Welcome to the
Innovative School
of Temple Beth Sholom
The Innovative School of Temple Beth Sholom is a Reggio inspired Jewish community dedicated to joyful learning
Welcome Message
From Margie Zeskind
Head of School
Dear Families,
“I think every parent, every scientist, every early childhood educator who has looked at a young child sees that curiosity, that wonder and asks themselves, what can we do to keep this alive in a child, to foster it, to fan the flames and not to dampen that curiosity?” Dr. Andrew Meltzoff – Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences – University of Washington
Our educators, parents and learners embrace the opportunity to be engaged in powerful learning moments as we are immersed in our search for knowledge, deeper understandings and new questions. We live and learn together in community around legitimate questions, collaboratively building possibilities and seeing different perspectives. We imagine what it could be like in our big world if all education were built on learners’ questions, wonderings and theories. If all education respected differences and permitted learners to enter into spaces of disequilibrium where children can search for and reconstruct meaning. We are deeply grateful for our school approach where we have the opportunity daily to think for ourselves, think joyfully with others, and enter into authentic and open relationships with one another.
Simply, the Innovative School of Temple Beth Sholom is a habitat for learners to be seen as competent and essential to the design of the learning experience. It is a place where diversity is embraced, respect vital, and relationships key to the fabric of our community. As a professional team, we want to grow thinkers, debaters, and creators who have a deep sense of agency and who constantly ask why and why not. We want our learners to imagine what can be and not settle for what is.
We welcome you and feel privileged to be a part of your life!
B’Shalom,
Margie Zeskind
Head of School
Our Mission
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.
Our Big Idea
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.
Kehilla Approach™
Our Values
Kindness
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.
Empathy
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.
Honesty
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.
Integrity
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.
Life-Long Learners
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.
Acceptance
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.
Benefits of
Shelly School
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