Summer is a strange time to start talking about Jewish teen education again.  The fact is that a significant number of Boston’s Jewish teens are at camp, in Israel, working, at the Cape for the summer, or just sleeping and texting most of the day.

If that is indeed the case, then it’s a good thing I’m at work this week, along with the rest of the Prozdor team, processing registrations, doing faculty contracts, and planning for 2011-12.

Because it’s going to be a great year.

It was with a heavy heart and tears in our eyes that we bade farewell to Prozdor’s former director, Margie Berkowitz, last month, bringing an end to her spectacularly successful 12-year term as the visionary leader and heart of Prozdor.  But it is with clear purpose and great energy that we set a new course and an exciting new agenda for Prozdor moving forward, and that journey has already begun. 

With the Hebrew College campus as our home for both Prozdor and Makor for 2011-12, multiple initiatives are taking shape and progressing already.  Allow me to share just a few with you:

Using the Schoology platform for online learning, we plan to launch pilot programs, both nationally and internationally, to bring Prozdor to a broader audience.

We are beginning to explore the potential of Prozdor classes being formally accredited for both high school and college credit and hope to offer a more academically-rigorous track of courses for students who are willing to make the extra effort. 

The second year of the Pirke Dorot partnership with the Reali School in Haifa in the middle of its curricular development.  The collaborative learning will feature explorations of both American Jewish history and Israeli history in the decades since Israel’s independence. The travel pieces will feature our second ninth grade trip to Israel in April 2012 and the Reali tenth grade visit to Boston over the December vacation this winter.

This year’s new volunteer advisory board and our commitment to spreading the message and the story of Prozdor will facilitate our sharing with Jewish Boston, and, in fact, the world of Jewish Education, the great work that happens in our classrooms.

Prozdor will be working with Hebrew at the Center to develop a new Hebrew language curriculum.

It’s an exciting time for Prozdor as we head boldly towards the future.  I look forward to your participation, feedback, and assistance as we enter a new chapter in Prozdor’s history together.  And if, perchance, your registration materials haven’t been returned to us yet, I can assure you that we will happily take them back at any time!

For more information about Prozdor please visit www.prozdor.org or contact me directly at 617-559-8802, or dbrosgol@prozdor.org.

 

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