The Innovative School of Temple Beth Sholom is a Reggio inspired Jewish community dedicated to joyful learning
Dear Families,
The Innovative School of Temple Beth Sholom is inspired by the Reggio Approach, which is a relationship-centered environment that cultivates engagement, which we know leads to both stronger retention of information, and a more joyful environment. Learners acquire 21st century skills through “real world” experiences including agency, creativity, empathy, collaboration, executive functioning, leadership, and sustained focus. This allows learners to engage with the world around them and transform their communities.
Our intimate class sizes mean that children are known, and teachers can develop strong relationships with learners and personalize learning so that learners can thrive at their own pace and teachers can maximize learner strengths. The excellent teacher ratio allows teachers to provide challenge or support based on each learner’s profile, as well as create robust social-emotional guidance. Learners know themselves, their strengths and interests and are able to make informed choices about the next step in their education. Our Jewish roots ground us and influence how we live daily; supporting our decision making, approaches and relationships.
We are privileged to watch our school grow to a thriving infant through fifth grade educational venue of excellence which focuses on high level teaching and learning with joy. Together with our families, we have co-constructed the vision, mission, and guiding principles that create the conditions to put our learners at the center of their education. Our learners know who they are, thrive in community and actively engage in the world as their best selves.
In our Infant/Toddler and Foundation Levels, our observations guide us to support our learners’ intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual, and physical needs and interests. Our approaches link an emergent, child-centered, and teacher-facilitated curriculum to deepen the learning experience.
Our Elementary Level grew from our Foundation Level families who were looking for educational venues that addressed the needs of the whole child well into elementary school age. They were looking for educational environments that motivated learners to grow and develop in an endless pursuit of wonder, meaning making, and knowledge. Our Elementary Level provides an academically rigorous approach to education that also cultivates the cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal skills needed to succeed in an ever-changing 21st Century.
We welcome you and feel privileged to be a part of your life!
Stacy Penson
Head of School
The Innovative School of Temple Beth Sholom is a welcoming and collaborative environment where listening is key, thinking is visible, communication authentic, and our practice is reflective. As a community we continually strive to recognize and actualize limitless possibility. Our Jewish roots ground us and influence how we live, supporting our decision making and approaches. Our practice is guided by our belief that children are competent. We are dedicated to strengthening our deep understanding of child development and children’s rights to constructively learn and grow in an environment that nourishes their spiritual, cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development. We are committed to the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam, making the world a better place. The importance of relationships is recognized as a thread that weaves the fabric of our community, creating strong partnerships amongst staff, families and children.
We believe school should be a place for learning how to live and be a productive member of a community. Schools are not just for learning academic subject matter. Our approaches are constructed to bridge the gap between academic content, skill and concept learning with meaningful applications that make the pursuit of knowledge relevant in the real world. Our learners become co-constructors of their learning and this is a learning disposition that will be nurtured in our learners for a life-time.
Within our Jewish tradition, it is a mitzvah to do acts of loving kindness. At the Innovative School of Temple Beth Sholom, connections and relationships are at the core of our philosophical, pedagogical, and ethical practices and approaches. We want to raise our children to be kind, respectful and socially competent.
Within our social constructivist practices, we believe that social and emotional competency development is critical to understanding the self. Achieving this benchmark is an essential goal to nurturing interdependent relationships. We know that when our learners understand their own personal feelings, they are open to receiving the feelings of others. We strive to nurture caring, responsive, and empathetic community members.
Open, honest, and transparent communication is critical to growing a healthy community where members feel safe and trusted. We believe that embodying an honest disposition means that our learners can constructively approach even the most difficult of situations with integrity, strength, and resonance.
We strive to create sacred space and time within our school community, where our learners grow to respect one another. Our unique approach to developing interdependent dispositions ensures that each individual’s needs are met appropriately and effectively.
Building the disposition to become a life-long learner starts very early on, and the adults in a young child’s life have the incredible opportunity to model life-long learning habits. The development of strong mindsets that include habits such as persistence, motivation, curiosity, and agency can lead to a lifetime of joyful learning.
We live in a world where differences often invoke fear. Our learners develop an awareness of differences at an early age, and it is our responsibility to help them to naturally think about how other people feel and think. We want to nurture our learners’ dispositions towards seeing different perspectives within a world that includes everyone. Awareness, respectfulness, fairness, and justice provide substance for creating common threads of acceptance and appreciation of differences.
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