What We’ve Learned from JECEI

As most of you know, the JCC Nursery School has been a part of JECEI, the Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative for the past 5 years. We learned this past week that JECEI is unable to continue their work with new schools due to lack of funding nationally and in local communities and therefore will need to phase out. As you can imagine, we were surprised and disappointed by the news but wanted to share with you a bit about our journey with JECEI and all that we will continue to do moving forward. In 2006 we were selected from hundreds of schools from throughout the country to participate in a pilot initiative to learn from the very best in Early Childhood Educational practice and excellence within the field of Jewish Education to become a model center of excellence. For four years teachers and administrators worked with talented coaches and consultants and were introduced to the work of Reggio Emilia, the Bank Street model of Emotionally Responsive classrooms, Howard Gardner’s theories of Multiple Intelligences, current brain research on children’s learning, as well as the JECEI Jewish lenses with which you are all familiar. I had the opportunity to interact with gifted Early Childhood program directors from as far as California, Dallas, Texas, Chicago, Washington DC and elsewhere. Our schoolparticipated in an incredible journey that included our being accredited as one of five JECEI schools.

But as I, and our staff, have begun to think about the implications of the news on our school we have realized that this change is simply one more leg of our journey. JECEI introduced language into ourschool for which we are grateful and which we will continue to use. The attention to documenting the work of the children that you see in our school, the journey binders, the daily reflections, the Kesher program, these were all adopted through our exposure to these models of excellence in Early Childhood Education. We will continue to learn and be inspired by these models as well as others as we continue on our journey. Next week we will be sending two teachers (Krissy and Orlee) to Reggio Emilia, Italy to continue to learn from the schools that are there and bring back their learnings to us here in NYC.

We learned through our experiences with JECEI but at this point in our journey we find that in fact this language, this set of values, this deep commitment to the unique identity of each child, the strong partnerships we forge with families, the belief that we are in a covenantal relationship with one another, this understanding that the environment and materials of our classrooms and our larger school serve as critical influences on children’s learning, this desire to create sacred space and time in our every day Jewish living, this all belongs to us. They are our JCC values, they are the values we strive to achieve each and every day. And these are the values we will continue to live with and see through. And we will continue to serve as a model for excellence within our field.

The Hebrew word for journey, “leensoa” literally means to remove the tent pegs, and removing tent pegs we will do in this time when we celebrate our people as journeyers. I am inspired and energized by our journey ahead. I am excited to further articulate this model of excellence that we believe we are striving for in our daily practice, and I am excited to continue to teach and share all that we know with other schools, as we also continue to refine our work, constantly evolving as any healthy organism does.

We feel grateful for all that we gained from our four year change process with JECEI. The direction of the school is not changing – we are simply continuing to build on what we learned. We will continue to consider the ways that these values emanate within our school.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend ahead.

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Ilana Ruskay-Kidd

Ilana has been serving the Jewish educational community in New York City in multiple capacities for the past twelve years. Most recently, she served as the Director of The Saul and Carole Zabar Nursery School at the JCC in Manhattan. Prior to being named to this position in 2006, she worked at the JCC as Director of Young Families and then as Senior Director of Family Life, supervising programs serving families and children from birth to eighteen years old. Ilana began her teaching career at the Central Park East school in Harlem and went on to become a founding teacher at the Ella Baker School, an alternative public school in Manhattan. She then worked as an Early Childhood Curriculum Consultant for the Children's Aid Society where she developed curricula with directors and teachers in day care, Head Start and private nursery school programs throughout the city.

Ilana received her B.A. from Harvard College and a Master's Degree in Education from Bank Street College. She was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives there with her husband and three children.

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