Between 12-14 February, Centropa organized the fifth CJN winter seminar for teachers and educators of European and Israeli Jewish schools. 28 participants came together from 16 countries to learn about Centropa materials and the various ways they can be used in the classroom.
Teachers had the opportunity to work together in smaller groups, think about cross-border project ideas, and share lesson plan ideaswith each other. One the first day, participants watched a selection of Centropa films, and worked in small groups on lesson plans for the films they liked the most. The final lesson plans are uploaded to the Centropa webpage.
For the first time, we introduced the method of Café Dilemma discussions. During this session, teachers read about short dilemma situations connected to Jewish education and school life, and in small groups they had to discuss how thir solutions. The program gave a special opportunity for teachers to discover that they share similar challenges, and they can try to find the solutions together.
We also invited three guest lecturers to talk about further sources for Jewish education in the 21st century. Sammy Morhaim from the Jewish Interactive introduced interactive online games which can be created by teachers and students themselves for various subjects. Karen Ettinger from the National Library of Israel showed the wide variety of sources of the NLI to support both Jewish and non-Jewish education today. Finally, Mariano Schlimovitch from the European Council of Jewish Communities introduced the Arachim Conference, a unique international platform for teachers in Jewish education.
The fifth CJN seminar was a sparkling and inspiring event – many great project ideas were born, which we hope to see to unfold in the future. Thank you for coming, and let’s stay in touch!
