The State of Tefilla

In a few short weeks, the President of the United States will give his annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.  It is speech to reflect on the past and speak to policy visions for the upcoming year.

In this spirit, I wanted to hear from some educators regarding the State of Tefilla in schools:

• Is tefilla strong in your school?  
• Has there been growth in tefilla?
• Was there a major challenge that was overcome this past year?
• Was there a tragedy to an individual or the community that influenced the tefillot of your school?
• Was there joyous celebration, like Gilad Shalit's release, that led to singing songs of praise and happy tefillot?
• What was the high point of tefilla and was the low point?
• What is the state of tefilla to the larger community? 
• Would people stand and clap at the end of your speech?

No doubt the president, in his speech, makes some honest assessments of events, many rhetorical statements, and spins a yearn to show the country in the best light.  Please feel free to share your experiences.  

Also, for those of you on twitter, please feel free to follow the blog for the latest updates and resources @davenspot. 

Evaluating What You Do

Evaluating the work and impact of teachers is one of the more controversial topics on the subject of education reform.

On the topic of tefilla, I am interested on how schools evaluate the progress made by students as individuals or in a group setting? I see the following five possibilities:

1. Attendance - that there are tushes in the seats at the proper time.
2. Spirit- that there is significant participation or a lack of disruptive behavior (are students saying "Amen").
3. Feedback - either compliments or complaints that come to the administrator's desk or formal evaluations that are given to students at the end of semester. (not so clear that it is fair to check if the prayers were answered from above).
4. Overflow - that students attend other prayer events (i.e. shul) or talk about tefilla in other classes.
5. Performance of skills - that individuals demonstrate an ability and/or comfort with specific tefilla skills (leading or reading Torah) that satisfies a benchmark.

These possibilities explore how to evaluate the student - but how does the supervisor evaluate the educator on this aspect of their job. Do you know of specific guidelines for teachers in their professional reviews? What criteria has your school given you to measure your educational return on investments for tefilla?

Some educators have contacted me have to say that they are compensated more for running or attending tefillot in their school and explicitly mentioned that there compensation has no relation to the performance aspect of the students.

What professional standards are in the Jewish Marketplace?

Answering Prayers

On October 5th, 75 Jewish Schools from around the world participated in the Tefilla for Gilad program. A little more than a week later, Gilad Shalit walked into the embrace of his parents in Israel. Several educators that I bumped into the over the past week mentioned how their students felt as if their tefilla really made a difference.

While the adults I spoke to were happy with the overall result - Gilad's freedom - several had not considered in their prayers the costs associated to a negotiated deal with warring parties. Everyone, at least I think, has conceptually experimented with the tefilla for a snow day before a test in school or to win the lottery, usually with negative results. My friend's grandmother is known to dutifully pray for a certain political party to lose elections to prevent them from gaining power.

How often does one actually see tangible results to prayer? Again, for many of the educators that I spoke to (after the release) were excited for their students to see the follow up to this special prayer forum. Is tefilla just an abstract exercise, a philosophical statement, or something transformational?

Welcoming Prayers and Advice on How to Pray

There is the old adage "those who can, do - those who can't, teach". As a teacher, and holder of a Masters Degree in Education I find this aphorism particularly annoying. But whenever I reflect in shul, which is often, I see that there is very little instruction on how to actually make your davening meaningful. There are plenty of texts (many of which will be reviewed in this blog) on the perfunctory steps that need to happen to effect a prayer experience and lots of equipment that is needed to give atmosphere, but very little practical advice on what to actually think about as the davening happens.

This is a forum to explore how to make prayer in general, but particularly in our schools, a more meaningful educational expression of this holy tradition. One of our first conversations will be about how to evaluate the success of these prayer sessions in schools and if there is a way to assess how the students improve and the instructor inspires and educates.