Education

I was sitting in a meeting about a pilot project on gender in Jewish education a few years ago when a male colleague interrupted to proudly announce the release of his new book, a compilation of essays that he edited about Jewish education in North America. Naturally, I flipped through the hot-off-the-presses volume and searched for women writers. To my surprise, there was not even one. I asked the man why there were no women among the fifteen or so authors.

As the word spreads about Living the Legacy, JWA's new social justice curriculum about Jews and the Civil Rights Movement, it's exciting and gratifying to read testimonials from educators and other interested parties. It's a rare honor, however, to receive a review from a student. Dina Lamdany is a senior at a Jewish day school in Washington D.C. She blogs about Jewish feminism at fromtherib? and is a regular contributor to Jewesses with Attitude.

Renee Ghert-Zand, a regular contributor to The Sisterhood, raves about Living the Legacy.

As soon as I begin talking about the history of Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, a few names immediately come up in conversation: Abraham Joshua Heschel. Micky Schwerner.

I was so blessed to be part of the Jewish Women’s Archive’s 2010 Institute for Educators. The JWA is about to release their social justice curriculum Living the Legacy and we certainly spent plenty of time reviewing that and the JWA’s multimedia resources (in development right now – stay tuned).

On the final night of the JWA Summer Institute for Educators, we wrapped with a fun and moving final session on Jewish Gospel Music.

I got my copy of Ms. Magazine yesterday and in it, and was excited to see an article called “Girls Love Robots, Too,” about a group of girls in San Diego who started their own robotics team and have won honors in national robotics competitions. It talks about how it’s a big thing for girls to have their own team, since men outnumber women in engineering 73 to 27, and emphasizes that the girls are defying the stereotype that only boys like science and math.

Monday night as part of the JWA Summer Institute for Educators, we saw a sneak preview of a newly made documentary, The Freedom Riders, which tells the story of the group of black and white young people, who rode south on two buses to deliberately break the segregation laws.

Today, Lynn Golub-Rofrano discusses a morning session with Rabbi Jill Jacobs and a particularly interesting text study.

If this is your first visit to Jewesses with Attitude this week, you may have noticed some unusual content. This week we are blogging JWA's 2010 Summer Institute for Educators, a four-day conference for educators to explore ways of incorporating Jewish women’s history into their curricula with a particular focus on Living the Legacy, JWA's upcoming online curriculum about Jews in the civil rights movement.