Project Seeks to Revolutionize How Teachers Prepare Jewish Studies Curricula

With a team hard at work for nearly two years on the project, the central educational office of Chabad-Lubavitch is about to launch a new educational computer software program that, according to Rabbi Nochem Kaplan, could well transform the face of the Jewish day school system in the United States, if not the entire world. By streamlining the way teachers impart Judaic studies and Hebrew language content to their students, explains the veteran educator, the program opens up a variety of opportunities for tailoring a curriculum to each individual student.

Kaplan, who serves as the director of education at Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, has been actively involved in designing Jewish day school curricula for the past several decades. With well over 20,000 students enrolled in Chabad-affiliated schools worldwide – including early childhood programs, high schools and institutions of higher learning – Kaplan knows firsthand how daunting a task it is to a compile a comprehensive centralized database of lesson plans and study tools to which educators and students at schools of every persuasion would have open access.

While many public schools in the United States have successfully established online core curricula, day schools have been stymied by myriad practical, cultural and academic challenges.

“Over the course of the past 50 years, there have been several attempts to create a solid universal core curriculum for Jewish schools,” says Kaplan. “But the challenge has been that even within one school, each class’ curriculum differs from year to year.”

Whereas secular disciplines such as math or science follow particular trends and projected academic goals can generally be mapped out accordingly, progress in Judaic studies – how much the student will learn over the course of a semester, for example – is a lot more difficult to anticipate. Variables like the students’ language background, level of religious observance at home, and how much importance their parents place on Jewish studies are all factors that play into what subjects get covered in each course.

“Every year, I would need to rewrite the curriculum for the various schools I led over my career,” says Kaplan, who just completed a two-year term as president of the National Council for Private School Accreditation, “and every summer I had to retool because my objective for the coming year was always different than what I had set up at the beginning of the previous year.”

What parents demand of their children’s education also shifts with each new generation, says the rabbi.

“In the 1950’s, parents wanted to place a huge emphasis on the Hebrew language,” he explains. “In the 1960’s, we found out the students weren’t becoming fluent anyway so then we placed it elsewhere. The learning [in Jewish day schools] is always in flux because it’s so fluid. There is no hard and fast curriculum.”

Rabbi Yosef Abramov, a sixth grade Judaic studies teacher at Cheder Lubavitch in Monsey, N.Y., finds himself under constant pressure to keep up with paper work and administration requirements while simultaneously maintaining quality instruction to ensure that his students are adequately challenged and develop requisite learning skills.

“It’s not just that I need more time,” he laments. “I need to be imaginative and creative daily and to be on top of every child’s skills development, while creating an atmosphere conducive to real learning.”

To solve the recurring problem, Kaplan has teamed up with computer programmers and research educators from Jewish day schools across the country to create what he calls the Cyber Teaching Center, an online virtual teaching center and interactive website which will feature a database and personal curriculum development center for teachers.

He appointed Rabbi Tzvi Greenberg, a teacher at the Lubavitcher Yeshiva in Brooklyn, N.Y., to head the development of the project.

Key features of the Cyber Learning Center will include: 15-20 minute lesson plans with a clear learning objective and suggestions for assessment; student activities divided by grade and skill level; an online chat room where teachers can share their input and ask questions; and a drop down box where users can select different subjects – say, a biblical passage or a unit on a Jewish holiday – and choose a corresponding lesson plan fit for each topic.

“Not having a centralized curriculum has remained a huge struggle for rabbis and teachers,” says Greenberg. “The result is that huge numbers of children emerge for their school years largely unskilled in their Judaic studies. There are many, many children who do not meet normative classroom expectations and are slowly alienated from their Jewish learning, their schools and too often what they represent as well.”

For Abramov, the software would present a welcome improvement to the Jewish day school classroom environment, making it more fun, more manageable, and with more time for actual learning. The change, asserts Abramov, would benefit both students and educators.

“If I had a well-defined curriculum with a choice of creative learning activities and assessment tools the way the general studies teachers do,” he declares, “my job would be infinitely more doable.”