Growing a Program Development Plan by Rabbi Erin Hirsh

Supplementary School Teachers by the # s schools, 7800 students, 500 teachers in Philadelphia ,000 students, 28,000 teachers nationally 3. < 1% of Supplementary School teachers have had a single class in both education & Jewish studies

“There is a lot of lip service given to innovation, experiential education, differentiated learning and engagement, I read about ecosystems of complementary education, the need (or not) to emulate summer camp experience, the introduction of technology and the role of families in their children’s learning. What I don’t read about is improving the quality of instruction... This is the 800-pound gorilla in our educational ecosystem, and he’s waiting to be fed.” - David Steiner (2013)

Professional Learning for Supplementary School Teachers “Today, amid financial constraints and declining affiliation rates, virtually every national Jewish institution, and many local ones, is in the process of restricting, redefining its mission, merging or even closing.” - Julie Weiner, The Jewish Week, 2013 Movement Education Consultants Central Agencies of Jewish Education

Our plan is to leverage the Philadelphia program in order to offer online classes to teachers BEYOND Philadelphia for a modest fee. The virtually negligible cost or replicating programs on broader scales is an almost irresistible characteristic of technology today.

Online Classes are easily replicable and expandable “The Internet, the web, and digitally-connected global networking are today’s “Carnegie.” These technologies have emerged as the basis of the 21 st Century’s means for making popular education’s learning and earning opportunities freely accessible to ‘the people.’” – Komoski, 2007 Once the classes have been built, they can be rerun immediately and indefinitely. They can be “tweaked” and revised according to student input in a quick, ongoing manner

The entire NEXT program – including specific class selections – has been designed with direct input from supplementary school educators. 50% of the education directors in Greater Philadelphia 20% of the supplementary school in Greater Philadelphia were surveyed by NEXT in 2013

The online classes are Asynchronous

Designed specifically for supplementary school teachers Generic Cola Coke Cola vs. Which would YOU prefer?

There are Complementary Components Direct Teacher Observations a Professional Assessment Tool a Professional Growth Plan development Mentoring program Communities of Practice Skype Livebinder Dropbox Survey Monkey Webstudy & Moodle

“Educators who use the [Web 2.0] tools for professional development... will find a community of other educators online. They can create a network of these educators to share with and learn from and can build a personal network to turn to regularly. Online, they can have access to best practices and the leader/practitioners and models that can show what strategies make a difference, and they can learn where and when to use them.” - Solomon, G. & Schrum, L. 2010, p.10 Why are the Complementary Components important?

What does it take?

About online education & Rethinking 20 th century education models

We’re moving beyond teacher-centered learning... To student-centered learning.

Online education understands the student is always a Prosumer. It’s like applying the process good teachers use when they gather and use feedback from the learners they are teaching, in order to improve learning outcomes. Good teachers have always been good, co- producing, prosumers.” Komoski, 2007 “This process of producer- consumer... co- production might easily be overlooked as relating to the current transformation of learning, but co- production is central to the learning process.

Intrinsic Extrinsic We’re offering both INTRINSIC and EXTRINSIC rewards, by providing access to college and continuing education credit.

Online learning caters to students with different learning styles.

The learning is not differentiated by the instructor But it is highly personalized for/by the student but

Moving beyond “Just in Case” Learning...

Although students are physically separate from one another, Online learning can still be highly collaborative

“Imagine how much better learning and teaching tools, all the textbooks and other learning resources that we and our students have been using over the years, could have become, had they been regularly revised on the basis of a seamless, automatic feedback from thousands of teachers and their students... by listening to students as learner-prosumers (i.e., producer/consumers of personal and national intellectual capital), teachers, curriculum leaders, instruction leaders, along with everyone in the educational publishing industry would have learned a lot. And, by applying what they’ve learned, would have produced better quality learning resources and practices. The result would have been that students, the ultimate educational prosumers, would have had better learning tools, better teaching, and better, more effective learning experiences.” - K. Komoski, 2007

Measuring Participation How many teachers PARTICIPATE IN... Online Classes? Mentorships? Professional assessments? Professional growth plans?

And the MOST important question is... DOES THE TEACHER’S WORK IN THE CLASSROOM ACTUALLY IMPROVE OVER THE COURSE OF THEIR ENGAGEMENT WITH THE NEXT PROGRAM?

In other words... may be one big