JEA conference inspires teachers at start of new school year

by Ron Kaplan
NJJN Staff Writer

In an age in which students in afternoon religious and day schools face extracurricular overload and ennui, Suzi Adelson Wainer challenged educators to keep their charges engaged by “taking a step outside your comfort zone and…applying new methods to your well-honed craft.”

Wainer was the coordinator of the 2005 Teacher Learning Conference, held Aug. 30 under the auspices of the Jewish Education Association of MetroWest, which drew more than 150 teachers to the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany.

Wainer, who also serves as coordinator of JEA’s Project MOREH, a year-long program of intensive training and mentoring for novice teachers, said the conference served as a reminder that a new school year was on the horizon. “We hope you will be better prepared to teach any subject because you’ll know about [these different methods],” she told the audience.

Roles would be reversed at the conference, Wainer warned. Teachers would be students for a day. “We’re going to teach you the different modalities that you need in order to be able to reach all of your students.”

Following the opening remarks, teachers split into groups designed for specific grades — primary, elementary, and middle school — and led by “master teachers.” They included Debbie Berger from Temple Sha’arey Shalom, Springfield; Treasure Cohen, former director of family and community education at JEA; Judy Gutin, teachers’ center coordinator of UJA-Federation of Northern New Jersey; Sharon Halper, regional educator for the Union for Reform Judaism in the New York-West Hudson Valley Region; Debra J. Siroka, director of Jewish learning at Temple Beth-El in Hillsborough; and Paula Spack Kessler, from the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union in West Orange.

The sample lessons included an “introduction/motivation/set induction,” used to connect the kids to the day’s lessons, and concluded with a “review and closure,” during which educators evaluated the presentations.

The conference also featured vendors offering the latest educational materials designed to enhance the learning experience, including Merkaz, the community resource center of MetroWest.

Ron Kaplan can be reached at rkaplan@njjewishnews.com.