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Early childhood

Feb 11, 2022

Investing in Congregational Education Teachers

Congregational Education programs are, in many Jewish communities across the country, the mainstay of Jewish learning for children. More children and teens attend congregational education than Jewish day schools.

Jan 14, 2022

How Much Is the Work of an ECE Teacher Worth?

ECE teachers are educators. They are not merely playing with children. They work with curricula, follow developmental standards, plan the day’s activities with intention and purpose.... It is the same work that every professional teacher does. Yet, for some reason, ECE teachers earn far less than teachers in elementary, junior high or high school, even when they have the exact same professional credentials.

Dec 24, 2021

Nursery School? Pre-School? Day Care? What Do We Call It?

Caring for children’s wellbeing has always been an essential goal of the many different kinds of child care options, from children being taken care of by family members to children going to child care centers. In fact, Head Start[1] was founded in 1965 to give comprehensive care to children living in poverty. At that time, only 10% of children 0 – 5 years old were enrolled in “nursery schools” or child care centers!

Dec 10, 2021

Bringing Our School Communities Together

What do Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative Heads of school have in common? Believe it or not, quite a lot! They are all part of CAJE’s Principals and Administrators Council (PAC) network that convenes the principals and heads of school from all of our 10 Federation funded schools with the principals and heads of school from the non-funded Jewish day schools located in Miami-Dade.

Nov 26, 2021

CAJE Launches New Day School Mental Health Network

After nearly two years in which their lives were upended, students are finally beginning to return to some normalcy this school year. Yet, the effects of learning online, the anxiety of missing major life milestones, and the isolation from peers and extended family have all taken their toll.

Nov 12, 2021

What We Have Learned: Words From Our Hearts

This week, as the “virtual curtain” fell on our final Torahtron performance, the co-creators of Words From Our Hearts: A Prayer Exploration for Early Childhood, Evelyn Goldfinger and Joy Schandler, had an opportunity to reflect on what they learned throughout the yearlong program.

Nov 5, 2021

Jewish Educator: a Career or a Calling?

As the authors from Rosov Consulting described in a white paper published by CASJE in 2020 “Beginning with the work of Bellah and his colleagues, in their landmark study Habits of the Heart, sociologists have distinguished people’s relationships to their work as jobs, careers and callings.”

Oct 29, 2021

CAJE Tackles Teacher Recruitment Crisis

Our Jewish community, and others around North America, are experiencing a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention. To education veterans and Jewish communal professionals, this is, of course, nothing new. What is new is that this summer the first systematic effort in more than 10 years to collect data about the Jewish education workforce was published based on a four-part research study led by Rosov Consulting and the Greenberg Team.

Oct 22, 2021

Why Our Jewish Schools Teach Robotics

After having to halt its programming due to COVID, CAJE’s Miami Jewish Day School Robotics Program is back. We received an overwhelming amount of emails and phone calls from various schools in Miami-Dade and Broward counties asking us to try to restart it this year.

Oct 1, 2021

"Retreating" to Advance Our Work

The word “retreat” has several meanings. One, of course, refers to withdrawing from a difficult, dangerous or disagreeable situation. However, in professional and private life, we often refer to “retreat” in two other ways: “a place of privacy or safety” and “a period of group withdrawal for prayer, meditation, study, or instruction under a director.”

Sep 3, 2021

Say “Thank You” to a Jewish Educator!

A typical day for a Jewish Head of school is much more than sitting in an office, taking phone calls, or doling out discipline for problem students. A head of school wears many hats and has a staggering list of responsibilities that would astound and alarm most people.

Aug 27, 2021

Pivoting into Rosh HaShanah and A New School Year

If one words sums up the teaching and learning in our Early Childhood Education centers this past year and a half, it would be “pivoting.” At the start of the pandemic, the educators had to pivot from teaching their preschool children in person to virtually through the computer screen. Then when summer camp and school started, they pivoted again, teaching in person while incorporating all the Covid-19 protocols designed to foster as much health and safety as possible for the staff and the children.

Jun 18, 2021

The Power of Prayer During a Pandemic

When the pandemic hit our ECE schools, everyone involved embarked on what can only be termed an “emotional roller coaster.” One way that CAJE sought to make a difference was to provide teachers and their children skills to cope with the ups and downs of the year.

Jun 11, 2021

WHOEVER SAVES A SINGLE LIFE…

CAJE is always on the lookout for how to help our schools and their families. So what you read below, we hope, will one day save a life! About two years ago, tragedy struck in one of our Federation-funded schools...

May 21, 2021

A Year in the Life of… the JRS’s

You may recall that JRS stands for Jewish Resource Specialist, a teacher - leader in an Early Childhood Education (ECE) program that holds an additional role added to the ones s/he already has. The JRS is a professional embedded in a school who is asked to focus on how to: Deepen the Jewish engagement of their school families AND Deepen the Jewish learning in the ECE- for teachers, children and families.

Mar 26, 2021

The Pesach Seder: The Ultimate Interactive Experience

Whether you are having a seder involving early childhood, elementary, middle, high school students or empty nesters, or any combination thereof, making your seder interesting and interactive is a worthy and attainable goal. All you need is some inspiration, motivation, and time to prepare.

Mar 19, 2021

CAJE Called National Model (Part Two)

The last one [aspects that need improvement in the day school system] that I'll talk about is the pipeline of educators for Jewish Day schools. There is clearly pandemic fatigue across the board. I'm sure that we all feel it. I know it's difficult to come to another Zoom. The pandemic fatigue is very real and it has raised the conversation about mental health and wellness in schools, now even more important than it had been before. Mental health and wellness was a topic of conversation before the pandemic; and now, we have heard more conversations about anxiety among students particularly in the high school level.

Mar 12, 2021

CAJE Called National Model (Part One)

There's been so much loss and trauma that will follow us as we slowly move out of the pandemic but I think that there is a collective sense of optimism about Jewish day schools right now. I would like to focus on three particular areas and to give a quick overview of what we're seeing from the national perspective at Prizmah. They are the value proposition of schools, collaboration and coordination on the community level, and the pipeline of educators for Jewish day schools.

Feb 26, 2021

Change is the New Normal

The education world has experienced change over the past year in unprecedented and deep ways. In education, we often talk about how we are called upon to metaphorically drive the bus while changing the tires, looking under the hood and getting people on and off safely. This holds true during the pandemic more than ever.

Feb 19, 2021

Teacher = Hero

Close to a year ago, as our entire world was thrown into a new reality, the world of Jewish education was compelled to pivot into this new reality as well. Our Miami Jewish day schools had to instantaneously become adept at new ways of teaching and learning. At first, the approach was “do the best possible,” given the situation and hope that things would go back to “normal” soon.

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