Starting Tuesday, my fellow Pardes Educators will enter a variety of Jewish day school classrooms across the US as part of their student teaching experience. With an eye toward this opportunity, here are a few lessons/ideas from this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Terumah, regarding pedagogy: The parsha opens with an appeal for donations of the materials necessary for building the Mishkan (the Tabernacle). Every Israelite was encouraged to donate, so that the Mishkan became a unified source of the Shechinah (GD’s presence) in which everyone claimed a portion. Our classrooms, too, should function on this precept. If we aim to foster a community of learners where everyone has buy-in we should solicit feedback and ideas from our students and incorporate them into our teaching. This is also known as a constructivist classroom. The parsha continues and provides a detailed blueprint for construction of the Mishkan and its objects. The blueprint lists the necessary materials,
I've always been famous; people just didn't know it.