Staff development: Old dogs can learn new tricks

Abstract

Peer coaching, study groups, and mentoring are all valuable methods for staff development. When all three can occur during the same year with a group of veteran teachers, the result is a learning community that enhances shared professionalism. This article describes such a year in which four veteran teachers came to teach in a residential high school for gifted and talented adolescents. This article reports that the focus from the perspective of the staff developer, as well as the focus from the perspective of three of the four teachers, emphasizes the power of these formats for professional development.     

Psychological well-being and ethnic identities of Jewish adolescents planning emigration from Russia and Ukraine to Israel: Changes during the post-perestroika period

This study examines psychological well-being and ethnic identities of Jewish adolescents planning emigration from Russia and Ukraine to Israel. Measurements were conducted in 1999 (n = 654) and in 2005 (n = 243). The adolescents were questioned about half a year before they left their homeland. In Russia, adolescents who planned emigration in 2005 had less emotional and behavioral problems and suffered less from loneliness than their peers in 1999. In Ukraine, no improvement was found in psychological well-being; moreover, the school competence of adolescents who planned emigration in 2005 was lower compared to their peers in 1999. Adolescents who planned emigration from Russia and Ukraine in 2005 reported a more positive attitude towards their homeland and stronger identification with the ethnic majority in their homeland than the adolescents who planned emigration in 1999. The emigrants’ attitude towards Israel did not change from 1999 to 2005. Their identification with Jews was weaker in 2005 as compared with 1999. In both cohorts, the adolescents’ attitude towards Israel was more positive than their attitude towards Russia or Ukraine, and their identification with Jews was stronger than that with Russians or Ukrainians. In 1999, Russian/Ukrainian and Jewish-Israeli facets of the emigrants’ ethnic identity were contradictory, while they were complementary in 2005.     

AFTER RABIN'S DEATH: LESSONS FOR ISRAELIS AND AMERICAN JEWS

Introduction

In the arena of the human condition, the Jew walks precariously, now as before, on an existential tightrope, seeking to balance the integrity of his wholeness. The footsteps of his past, indelibly impressed upon the inventory of his memory shadows his movement in time, haunting him with a lingering urge to survive. No matter where he has trodden or been allowed to rest, his acceptance in the human family has been but punctuated moments in historical time. He has been a veritable stranger, whom Simmel has described as “the person who comes today and stays tomorrow.” For his todays and tomorrows, like his yesterdays, offer only the occasional respite from the twisting agonies only the stranger knows. Alone in his separateness, the Jew looks out into the space of human distance between others and himself, knowing there is a social infinity. Whatever he does to narrow the gap, there is the distance, and he is the stranger in the inseparable dimension of time and space.