Teacher Resources

Think about a time when you stepped into a classroom or event or any room full of unfamiliar faces. Daunting, right?

Using creativity, practical tools, and a little prep work, you can help your students and staff break the ice and begin building relationships quickly and successfully.

Relationships lie at the core of successful education, and icebreakers help initiate and grow relationships, according to Batsheva Frankel in The Jewish Educator's Companion: Practical Tools and Inspirational Ideas. Icebreakers accomplish many things — they can create a sense of community, encourage trust, and allow for better bonding experiences.

Frankel includes an entire chapter in 

Teachers form the backbone of Jewish education. 

It's nice to show them gratitude with a gift as the year comes to a close. Here are some of our favorite ideas.

Keeping an eye on the budget? Remember that quantity discounts are available. Log in to your school account to get the best discounts.

Maybe It Happened This Way

The Chicago chapter of the ARJE this year gifted its members this midrashic approach to Bible, combining storytelling with learning.

Maybe It Happened This Way: Bible

In Teach Them Diligently, Bonnie K. Stevens writes how the joyfulness and energy of Purim celebrations provide educators with opportunties to reflect on the role arts can play in Jewish education. 

Yom HaShoah begins this year on April 17. 

Each passing year brings on a greater urgency to recall this dark time in our history. With fewer living witnesses able to tell their stories firsthand, we need a new way to fulfill the responsibility that Holocaust survivors have entrusted to us - to remember, to tell the story, and to act. 

Plan now using a powerful new approach.

Light from the Darkness: A Ritual for Holocaust Remembrance is a 45-minute, structured seder-like experience that helps the next generations remember and honor the Holocaust. It can be done either in-person or virtually. And it is deeply moving.

“It’s out

For all of us, the past few pandemic years have been scary and disorienting. For teens in a hunkered-down society, it’s also meant losing opportunities to develop independence.  

“What our teens need in this moment is support for finding their voice and finding their autonomy. Then we’ll slowly see the pain and fear untangle,” says Michelle Shapiro-Abraham, an award-winning teen educator and director of strategic innovation and youth programs at the Union for Reform Judaism. "We need to showing them that they can claim their power.”

Dreaming Bigger: Jewish Leadership for Teens by

For all of us, the past few pandemic years have been scary and disorienting. For teens in a hunkered-down society, it’s also meant losing opportunities to develop independence.  

“What our teens need in this moment is support for finding their voice and finding their autonomy. Then we’ll slowly see the pain and fear untangle,” says Michelle Shapiro-Abraham, an award-winning teen educator and director of strategic innovation and youth programs at the Union for Reform Judaism. 

She points to two new resources that are committed to lifting up teen voices and showing them that they can “claim their power.”

It's a new school year, and a new season of staff development opportunities.

Consider the following:

• What changes do you want to bring to your setting?
• How will you know whether your staff has the skills to actually do things differently?
• How will you help them identify and develop the new skills they might need?

If we want to teach differently, we need to make sure we and our staff have a way to identify, articulate, and then develop the new skills that will help everyone grow professionally and become reflective practitioners.

Rubrics are one tool to help us do that. Rubrics can articulate the specific skills that help teachers excel in areas such as content knowledge, classroom management, inclusive focus, family communication, work with madrichim, community building, and collaboration with colleagues. A rubric not only sets out standards to assess progress, it also