This past week, I had the opportunity to go to New York and look at graduate schools. I am interested in pursuing a masters degree in Jewish education. My eventual hope is to become a religious school director in a synagogue setting, responsible for hiring and training teachers, evaluating and modifying the school curriculum, creating end executing family education programs, working with synagogue professionals and congregants on behalf of the religious school. 

The school I looked at was Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. The three year masters in Jewish Education program has students spend the fist year in Israel and the next two years at the New York campus. Students learn Hebrew, Jewish history, pedagogy, Jewish philosophies, and are given the opportunity to work in the community with a mentorship program.  Not only do they learn in the classroom, but they are applying what they learn in a real-life situation. 

The open house I went to was a wonderful experience. The directors of the rabbinical, cantorial and education programs came to meet with prospective students. Being the only person interested in education, I got a chance to have a one on one conversation with the director of the New York School of Education. It was a really nice chat. I got the message that this school is really about practicing what they preach. The teachers are all involved in program where they are moving the field of Jewish education forward, trying new techniques and programs and really leading the field to new places. After our conversation, the whole school, students and faculty, came together for Thursday morning services. Students led t'fillah (prayers). And a fourth year rabbinical student gave a really lovely sermon about the inclination in us all to do good and evil. After services, the whole school came together for a bagel lunch and a discussion--students and teachers asked the rabbinical student who presented the sermon questions about his sermon, commented on what they enjoyed, and critiqued what they felt was missing. It was a really interesting conversation, and I would have been intimidated if I were the rabbinical student in the hot seat. After lunch, I had the opportunity to attend a survey of Jewish history course (part 1). They had a lively conversation about sects in Judaism and the Karatites. Following class, the prospective students attended a student panel where they got to ask current students  the questions they'd been waiting to ask. 

It was a really wonderful day and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to attend the open house. Now I just have to work on getting in!! More updates to come as I work through the application process :) 

For my English 202H class, we had to pick a topic about literacy and write an annotated bibliography on that topic. My group picked gender and literacy, focusing on women's access to education around the world. The paper is written and our presentation is done. And then thishappens. A 14 year-old girl was shot and almost killed because she was going to school. As the article indicates, her attackers thought she was too Western. Malala Yousafzai, at 14, has become an activist for women's education to the point where the Taliban is threatened by her. If she survived this attack, a spokesperson for the Taliban said they would attack her again, according to the NY Times article. She was awarded a national award for peace in 2011, at 14. I'm very impressed that such a young girl has the courage to stand up for her rights, in a country like Pakistan where the Taliban rules. While killing a woman is considered sinful in Islam, according to the article, special exception was made for Malala because of her public persona. She kept a blog for the BBC about going to school as a girl in Pakistan, where the girls would hide their uniforms and books in their bags and under their clothes so that they wouldn't be recognized as school girls. She wants a career in politics, to fix the situation in all of Pakistan and to be one of the good leaders that Pakistan needs to become one of the best countries in the world, according to Malala. Malala is an inspiration--standing up for what she believes in and working to make life better not only for herself, but for future generations as well. I hope that she gets the necessary medical attention and recovers fully from this horrible attack. 

Working on group projects is never a fun situation. Especially when the groups are small. In some situations, everyone is willing to put in their share of the work and truly make it a group project. However, the majority of the time, there is that one kid who brings down the whole group. Doesn't do their work, or doesn't do their work on time. This makes that much more work for the rest of the group who not only have to do their own share, but they also have to pick up what their group member left behind. 

This is happening to me in my English class this semester. The teacher split the class into two sets of groups. One group was to lead a discussion based on the previous night's reading. The other was to work collaboratively on a annotated bibliography. For the discussion lead, my group had two members: my self and another student, whom I'll call Don. In order to successfully accomplish the discussion activity, the group leading had to read the selection early and generate a list of 5-7 questions to be distributed to the class 24 hours prior to meeting. Two days before the discussion, I sent Don my list of questions and asked him to add his and email it to the class 24 hours before class. When I hadn't heard from him 20 minutes before the deadline, I finished the set of questions and sent the email myself. Three hours after the deadline, I hear that he is still working on the reading and is a bit behind. Will he finish the reading before class? I wondered. The teacher commented on how good our questions were and was excited for us to lead the discussion the following day. In class, Don did a good job of asking questions and calling on students that hadn't spoken much. We both contributed equally to the leading part of the discussion lead. My question is this: do I tell my teacher that Don wasn't prepared before class to write any of the questions? Does that make me a tattle-tale? A good group member? 

The second group was working together on the annotated bibliography. We decided as a group to work on the topic of gender and literacy around the world, each of the three of us taking a different region to research. We each had to generate five annotations and collaborate so that they sounded as if written by a single person. In addition, we had to put together a presentation for the class to show them what we researched. My two group members I'll call Leigh and John. Leigh was working on a Asia as her region and John was focused on Africa while I looked at the Middle East. We decided that the Sunday before the assignment was due, we should all post our annotations on the GoogleDoc and meet to revise them together. Leigh and I had all of our annotations completed at this point; John barely had two done. After the meeting, we said our edits and revisions needed to be completed by Tuesday night so that someone could upload them to the folder before the deadline. By Wednesday evening, John still had not completed his part of the presentation while Leigh and I had worked on editing the annotations and compiling the PowerPoint. The issue here is that we are getting one grade for the whole group. If John doesn't pull his weight, my grade goes down. To what extent do I do his work? I would be working toward my own grade, yet he would not be contributing to the group project? 

I'm curious to know what you would do in these situations. 

In Steve's blog this week, he commented on the Etiquette Dinner that the sophomore class as the opportunity to attend early in the semester. He remarks that these customs and "rules" may inhibit a person from actually enjoying their food. And to an extent, I would agree. If you are so worried that you are eating at a pace slower than your host, you may scarf down your food without actually enjoying it, and that wouldn't be good for anyone. And while knowing which direction to pass the bread will not make or break your dining experience, learning the proper way to eat bread and butter or how to handle your napkin during a meal can make people feel more comfortable at a formal dinner. It made dinners on the field trips less intimidating, our table mates could comment on our etiquette at the table and it made everyone feel more at ease. I greatly enjoyed the etiquette dinner and wish the seniors could have a second go round!
Felix spent his blog commenting on the effects of the first Presidential debate on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, I was unable to watch the debate as a meeting ran until 10pm that evening. However, the comments I heard all echoed what Felix discussed. Romney seemed more put together for this debate and Obama was just kind of there. Does your eagerness to participate in a debate make you a better qualified candidate? When Romney's facts about healthcare get corrected by his own staff, it makes me questions what he's actually telling his constituency (See article from NPRhere). There was nothing incredibly remarkable about this debate. I wonder if anything more will come from the others later this month. I thought this cartoon did a nice job of summarizing what I heard from the debate: 
http://albany2cents.com/wp-content/plugins/sam-images/lat-na-tt-romneys-debate-20121004-001.jpeg