Prizmah Podcasts: Podcasts by Prizmah Center for Jewish Day Schools

What do parents want from their children's Hebrew education? How do they think about and value Hebrew, and does their thinking align with the way that Hebrew is taught in their children's school? Hebrew educators explore these questions and share innovative ways that they engage students with Hebrew, both inside and outside of the classroom. The discussion is sparked by a chapter written by Sharon...

Learn how middle school Tanakh teachers can help students develop not just their own interpretive skills but also their capacity to collaborate and generate fresh insights together. Educators reveal some of their pedagogical toolkit and discuss the challenges to cultivating literacy in the age of AI. The conversation is rooted in a chapter by Ziva Hassenfeld, "Intercomprehending in Action: Text-Ba...

What makes teachers feel that they belong at a school? Explore the different aspects of community that teachers participate in within a school. Based on Shira Hammerman's chapter "Designing Schools Around Five Dimensions of Community" in the volume Teaching & Learning in Jewish Day Schools , this conversation enables school leaders to share practices, stories and reflections on ways that they...

Featuring Dr. Vardit Ringvald and Sharon Schoenfeld The events of October 7 marked a turning point for Hebrew educators, shifting their role from language instructors to cultural mediators of Israel’s complex realities. This situation has brought us to a critical moment of reconsideration for the profession. Explore the evolving professional identity of Hebrew educators and begin to consider your...

How do rabbinics teachers conceptualize, implicitly or explicitly, the nature of the material that they teach to their students? Starting with a paper titled " Three Conceptions of Rabbinics: Understanding Teachers' Thinking " by Joshua Ladon, a chapter in the recent collection  Teaching & Learning in Jewish Day Schools , this conversation allows seasoned teachers to explore the ways that they...

For decades, Israel education in North American day schools has centered on fostering positive feelings toward Israel. But is “feeling good” about Israel the right goal? Drawing on qualitative research with Jewish day school students, Jonah Hassenfeld challenges the assumption that connection must precede knowledge. Explore why knowledge and connection are inseparable, why complex topics including...

At the Rabbi Jacob Pressman Academy of Temple Beth Am, healthy, supportive relationships aren’t just a priority; they’re the foundation of everything they do. Learn how the school builds a culture where resilient relationships fuel academic success, increase teacher job satisfaction, strengthen parent partnerships, and empower effective leadership. Get a behind-the-scenes look at how Pressman brin...

Explore how 20 Israel educators from Jewish high schools across the denominational spectrum address the "you never told me" phenomenon—graduates’ sense of betrayal when encountering criticisms of Israel not covered in their Jewish day school education. These educators integrate both Zionist and Palestinian narratives to strengthen students’ Jewish identification with Israel and the Jewish people w...

This episode is part our Research Into Practice in Israel Education series and features a conversation with Dr. Keren Fraiman. There is a growing consensus that successful and holistic Israel education demands a sophisticated and nuanced engagement with critical questions within Israel, and in particular, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This feels especially pressing in a post-Oct. 7 world. Desp...

Featuring Dr. Alex Pomson and Dr. Jessie Kalbfeld Rosov Consulting visited Har Herzl several times during the summer of 2024 to observe North American teen programs in Israel as part of ongoing work with RootOne, an organization founded to increase the number of Jewish teens travelling to Israel each summer. This session shares the findings of their observations at Har Herzl and explores powerful...

After receiving a grant for professional development, Sulam teachers were able to deepen their learning and create Presentations of Learning (POL). Learn how the teachers started to take pride in their own learning, while teaching their team new and innovative strategies, encouraging others to deepen their own professional development.  Presenters Lisa Houben is the upper school director at Sulam,...

Part of our Research into Practice series, this episode draws on a qualitative study conducted in six classrooms during the first two and a half months following the attack, explore how educators navigated the tension between preserving childhood innocence and fostering resilience, while also questioning traditional understandings of developmentally appropriate practice. Learn how teachers use dev...

Part of Prizmah's Research Into Practice in Israel Education Series, this episode focuses on new research on the gender confidence gap in Israel education.  While Jewish day schools have succeeded in fostering emotional connections to Israel among their students, new research reveals a troubling pattern: girls are significantly less confident than boys when discussing Israeli politics and history....

Research into Practice in Israel Education Series Learners undergo a series of developmental stages as they move through childhood and early adolescence, in their attempt to make sense of political systems and political issues in Israel and about Israel (in global politics). In this recorded webinar, gain insight into facilitating developmentally sensitive conversations about tricky political ques...

Explore how Hillel Torah North Suburban Day School in Skokie, Illinois, reimagined teacher compensation—from identifying the challenges, to engaging faculty voices, to building a transparent and sustainable system. Hear the lessons learned, the questions asked, and the insights generated. This story can help guide other schools on a similar path. With special guests Rabbi Menachem Linzer, Dov Shan...

School heads need to manage, decide upon and negotiate difficult challenges every day. This episode gives listeners a window upon the ways that three heads would think about and handle challenges that may arise with various stakeholders. Hear them discuss and probe several cases drawn up by Rabbi Dr. Barry Kislowicz, who moderated the conversation with special guests Ginny Galili, Stephanie Ives,...

With a "Culture of Belonging" microgrant from Prizmah, the Seattle Jewish Community School launched a Seattle Sephardic Heritage Initiative in the fall of 2023, in partnership with the Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle.  At its inception, this program aimed to introduce 5th graders from both schools to the distinctive Sephardic roots of Seattle's Jewish community and to the ongoing influen...

Rabbi Dena Glasgow is the Director of Jewish Education at Gann Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she is responsible for both the Jewish Studies Department and the Hebrew Department. She is also part of the instructional leadership team. Sheri Gross is the Director of Arts, Culture, and Creative Programming at Gross Schechter Day School in Cleveland, and the director of Testimony Theater--a...

Prizmah's Director of Knowledge, Research, and Data Odelia Epstein discusses three timely studies transforming how we understand Jewish day school education today: • An early preview of findings from the first full census of Jewish day schools since 2018-19, revealing Prizmah network schools trends in enrollment. • A study showing that new families post-October 7 are turning to Jewish day schools....

Tune in to this Prizmah Podcast Live with The Epstein School in Atlanta's Idit Bendavid and David Welsher to hear how the school built its own Hebrew program—one that puts students at the heart of the learning process. Explore the shift from a rigid curriculum to a student-centered, proficiency-based approach that prioritizes real-world communication. From the perspectives of students, teachers, p...

How do you help your school's lay leaders become knowledgeable about your school, obtain the skills they need, and gain inspiration to step up their game? Avery Joel of the Fuchs Mizrachi School describes a cohort program they developed to accomplish precisely that. This Podcast Live episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the Prizmah Conference in Boston on February 3, 2025.   Rabbi D...

What would happen if schools thought of play as not just some fun release that takes place outside of the "serious" work, but as integral to the task of education? Learn what play is and why it's so important, and explore the different ways that our schools incorporate play into different aspects of the student day. The conversation is inspired by the recent book A Moral Case for Play in K-12 Scho...

AI may be the greatest thing to happen to Jewish education since unicode. And it may even be bigger than that. AI is still in its infancy, and it's already allowing teachers to do so much. Join this podcast to dive into how AI can help with note-taking, studying, essay writing, and more – and why that's a good thing. We talk about how it can help teachers present information in more exciting ways....

This podcast, based on the volume  Teaching Israel: Studies of Pedagogy from the Field , edited by Sivan Zakai and Matt Reingold, focuses on Israel teachers in the classroom. Who teaches our students about Israel, and in what contexts? How do Israel educators think about their role--as an "explorer" or "exemplar"? What happens when a "micromoment" arises, when a student struggles to understand or...

Often, Jewish schools operate in isolation; "teamwork" may mean partnership among the team of administrators, or the head of school with the board. A new initiative in Boston, Stronger Together, aims to foster a culture of collaboration among the city's 14 day schools and yeshivas to explore opportunities for shared success. Explore how the project came about, how it functions, what it has accompl...