CAJE DAY 2

It’s been an amazing whirlwind over the past 2 days since my last post. It’s now the middle of Wednesday (day 3 of CAJE) and I’m in the “Blogger’s Cafe”, a place to experiment with my blogs under the watchful and knowledgeable eyes of Debbie Harris. Here are some of the incredible sessions I’ve attended day 2:

• FAMILY EDUCATION TRACK: For the 3 days of the conference I’ve spent my mornings in the Consortium for the Jewish Family. Organized by family educators Joel Grishaver and Ron Wolfson, we have learned from the master teachers in Jewish Family Education. I chose a specific track on education for families of teens. My teacher, Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan, is an amazing Jewish family educator who enlightened our group on how to educate teens and their parents in meaningful Jewish learning….not an easy task. But there is common ground to be found and those opportunites for creating Jewish learning and dialogue (where often dialogue between these groups is missing) are priceless!
• INCLUSION: A well presented and valuable session by Fran Pearlman on creating and maintaining inclusion opportunities for special needs students in religious schools.
• IS PURIM THE ANTI-PESACH?: An intriquing session on comparing and contrasting these two holidays that fall only a month apart. Did the rabbis intentionally place Purim a month ahead of the grandeur of Pesach for a pedagogic purpose? Great material for a text study course for adults.

More tomorrow on Day 3 and a final wrap on the conference. Nighty night!!