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7th Grade Curriculum and Teacher Bios
Ken Goldstein
Ken Goldstein has been teaching at Micah so long that two of the current teachers were students of his. After graduating from Brown University, he taught U. S. History and photography and ran a dormitory at a private residential school. He then started an auto repair business, and recently completed a master's thesis at Baltimore Hebrew University on the meaning of El Shaddai in Genesis. He particularly enjoys tutoring the pre b'nai mitzvah students. Ken Teaches the History of the Jewish People curriculum, as outlined below.
HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE VOL. I
The History of the Jewish People was developed and written by two esteemed scholars of Jewish history. The text features a rich presentation of Jewish history from our earliest ancestors in the Land of Israel to our dispersion in the Diaspora through the Jewish experience in America in the 1880’s. Each chapter helps students consider how their lives compare with the lives of our ancestors, how each generation adapts Judaism to its time and place, and how the decisions of previous generations influence our own lives and decisions. History comes alive for Micah seventh-graders through a dynamic array of famous personalities, diverse source material, engaging activities, and thought-provoking questions.
Topics:
- The Early Israelites
- The Age of Hellenism
- Roman Domination of Judea
- Rabbinic Judaism
- Judaism and Christianity
- Babylonia
- Sepharad and Ashkenaz
- Medieval Europe
- The Sephardic Diaspora
- The Polish Kehillah and German Enlightenment
- Revolution and Emancipation
- Judaism and the Modern World
- The Rise of Antisemitism
- U.S. Jewry, 1820-1890
Ariel Scheer
Ariel Scheer is a senior at The George Washington University in Washington DC. Originally from Morristown, NJ she attended the Hebrew Academy of Morris County for ten years and graduated in the top percentile of her class from Morristown High School in 2006. From 2006-2007, she attended Young Judaea Year Course, a 9-month post-high school program in Israel. While living in Israel, she did basic training in the IDF for 3 months, taught English to underprivileged children at an elementary school in a suburb of Tel Aviv called Bat Yam, and took college courses in Jerusalem through the American Jewish University. She enjoys reading, dancing, singing, traveling, and she loves Broadway musicals! She is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in Judaic Studies with a minor in Organizational Science. Ariel spent her last semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina is happily integrating her Jewish experiences from South America into her second year as a part of the Temple Micah community! She teaches the BabagaNewz Curriculum, as outlined below.
BabagaNewz
BabagaNewz is an innovative and educational curriculum for Jewish middle school students and teachers. This curriculum examines the values that are at the core of Jewish beliefs and practices. BabagaNewz encourages seventh-graders to explore Jewish values, traditions, life- cycle events, holidays, and Israel, from perspectives that are novel, hip, fun, thought-provoking, exciting and that encourage them to continue these explorations with the full power of their imaginations and reflections.
Anna Phillips
A native from San Diego, Anna studied International Human Rights in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. She is currently a Presidential Administrative Fellow at GWU and is pursuing her master’s in international development studies with a focus on governance. Anna spent the last academic year on a Fulbright Fellowship in Uganda conducting research on the use of affirmative action policies for women in Uganda’s parliament. Anna has combined her love of sports and commitment to global justice through her
creation and leadership in the sports for social change movement. In 2006,she used her athletic experience to create Girls Kick It, (Anyira Gweyo), a girls soccer and empowerment program in Northern Uganda. Anna has studied Hebrew and Swahili. Anna is teaching the Partners In Prevention curriculum, as outlined below.
PARTNERS IN PREVENTION
If Jewish learning can help individuals recover from addictive and self- destructive behaviors, why can’t it be just as useful in preventing it? In a culture where teens must cope with peer, media, and family pressures to “look good” and achieve material success, the soul is often ignored and neglected. We believe the antidote to this “hole-in-the soul” is Judaism.
Partners In Prevention (PIP) is a program which utilizes the path of Judaism to promote self-acceptance, self-worth, spiritual values and family harmony. PIP differs from other programs in that it does not focus on drug-education but rather the underlying “spiritual maladies” that lead today’s youth toward risky behaviors. It focuses on teaching spiritual tools to cope with daily stress and anxiety.
The innovative aspect of the program is the introduction of a curriculum into mainstream Jewish education that applies Jewish values and concepts in a way that is relevant to our daily lives.
Anna will be teaching one module of a six-module curriculum, called Personal Inventory. This module helps young people look at the personal qualities that either support or harm their efforts to make positive choices on their journey to adulthood. Upon completing their inventory and identifying those areas where they have “missed the mark,” participants will be introduced to the process of T’Shuvah, the “return home.”