Last year, the Temple Micah Religious School went through a self study process facilitated by the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning called the Commendation Program. As part of the process, teachers were asked to document their teaching and their students' learning. The goal was to find out if we are actually teaching what we say we are teaching in our classrooms. The process was time consuming and, at times, frustrating, but the results made the effort worthwhile. Not only did the Temple Micah Religious School receive Commendation, but also I learned a lot about what we were doing right and where we needed to focus our attention.

At the same time we were undergoing this self study process, I began to meet monthly with parents during a new forum we call Religious School Roundtable. This 90 minute conversation is held the first Tuesday of the month during midweek and offers parents the opportunity not only to talk to me but also to one another. During our meetings last year, the question of curriculum came up often. What were we teaching, how were we teaching it, why were we teaching it?

Temple Micah's Religious School has always had a curriculum. We have always had a strong sense of what we wanted to teach our students and where our priorities were. One of the first things I did as the education director at Temple Micah was to work with Rabbi Zemel to write a Religious School Goals Statement, which began by stating, "The overarching goal of the religious school is to help our students in their formation of a positive Jewish identity that is rooted in core Jewish values and beliefs. We want them to see Judaism as fundamental to their lives, both as moral decision makers and as Jews who celebrate the beauty of life. Through a combination of both classroom instruction and experiential learning, our hope is that we will communicate this basic principle to our students and that they embrace the idea that Jewish education is a lifelong pursuit."

I have always worked with our staff to communicate those goals and priorities and it is clear from the materials we collected during self study that, by and large, our teachers have been doing great things in their classrooms. But we've never had a written curriculum that defines our goals, spells out our priorities and offers our teachers concrete examples of what we consider to be high quality lessons. After going through the Commendation process and finding a few weaknesses and holes, and after listening to parents who expressed a desire to have a better sense of what their children are learning, Rabbis Zemel, Manewith and I decided the time had come to write a formal religious school curriculum.

And so the process has begun. Over the course of the summer, two teachers worked with me to write the curriculum for grades 3 6. We are calling the finished products Curriculum Cookbooks. Each Curriculum Cookbook contains 30 complete lesson plans, as well as supplementary materials. Our teachers in these grades have been given their Curriculum Cookbooks and are using them every Sunday morning.

Our goal with this project is not that students sit down to a canned lesson, taught straight from a binder. Instead, we have given our teachers the freedom to use the Curriculum Cookbooks in the way that works best for them. Some of them will use the lessons just as they are written. Some will adapt the lessons to better suit their particular class. And some will use the lessons as a guide to what we expect our students to learn over the course of the year, but will achieve those goals in their own unique ways.

During the summer of 2007 we will finish this project, writing Curriculum Cookbooks for grades K-2, 7, and 8. We will also take another look at the completed Curriculum Cookbooks, editing and adapting as necessary. I invite parents to take a look at the materials, which will be available whenever religious school is in session. Come and see what we have created and let us know what you think.