelman, the consultant who is working with them on the Quest for Teaching Excellence program.
A product of the day school system in Toronto, Hindin holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications and journalism from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. She has five years’ experience as communications manager at the Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Center for the Study of Women in Judaism and has held several public relations positions with Bar-Ilan.
Her husband, Etan, is an alumnus of the Kushner yeshiva, and their daughter, Sarena, will enroll at Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy next year. She is, she said, “highly invested in the community.”
Hindin began the job Nov. 1 and is based in the offices of The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life, MetroWest’s Jewish education and identity-building agency, on the Aidekman campus in Whippany. She can be reached at 973-929-2962 or RHindin@thepartnershipnj.org.
Comments
Charlie Green
December 13, 2011
Thanks once again to the Gottesman family for giving our day schools the ability to educate our children successfully. I am a former parent at the HAMC and a huge advocate of the need for a Jewish education. This will finally put the HAMC on par with the public school teachers in the same town. Randolph boasts a superior public school system, and the Hebrew Academy’s teacher don’t even compare. For the money the parent body spends the education level should be far superior, and it is not. I hope this helps get the school to the same level of excellence that can be achieved for free in the public school system.
Jason Bacharach
December 17, 2011
The mission statement of the Hebrew Academy of Morris County is “to maintain high standards of academic excellence and nurture students in an environment infused with the richness of Jewish life. The Academy inspires intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and personal integrity to enable our students to emerge as lifelong learners, compassionate individuals, and successful members of society who are rooted in their heritage. As a community day school, The Academy welcomes families from a wide range of Jewish backgrounds, reflecting the diversity of the American Jewish community today.”
We do this exceptionally well. For more than 40 years, the Academy has provided a superior educational foundation that stimulates and challenges every child’s academic and social needs.
The data supports this. Our graduates excel in high school honors programs, are accepted to the leading private high schools and go on to the best Universities in the nation. Our student accomplish this while also understanding and valuing their Jewish heritage and giving back to the Jewish, and larger, community by becoming leaders in their academic and social environments. They are leaders in the various teen programs offered by Federation as well as being leaders in secular groups, such as protesting against the situation in Darfur. Two of our recent graduates received Diversity Awards from Morristown High School. In this current season of college acceptance, members of the 2008 8th grade class have already been accepted to schools such as Washington University in St. Louis, Duke, NYU and Rutgers. Our students will excel in these schools as our students have done throughout the years. They will make us proud. And, they will return to a school they love, as they often do, to share their accomplishments with the teachers who they love and respect and have set them on their path.
This level of excellence is achieved by a relentless focus on each and every student’s individual needs by the schools amazing teachers and administrators. Our teachers are at the top of their profession. This is demonstrated both by the awarding of a National Blue Ribbon Award for Academic Excellence as well as by the HAMC’s admission into the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools after a rigorous application process. During the review period and in their recommendation, the NJAIS admission committee routinely acknowledged the effectiveness of our teachers and their knowledge and application of leading edge teaching methods and technology tools.
Moreover our teachers are never satisfied with their achievements. Just like they ask their students to do, they challenge themselves. On their own and with the administrations assistance they are constantly working to stay at the leading edge of education. The Quest for Teaching Excellence program, established through the vision and generosity of the Paula and Jerry Gottesman Family Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest, as well as the MetroWest Day School Community Fund of the JCF, will help to support our teachers, enhance their skills and ensure our students continue to receive the finest education
Our teachers are treasures for the Hebrew Academy and the broader Jewish community. They are dedicated and effective professionals, warm and loving teachers. and sincere and aspirational role-models for every one of our students. The education they provide, the education the HAMC provides is second-to-none. I see this every day in the work and achievements of my own children, their friends, and the graduates of our school. The value of an HAMC education is priceless.
Jason Bacharach
President, HAMC Board of Trustees
Kate and Ron Rubenstein
December 17, 2011
Many years ago we moved to Randolph because of the public school’s reputation for education. We enrolled our son into the Nursery school at HAMC with the intention of moving him to the public school once he was ready for Kindergarten. We thought one more year of enriching his Jewish heritage then we would move him in First Grade. Well for us the rest is history as our son graduated Eighth Grade from HAMC. The excellent education he received at HAMC and the love of learning that was nutured by his teachers, made the decision to keep him at HAMC one that we are proud of and more importantly, our son is also. He is now a successful business man with an MBA degree
who is involved in Jewish life. We are also proud to say as testament to his teachers that our son’s goal is to send his future children to HAMC. Thank you to Paula and Jerry
Gottesman’s generosity and vision we will hopefully have a second generation of graduates from the HAMC . Thank you HAMC teachers for shaping and guiding our son through the most formative years of his education.
Kim Hirsh
December 19, 2011
The goal of the MetroWest Jewish day schools’ “Quest for Teaching
Excellence” program is not to create great teachers. We have those
already, hard at work each school day at the three schools—Hebrew
Academy of Morris County, the Golda Och Academy and the Joseph Kushner
Hebrew Academy/Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School—that together created
this groundbreaking program.
Rather, the goal of the Teaching Excellence program is to further invest in the high-quality and highly dedicated teachers in these schools and enable each one of them to continue to grow, learn and excel in their specific fields, to share lessons among
fellow professionals, and to enrich and enliven every classroom with
continuously inspired teaching. We seek to support our teachers to do
their best work, and then celebrate that work, within each school and
throughout the MetroWest community.
When a business invests in ongoing, comprehensive professional development of its employees, it certainly does not mean that the employees are sub-par. Quite the opposite is true. What it means is that the company’s leadership understands that a
fundamental key to success is for its employees to continue to learn and
grow and be at the top of their fields. Similarly, in education, many
elite private schools continually invest in professional development and
growth of teachers because, at the end of the day, there is nothing more
important to a school’s success than the teacher at the front of the
classroom.
Thus, the thinking behind the “Quest for Teaching Excellence”
is certainly not new in the world of private education. Indeed, the
consultant who helped to draft this plan, Penney Riegelman, has been a
leader in private independent school education for decades, including as a former Head
of School at Newark Academy and executive director of the New York State
Association of Independent Schools. What IS new and exciting is
that—thanks to the visionary generosity of Paula and Jerry Gottesman Family Supporting Foundation of the JCF, the leadership of the MetroWest Day School Advisory Council, and hard work by many educational leaders—this philosophy has turned into a carefully thought-out, comprehensive plan and a $1 million
investment for these three outstanding Jewish day schools in our
community.
The immediate beneficiaries, of course, are the teachers,
students, and families in the day schools. In the long-term, the entire
community benefits through creating knowledgable, Jewishly committed graduates who help to secure a strong and vibrant Jewish future.
Kim Hirsh, Development Officer, JCF of MetroWest