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The reopening is near for Chicago Jewish day schools, extracurricular systems, and public school Hebrew language departments.
This means designing plans that meet parental protection expectations, local fitness regulations, and instructor protection needs, while providing quality education.
The result, so far, is a varied picture of reopening plans, adding an increase in Jewish school enrollment and online learning.
Lori Sagarin, director of congregational learning at the Beth Israel Temple in Skokie, has reveled first-hand in this dynamic. His devoted public post-school schooling program, or Hebrew school, had originally planned to reopen for on-site learning, partly based on the effects of a parent survey. This before the number of coronavirus cases in your domain began to increase.
After consulting with other educators and Skokie’s Ministry of Health on the change in statistics, Sagarin’s team will continue with virtual learning.
Gary Weisserman, director of the Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Jewish School, is his school’s return to face-to-face learning for safety.
“We have a fair plan and we recognize that the landscape is very fluid,” he said.
Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Jewish School, a non-denominational school that caters to students from kindergarten through eighth grade, opened a new and more spacious construction last year that was expected to alienate students. The school is about to open its doors for in-person learning on August 31, but Weisserman said it “intends to replace it at any time.”
Image from Ida Crown Jewish Academy
Ida Crown Jewish Academy, Chicago
Zell, along with all Jewish schools contemplating reopening, will take security measures that come with the use of a face mask, students will learn in separate equipment or “capsules” and reduce the congestion of the aisles. Services for academics receiving additional education will continue, with plans in position to ensure that those facilities continue if learning returns to the virtual model.
At Ida Crown Academy, Chicago’s only fashionable Orthodox Jewish school, educators have made plans to reopen with the same caution that resumes face-to-face learning. Students have the opportunity to continue participating in a virtual capacity. Each elegance will convey online classes and teachers will provide students from the house.
On campus, Ida Crown’s team of educators has followed security measures similar to Zell’s. At the same time, Rabbi Leonard Matanky, the school’s principal, points out that the student coverage component means staying aware of the realistic choice for a student to contract COVID-19 and having a transparent plan on how to rotate if this happens.
Even educators ahead of the reopening in the fall say virtual learning last spring had unforeseen benefits.
Israeli singer Ishai Ribo gave a virtual concert to Ida Crown students. Zoom allowed the brothers and Bernard Zell Anshe Emet to gather for Shabbat preparation activities.
iCenter, a national middle school in Israel in the Chicago suburbs, has noticed greater use of its extensive library of online resources, adding large-scale and expertly produced audiovisual media, with academics engaging in topics such as the diversity of food cultures, music styles, and geographic ecosystems.
Image via JCC Chicago
Distance markers on the day of the opening of JCC Chicago
The extracurricular Hebrew systems affiliated with synagogues will remain largely virtual. These systems face their own challenges, given their two- or three-day-a-week format that complements the training of a public school.
“We’re in a position at the moment on the priority list, and when young people sit on Zoom screens all day, even more,” Said Sagarin of Temple Beth Israel.
He found that one solution is to provide more resources to arouse students’ interest in this virtual learning period. Next fall, this will come with a collaboration with Theatre Dybukk, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that specializes in multidisciplinary educational workshops that explore Judaism through storytelling and the arts. Temple Beth Israel staff also spent their summer vacation receiving special education on the most productive practices of virtual learning.
Mandy Herlich, former head of apprenticeship at Beth El Temple in Northbrook, expressed her pride in her students’ willingness this spring to remain engaged despite what she calls her “zoom fatigue.” As she moves toward her role as headmistress of the Emanuel Congregation’s devoted school in Chicago, Herlich plans to bring her concepts about what works in online learning, but adds that Sunday categories on the site can return next spring.
Ensuring the continuity of schooling of the first years of training has presented the most demanding situations for both schools and parents of young people trapped at home during months of confinement. For some, the return to school on site is welcome.
Addie Goodman, executive director of JCC Chicago, points out that the Chicago Jewish Federation has been instrumental in investing and purchasing non-public protective devices (PPE) for her six hundred academics from the first years of seven-site training. Her EPI plan includes offering students various types of masks, face protectors, and transparent masks that help showcase teachers’ facial expressions.
Even two-year-old scholars voluntarily respect the wearing of face masks, said Etti Dolgin, director of education for the early years of training at The Hebrew Immersion Gan Gani/Moadon Kol Chadash.
Dolgin’s team worked together for months to expand a re-opening plan that would keep students at bay safely and sustainably while maintaining a unified school atmosphere.
Congratulating his staff, Dolgin said, “From now on, you will never tell me those words again.”
In the Chicago area, enrollment in Jewish schools, Hebrew categories in public schools, and devoted extracurricular systems have expanded in recent years. But when the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, many educators wondered if overworked parents and academics would simply retire.
To his surprise, it has happened.
Following Chicago Public School Systems’ recent announcement that their initial hybrid plans would be moved to a virtual-only plan, some public school academics are enrolling for the first time in Jewish schools at schools such as Solomon Schecter and Chicago Jewish Day School.
The number of academics from the best schools who choose to examine Hebrew as a foreign language has increased so much in recent years that school systems, such as the Deerfield School System, Illinois, are also beginning to publish an offer in Hebrew.
“Enrollments for Jewish and Hebrew learning are increasing in public and personal schools,” said Binnie Swislow, director of the Public High School Hebrew Teachers Network at iCenter for Israel Education in Chicago, “and this is declining as we speak.
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