rout
Learning Together
Photos by Bill Hansen
Day schools convene for first annual community-wide conference.
JULIE WIENER
StaffWriter
1911
or the first time
ever, teachers from
•Akiva Hebrew Day
School, Hillel Day
School, Yeshiva Beth Yehudah
and Yeshivos Darchei Torah
learned together.
The forum: a conference
last Monday on "The
Changing Classroom" orga-
nized by the Opening the
Doors Special Education
Partnership Program of the
Agency for Jewish Education.
According to Anita Naftaly,
the program's director, almost
200 teachers — with siz-
able representations from
each school — attended
the 4-hour conference in
the AJE auditorium.
Akiva and Darchei Torah
sent their entire teaching
staffs.
The program featured
two keynote speakers:
Lynne Master, owner and
director of the Learning
Disabilities Clinics in Oak
Park and Bloomfield Hills,
and David Pelcovitz, chief
child and adolescent psy-
chologist at the North
Shore Hospital of the New
York University Medical
Center.
Master provided practi-
cal strategies for the "hard
to teach child," while
Pelcovitz addressed strate-
gies for the "hard to reach
child." The conference also
included question-and-
answer sessions, a resource
fair and opportunities for
shmoozing with colleagues from other
schools.
"This was a wonderful collabora-
tion of efforts," said Naftaly, who
planned the conference with help
from a committee that included
top administrators from each day
school.
Deedee Berman, a first-grade
5/22
1998
12
Above left: Darchei Torah
teachers Kim White, Cheryl
Litt and Mary Hughes talk
during the break.
Above: Dr. David Pelcovitz,
one of the keynote speakers,
addresses the group.
Left: Yeshiva Beth Yehudah
teacher Mindy Rosenblum and
Dottie Wagner of Darchei
Torah talk to Anita Naftaly,
AJE's director of special educa-
tion.
teacher at Darchei Torah, praised the
conference. "It's been inspiring. It real-
ly focused my directions," she said,
adding that there was a "nice feeling of
camaraderie."
Nehama Glogower, a seventh- and
eighth-grade teacher at Hillel, said she
enjoyed having all the different
schools together, but wished the con-
ference had featured more interactive
workshops "so we could talk to each
other more."
Hindy Levine, who teaches high
school-level Judaic studies at
Darchei Torah and Akiva, said she
would like to see more events like
the conference in the future. "There
should be more interaction among
the schools," she said, adding that
she had recently moved from Los
Angeles, where day school
teachers regularly meet
together.
Opening The Doors,
according to its brochure,
"provides an opportunity for
children with learning dis-
abilities and other special
learning needs to receive a
quality Jewish education."
The two-year-old program
serves 17 congregational schools,
Jewish nursery schools and day
schools, providing placement of spe-
cial education teachers, development
of new school program models, con-
sultation services, teacher training
workshops and special education
resources through the AJE's teachers'
resource center. ❑