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ABOUT
JECEI
The CHALLENGE and the OPPORTUNITY
Early childhood education represents a unique opportunity to engage both young children and their parents in a rich and meaningful Jewish communal life. The Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative (JECEI) transforms preschools into Jewish early childhood centers that ignite a desire and commitment in families to continue Jewish learning and living beyond their preschool experience and inspires increasing numbers of new families to enroll in Jewish early childhood centers of the highest quality.
At this stage of their lives, parents of young children are open to considering questions of identity and connection for themselves and their children. The raising of young children offers Jewish communities an unrivaled opportunity to engage young families and deepen their Jewish journeys.
The early years of a child’s life have a substantial impact on brain development, social-emotional intelligence and personal identity. The foundations for future learning, personal relationships and communal belonging are laid down in those early childhood experiences. Thus, parents are seeking the best educational environments available for their children, and the Jewish community needs to be able to offer them excellence.
A NEW APPROACH
In meeting this challenge, the Jewish preschool will need to change and grow. It will need to offer children the highest quality education. It will also need to become a center of Jewish life based on learning for the whole family and a community of support and celebration steeped in authentic Jewish values.
To achieve this, we require a new approach to Jewish education that will embody the best practices in early childhood and adult education.
JECEI has been creating living models of this new approach offering a new synergy of authentic and relevant Jewish values with the best in progressive education, as embodied particularly in the world renowned schools of Reggio Emilia in Italy.
JECEI has established a set of core Jewish values and ideas that guide our work in constructing Jewish early childhood centers. Understood as “lenses,” they enable us to see our world more clearly and in a particularly focused way. Through study and discussion of these lenses, teachers and parents create a shared vision and sense of belonging.
JECEI places unparalleled emphasis on the importance of serious Jewish inquiry and dialogue on the part of the entire family in the community of the early childhood center. A central goal is to significantly upgrade the Jewish experience and commitment of families who enroll in an early childhood center. Independent of family background, immersion in Jewish values, community and life will transform the face of families with whom we are involved.
The philosophy of the early childhood centers of Reggio Emilia harmonizes powerfully with the core values and ideas of Judaism. For instance, the schools of Reggio Emilia are grounded in a deep respect for the amazing potential and competency of children. Teaching and learning in Reggio Emilia emerges from an intensely collaborative partnership among teachers, children, and parents leading to the highest educational quality.
This synergy of Jewish values and constructivist education can be viewed in the seven JECEI model centers that are the fruit of three years of intensive labor. JECEI’s centers are demonstration sites where early childhood directors, teachers, parents, funders and other interested stakeholders in the Jewish community can learn from this new, dynamic approach to Jewish early childhood education.
COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS
JECEI is embarking on a new stage in its development by entering into partnerships with Jewish communities to bring this new approach to Jewish early childhood centers across North America. We are seeking out a select group of communities with the vision and commitment to transform early childhood Jewish education and, in so doing, the lives of the next generation of children and their families. Our partnership with the Denver/Boulder Jewish community is already in process. JECEI’s work in the community is two-tiered and will consist of intensive work with individual schools as well as building community capacity by working with all early childhood centers in a community.
In order to ensure that aspects of the JECEI-community partnership are open to all schools, there will also be a parallel process which will include workshops and seminars led by the JECEI coaches, staff and consultants in consultation with the community’s early childhood education specialist. The process serves not only to inform the community about the work that is happening in the first cohort of schools but helps them to grow as they become ready for more intense work themselves.
We propose a partnership between JECEI and key stakeholders in the community including local funders, federations and central agencies. Through this partnership, JECEI will bring its tremendous expertise and knowledge to local communities.
HOW JECEI WORKS
JECEI works with selected early childhood centers through a four year school-wide change process that employs several, mutually supportive strategies:
- JECEI staff works directly with the school leadership and parents to enhance parent involvement and learning.
- JECEI provides mentors to the leadership teams from each center to cultivate their leadership skills to significantly improve teaching and learning.
- JECEI pairs each center with a coach who works directly with the teachers to transform their educational practices.
- JECEI brings the director and lead teacher(s) of selected centers together with those from other partner communities to create a unique national community of practice.
- JECEI provides grants to each selected center to facilitate this work.
- JECEI represents a distinctive brand, which will be marketed nationally to Jewish parents of young children in the mainstream media. Selected centers that embrace the JECEI approach can employ this brand alongside their own center’s unique identity in marketing to new families.
- JECEI conducts ongoing evaluation of its work and learns from continual, critical reflection on our practice.
JECEI’s efforts are guided and supported by an elite group of professional coaches, consultants and academics who have brought and will continue to bring their years of experience and knowledge – from Jewish education, general education and, in particular, the world renowned schools of Reggio Emilia – to our work in building Jewish family life centers of excellence.
JECEI’s work over the last three years to develop a unique model of Jewish family life education that offers unsurpassed excellence and a supportive community for both children and parents has been funded by a group of national partners. Their continued support maintains JECEI’s infrastructure and continued learning and growth. JECEI’s partners are the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Helen Bader Foundation, the Holly and Sam Merrin Foundation, the Schultz Family Foundation, the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Francisco, and the Samuel Bronfman Foundation.
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