I wrote at some point earlier this year that I almost miss COVID, given the current situation in Jewish Education. While I said that somewhat tongue in cheek, it speaks to the fact that we have been leading our schools and ECE-RJ from trauma to trauma; and yet, we all have persevered. We forged new partnerships; we created new initiatives, and we kept moving forward - despite being in pain.
In July of 2023, the ECE-RJ board came together to plan and to dream about what might be possible this year. While we could not have imagined what would happen just a few months later, I am proud of the fact that we were able to enact many of the ideas generated that week. But NONE of that would’ve been possible without so many of you.
In my office, I have hanging the line from Pirkei Avot: “Lo Alecha Hamlacha Ligmor”... It is not required of you to complete the task, but neither are you free to avoid it
We could not have accomplished ANY of the things we’ve done this year without all of you - and we need these and each one of you that hasn’t yet leaned in to continue to drive the success of our organization. We are all overburdened and overworked in our jobs, and often overwhelmed by our lives, but any of us who have been involved in this work will tell you that we get SO much more back from what we put in - and I want to invite every one of you to engage more deeply in ECE-RJ.
Please take 30 seconds to look and to indicate which areas YOU might be interested in working on this year. There is work that is short term and long term, tasks that will take just a few minutes to maybe a few hours over the course of a month - this is not committing you to more than you can take on.
To prepare for the annual meeting, and my “state of the organization” reflection, I looked back at the Forum posts over the past year and created this word cloud to try to capture what was on our minds over the past 12 months.
There were, of course, many posts about Israel and about security - but there were also such incredible conversations around learning differences, relationships with the Temples we are affiliated with, job description development and how Universal PreK is affecting many of our schools.
To address these issues, ECE-RJ took a multi-tiered approach - we, of course, continued with our Meet-Ups, our ongoing monthly professional development offerings - led by our VPs of Learning Mihaela Schwartz and Zoe Miller and their Learning Committee, we had sessions on Antisemitism, on Gender Identity, on Teaching Literacy, on Helping our parents and staff through trauma - and so much more.
We introduced a new initiative this year called “Monthly Round Tables' where different board members hosted a zoom meeting around a specific topic for Directors to come together to network, brainstorm and commiserate. It was a huge success and out of these sessions came resources around how to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut this year, how to articulate the non-financial benefits of having early childhood centers in synagogues, and resources for staff training and inspiration.
We launched our 2nd cohort of the New Directors Group, which last year was led by board members Amy Damast and Ellen Lefkowitz. Cohort 2 is being led by Cohort 1 participants, Leah Lyndon and Laura Krautheim, and we are eager to launch Cohort 3 next year. We also started the ECE-RJ Engagement Network, led by Lauren Byers, bringing together different professionals who are dealing with engaging families with young children.
Under the leadership of Susie Wexler, we also piloted a Mentorship program, pairing newer directors with more experienced ones. We are eager to expand and improve on this in 2024-2025.
… and that was just the tip of the iceberg. One of our most significant events this year was the Yom Chadash Conference in Memphis, TN. This year’s conference, which was a partnership with ARJE, offered an incredible new opportunity for us to learn with Religious School educators and the experience really illustrated both how intertwined our work is and how much we have to learn from one another.
Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
