MTEI in Principles in Action: Reimaging Torah School Curriculum

How can supplemental schools revitalize learning while staying spiritually rooted and connected to the community? In 2023, this was the challenge faced by the leadership team at Temple Beth Torah (TBT) a Reform synagogue of 300 families in Ventura, CA.

Serving about 100 children each week, the congregational school sought to strengthen its culture and curriculum following several changes in leadership, disjointed teaching methods, and a general sense of stakeholder dissatisfaction.

To successfully re-engage its community and re-imagine Jewish learning, TBT utilized the Group-Level assessment (GLA) method, supported by faculty at the Mandel Teacher Educator Institute (MTEI). Rooted in a participatory process, GLA involves the use of prompts and questions developed by a stakeholder working group to explore collective values and views within the community – helping define the relationship between Jewish literacy and identity in the Torah school curriculum.

In addition to updating the Torah school curriculum, the GLA method also helped clarify priorities among contentious school stakeholders. It will serve, in the long term, to establish an ongoing dialogue and bring stability to the school’s curricular model. Ensuring that all stakeholder voices and perspectives are captured is central to the GLA method, lending a sense of fairness and inclusiveness to the process that goes a long way in gaining trust and endorsement for the group’s final directions and priorities.

Some of the GLA prompt examples used include:

“What would your dream Torah school look like?”
“In Temple Beth Torah (TBT) School, we should keep doing . . .”
“If I were the teacher, I would teach about . . .,”
“Every student should leave TBT Torah School knowing . . .”

And “What do you think our kids will most remember from TBT TS when they are at college?” (View Appendix 1 for a complete list of GLA prompts).

Ultimately, the team adopted a modified version of the Union for Reform Jews (URJ) Chai curriculum to fit their newly defined goals. The project demonstrated the effectiveness of collaborative research in guiding curriculum reform, balancing the aims of Jewish identity and literacy. Moving forward, TBT plans to continually monitor and adjust the curriculum, with a follow-up GLA scheduled to assess results and make further improvements.

Research Facilitator & Author

Cliff Wilcox is the Director of Education and Operations at Temple Beth Torah in Ventura, CA. He and his wife live in Ventura, just north of Los Angeles. Previously he worked in both higher education and corporate IT. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is an adjunct professor teaching the history of American cultural history and Jewish Studies at Cal State University, Channel Islands, and California Lutheran University. A member of MTEI Cohort 10, he is currently a candidate at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in the executive MA program in Jewish Education.

Click to read the full research summary: Reimagining Torah School Curriculum
Reimagining Torah School Curriculum by Cliff Wilcox, PhD