by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

September 4, 2008

Two months after returning from Israel, teachers from Newark Academy are contemplating how to apply the lessons they learned to courses ranging from English literature to pre-calculus.

And as the teachers consider changes to their curricula, school administrators are working on details of an exchange program that will welcome a delegation of teens from MetroWest High School in Ra’anana later this month (see sidebar) and send Newark Academy students to Israel sometime later in the school year.

“Initially some Newark Academy students will visit Israel for a three-week program,” said Sam Goldfischer, director of business and finance and instructor of Holocaust studies at the school. “We are looking for multicultural experiences in Israel because we are a multicultural school,” he said. “We would like students to live with families and stay for three weeks.”

Although neither Arabic nor Hebrew is taught at Newark Academy, students who intend to take part in the study program in Israel would be encouraged to learn those languages, said Goldfischer.

The academy already has exchange and study-abroad programs with Spain, China, Italy, and France. “It’s the way the world is going, and we want to be out in front,” said Goldfischer.

“We could see some of our seniors here going to Israel and apprenticing as teachers, being teachers’ helpers, in any of the schools we made contact with,” said English instructor Von Rollenhagen.

Joining them around a conference table on Aug. 27 at the school’s Livingston campus were three more of the 11 faculty members who traveled to Israel from June 12 to 22.

As they reminisced about their journey, humanities instructor Amy Schottland said she was especially struck by the Yad B’Yad School in the Galilee, where Jewish and Arab students take courses in both Hebrew and Arabic.

“They make an incredible effort to integrate curriculum and culture to accommodate both communities. It is a unique school,” she said.

“We sat in class together and what was so remarkable to me was that these 10- and 11-year-old kids could follow both languages generally, and some also spoke English,” said Rollenhagen. “It was very impressive.”

At MetroWest High School in Ra’anana — a partner community of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ — the visiting teachers were shown around what math teacher Derek Kanarek called “a beautiful high school with an incredible campus. Their arts facility was very impressive. The teachers welcomed us so beautifully.”

The visitors observed that the school, heavily supported by donations from UJC MetroWest, was both similar to and different from their own private school campus.

“There was a lot more specialization among the students at MetroWest High,” Rollenhagen said. “By the time they hit 11th and 12th grades, they pretty much choose three or four disciplines.” Essentially, students at MetroWest High School select their majors before they graduate, he noted.

‘Been there, seen this’

Some 20 percent of Newark Academy’s 550 students are Jews.

English teacher Nicole Champagne, who is not Jewish, said, “The trip was instrumental in helping me comprehend the student body I work with every day in terms of customs and belief systems,” she said. “As an English teacher I have had a heavy dose of American lit and American history, British lit and British history. But when I am looking to incorporate new texts from other parts of the world, this trip helped me to understand the Middle East conflict. It made me more comfortable in choosing new literature to bring into the curriculum.

“I can say, ‘I’ve been there. I’ve seen this.’”

“I don’t know where I’m going to go with the literature,” Rollenhagen said. “Personally, the excitement of going on the trip led me to read tremendous amounts about history and come to an understanding about a part of the world I had not truly understood.”

Schottland said she plans to devote a portion of the first semester of the new academic year to studying Jerusalem “as a great crossroads of the world from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic perspectives. I want to incorporate lessons about the sacred spaces — the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock, Al-Aqsa mosque, and, of course, the Via Dolorosa and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,” she said. “To hear the Muslim call to worship, to see the Israeli flag, and to know that on Sunday there is going to be Christian worship — the confluence of great religions is just in your face.”

“As much as I can, I try to bring the outside world into the math classroom,” said Kanarek, who is also faculty adviser to the students’ Model United Nations Club. “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is always a topic of discussion, and now I have a much more nuanced understanding, and I’ll be able to help the kids see all sides,” an aim that he said he will further by inviting “outside experts to visit the academy and represent different views.”

Also on the visit to Israel were teachers Lillesol Kane, Lydia Masterson, and Blackie Parlin (humanities); Joe Ball (English); Luis Gomez (Spanish); and teacher Scott Jacoby (arts).

Many of the teachers’ strongest impressions of Israel were formed outside of the classrooms they observed.

“I was truly impressed by the sustainability in Israel,” said Goldfischer, citing as an example the energy-saving escalators in Ben-Gurion Airport that slow down when no one is standing on them.

“In Tel Aviv, every roof has solar panels,” he said. “There are cages on the street where people recycle cans and bottles. It seems to be a way of life, and we are going to incorporate that into our curriculum as well.”

“We are still wrestling with the experience,” said Rollenhagen. “The beauty of this trip was we all came with different levels of understanding, different faiths, different goals for what we would bring back to our classrooms. Every night we would get together after a long day and discuss what we felt and heard. We weren’t always in agreement about the different angles, but we sat down every night to discuss these things, and we are still doing it.”

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