![]() ![]() For others, the connections feel deeply personal and hard to articulate, but are they so private as to appear nonexistent to the children? Then there are the community systems – synagogues, youth groups, and camps – that also play a pivotal role in our children’s growth. For some parents, our own connections have stagnated to the point where they cannot give what they do not have. In this context, parents are teachers too. However, any conversation about developing expert connectors needs to extend beyond the classroom. Schools need to define what that means with regard to religious and spiritual development. UDL emphasizes that children can only develop into expert learners when they have expert teachers, and where both students and teachers are embedded within expert systems. Where do we need to reframe what we are already doing, to make the association between our practices and their intended purpose more explicit for students? What new approaches might we need to implement, if developing expert connectors is our goal? How can we shift the focus from Judaic Studies teachers as subject matter experts, to Judaic Studies teachers as connection experts? What are the dispositions of expert connectors and how can we facilitate the development of those qualities in our children? To approach religious and spiritual growth from this perspective, schools can begin with a conversation centered around these questions: The impact is not in disseminating ideas that influence society, but in generating a level of commitment that results in Jewish continuity. That attachment is impressively multifaceted to include a personal connection to God, religious practice, Jewish text, Jewish community, and the Jewish people. ![]() In the context of religious and spiritual growth, being an expert connector does not refer to a quantity of relationships, but to the quality of just one – the individual to their Judaism. Malcolm Gladwell coined the term connectors in his book, The Tipping Point, to mean individuals who know an impressive number of people across groups, and are therefore able to spread ideas and effect change. Our ultimate purpose is to help facilitate the religious and spiritual dispositions that will keep students authentically connected to Judaism, well beyond their school years. Certainly, we want students to understand themselves as learners in the Judaic Studies classroom as well, but this does not capture the full scope of what schools and Jewish educators are aiming for. In Jewish day schools, our goal of facilitating students’ religious and spiritual growth adds another dimension to this paradigm. Ultimately, students emerge from an educational environment designed through a UDL lens with an understanding of themselves as learners, and what they need to do to learn successfully in any setting. In other cases, teachers are reframing practices they’ve implemented for years, such as explicitly labeling classroom materials as resources that students can use to support their own learning. In some cases, these practices are new to teachers such things as involving students in monitoring progress toward their goals. We then drill down to the actual classroom practices teachers can implement to facilitate their students’ development as expert learners. ![]() We discuss how this perspective shifts the focus from teachers as subject matter experts, to teachers as learning experts. During workshops, I ask participants to list the dispositions of expert learners, and I get a range of substantive responses, such as “they are self-reflective”, “persist through challenges”, and “utilize strategies”. This does not preclude the need to teach specific skills and content knowledge, but sees the ultimate goal as developing learners who are “purposeful and motivated, resourceful and knowledgeable, strategic and goal-directed” ( UDL Guidelines). ![]() For years, I have trained teachers and school leaders in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an approach to teaching that emphasizes the importance of creating educational environments and facilitating learning experiences that support students in becoming expert learners. ![]()
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