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Preschool Trends

Three trends in Jewish preschools

By Gila Heller

The world of education is constantly evolving to meet the needs of today’s children. As the 2009-2010 school year is about to get under way, iNSIDER decided to speak with educators at Baltimore’s Jewish preschools to learn what’s new in the way of education.

Child-Directed Curricula

For years, preschool teachers have employed a one-size-fits-all philosophy with regard to curriculum and teaching style. At the age of three, they reasoned, children all had the same needs and could be served in the same ways.

As a result, teachers would create lesson plans on a range of topics, such as colors and numbers, and teach all youngsters in the same manner.

Today, say professionals, the field of early childhood education is expanding to allow room for individuality at a young age. This means that teachers often stray from these set lesson plans and curricula to seize “teachable moments” when children express interest in particular areas.

Melanie Smith, a teacher at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation’s E.B. Hirsh Early Childhood Center, recalls a winter day when her young charges’ excitement over the snow outside overruled the Hanukkah-themed activities she had planned.

“We bundled up and ran outside to experience the snow firsthand,” she says. “We filled a jar with snow and later learned that a full jar of snow will melt into only half a jar of water. We read about snow and made pictures of snow and talked about all of the fun things we like to do in the snow. Hanukkah lasts eight days, but the chance to capitalize on the children’s heightened interest in the topic of snow was immediate and could not be passed up.”

Children don’t always share the same interests, Renee Stadd, director of Beth Tfiloh Preschool, notes. While snow is universally fascinating to young children, most traditional classroom activities are not, and it takes careful planning to allow the children’s personalities to shine through in a classroom setting.

“We don’t do group art projects anymore,” she says. “They don’t all need to do the same thing at the same time.”

Splitting children up into small groups can be logistically tricky, but Stadd has found ways to work around it. In a classroom of 10-15 children and two teachers, she says, one teacher will take three children aside to work on a project while the other teacher instructs the rest.

“I certainly have to have a plan each week of what I’m going to do,” says Alison Berlin, a preschool teacher at Baltimore Hebrew, “but there are those spontaneous teaching moments that do occur, and that’s great. I once had a child ask me, ‘Who took a bite and ate half the moon? Where’d the moon go?’ and it was a great opportunity to explain [about the lunar cycle]. Children are all so creative and curious, and sometimes you just have to go with the flow.”

“While the teacher prepares lesson plans that are specific to the units he/she would like to teach,” she says, “it is the interests of the children that can take any discussion to new heights. Just picture a group of children building a beautiful classroom sukkah. As the teacher encourages them to talk about how the sukkah is constructed, one of the children mentions that a house is being built on his block. An animated discussion about different houses ensues and the activities take off from there.

Often, parents who are accustomed to more traditional methods of learning need to be educated themselves about the value of this philosophy.

“Training the parents on this educational philosophy is very important, because otherwise, their expectations don’t match our expectations. Initially, it can be hard for a parent to not necessarily have a set thematic curriculum, because that was a very common practice in early childhood. Anytime you have a change like that, it takes time for that change to occur,” says Michelle Gold, director of the Goldsmith Early Childhood Education Center at Chizuk Amuno Congregation.

“I don’t think parents are necessarily aware of what we’re doing,” adds Stadd. “Parents are most likely to walk in while they’re taking a tour and ask, ‘What’s your curriculum?’ That’s a typical question and we have to take the answer beyond shapes and colors and numbers, and explain to them what learning at this stage of their child’s life is all about and how children do it best.”

So far, DJ Schneider-Jensen, director of Early Childhood Services for the Center for Jewish Education, says, introducing parents to this new style of learning has met with success.

“Parents are beginning to understand that a child fares better in an environment that is hands-on, interactive and engaging, rather than teacher-directed and product-oriented,” she says.

Greater Independence for Children

“We’re working on independence and directed self-motivation,” says Ellen Marks, director of the infant-toddler program at Beth El Congregation’s Pauline Mash Early Childhood Education Center and former director of the preschool for the past 19 years. “Recently, we tried an activity where the children mashed up some fruit to make their own fruit pops for snack. They did it themselves and it just worked beautifully. … They’re becoming independent, motivated little people.”

Berlin likes to encourage independence in children as soon as possible. “My technique is letting them independently go around the room,” she says. “It really lets them express who they are and you see the boys gravitate toward the trains, while some of the girls go to the play kitchen or dress-up trunk. I think a classroom should be independent, even with children as young as 18 months.”

“Children are becoming more inquisitive, more apt to look for problems and solve them as opposed to asking their parents to fix things for them,” adds Schneider-Jensen. “Research is suggesting that hands-on learning is the best form of education.”

Preparing to Accommodate Universal Pre-K

As middle-class Marylanders clamor for the state to offer a fully subsidized, universal pre-kindergarten program (UPK) to all families regardless of income, local Jewish preschools worry that they will lose Jewish children to the publicly funded option. President Barack Obama has pledged a $10-billion investment over 10 years to strengthen early childhood education and will competitively award funding to states willing to offer UPK.

A few years ago, Jewish preschools found themselves in the opposite circumstances when a change in state kindergarten legislation led parents to opt for an extra year of preschool.

In 2002, the Maryland Board of Education voted to change the cutoff age for children entering kindergarten. Previously, 4-year-olds could enter kindergarten if they would turn five by December 31. Under the new legislation, phased-in one month at a time over four years, children enrolling in kindergarten were required to turn five by September 1. Parents of Jewish children with fall birthdays increasingly turned to private day schools for the pre-kindergarten year.

“Our Pre-K was actually precipitated by the fact that the public schools changed the date of kindergarten registration,” says Marks. “We created a Pre-K to accommodate these children.”

At the same time, when area public kindergarten programs began offering full-day programs, many Jewish preschool kindergartens found themselves with shrinking enrollment numbers. “We did lose some kindergarten families,” says Schneider-Jenson. “Several schools made an older pre-kindergarten/kindergarten combined class in order to make it feasible for the families who chose to stay at the Jewish preschools.”

“UPK has both negative and positive pieces,” adds Schneider-Jensen. “If we end up with empty classrooms because parents are moving to UPK, the state may pay us to host UPK. There are a lot of questions out there and we’re trying to figure out how this will work.”

However, Schneider-Jenson adds, “since it’s a public system, it would be difficult for us to include the Judaic component, which we’re very reluctant to lose. The UPK program is wonderful for economically disadvantaged families, but we would hate to lose our Jewish families because of it. …This is definitely looming and we will hear more about it over the next year.”