Great teachers help nurture great students. Research shows that an inspiring and informed teacher is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement. For teachers and school leaders to be as effective as possible, they must continually expand their knowledge and skills to implement the best educational practices. Ongoing professional development keeps
I first learned about Twitter about three years ago while attending YouthCon, an educators' convention in New York, from Rabbi Dov Emerson (@dovemerson), now the Head of School in YULA (@yulaboys). To this day I owe him thanks for opening my eyes to the world of Twitter and EdTech in the classroom. Since then, it has become my passion. I'd like to share with you a
I have had the pleasure of teaching Gemara in a yeshiva high school for the past ten years. Each year, I struggle to ensure that I teach my students the depth of each topic, focus on helping them develop textual skills, as well as cover ground. These are not easily achievable goals. I find myself reflecting in the last third of each year, trying to determine if I have reached my goals. Over time
Where was Hashem?! How did He let it happen?! Am I supposed to believe that Hashem is merciful and kind?! I want to believe and trust in Hashem, but I am so confused? Having, Baruch Hashem, been involved in Jewish Education for many years, questions from students regarding emunah and bitachon are not new to me. Nevertheless, with the recent terrible tragedies in Eretz
I would like to introduce the readers of NLEResources.com to Tefilla-Toons, an exciting new tefilla curriculum. Tefilla-Toons is a series of cartoon animations that teach each of the birchos hashachar and basic foundations of emunah, such as: how Hashem loves each and every one of us, our Torah learning is important to Hashem and many more.
My youngest child has begun second grade (where did the time go?), and while that may not seem like the most momentous change that is happening in my house this school year - our oldest has headed to high school, after all - in some ways this is a game-changing moment that is about to take place. Why? What earth-shattering learning happens in second grade that is more important than that which is learned in 6th or
With the Book of Bereishit upon us, I want to share with you a website called: ClassTools. Classtools has a bunch of games that you can create for your classes to provide a unique type of assignment. When I first searched through the website, three jumped out at me. Twister (a mock Twitter account), SMS (a mock text message exchange), and Fakebook (a mock Facebook account).
I first fell in love with Gemara Berura a dozen years ago. I had just finished my most ambitious project-based learning assignment I had ever attempted with my 9th grade class. We designed a “How To Learn Gemara” website. In this project, my students culminated a year of a careful skills-based approach to learning Gemara by summarizing the various Sugiyot they had learned complete with keywords and color coding. They