Jeffrey S. Kress

Bringing Together Educational Standards and Social and Emotional Learning: Making the Case for Educators

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has as its goals to strengthen a person’s ability to understand, manage, and express the social and emotional aspects of life. The authors, all of whom have worked in training teachers in the promotion of students’ social and emotional skills, have found that educators often view efforts at building such skills as standing in opposition to the academic focus of their state curriculum standards. This view hinders many well‐intentioned teachers from implementing SEL in their classrooms. Thus, it is a valuable consultative tool to be able to demonstrate the overlap of SEL, academics, and curriculum standards. The authors set out a rationale for this overlap and provide examples of how they incorporate this overlap into their training and consultation.

Jewish Identities in Action: An Exploration of Models, Metaphors, and Methods

“Jewish identity” has been a central concern both in the realm of research about American Jewry and to American Jewish educational programming, but what it means and how to best study it have come under question in recent years. In this article, four scholars describe the ways they understand Jewish identity among American Jews and how they study it. Together, they avoid defining the content of Jewish identity in specific normative/prescriptive terms because this unnecessarily flattens and delimits the ways people experience being Jewish. Instead they seek to expand the kinds of analytic questions and research methodologies in ways that that permit descriptive and non-evaluative conceptualizations, viewing Jewish identities as emerging from the complex interplay of “Jewishness” in the environment with other aspects of the self, and its longitudinal and cross-contexts.

Substance Abuse Prevention in Special Education Populations: Review and Recommendations

Students who make up special education populations are a high-risk group for the development of future substance abuse. A number of factors contribute to this phenomenon. Students with emotional disturbances and learning disabilities face unique risk factors and skills deficits. Such students are at a considerable disadvantage for successfully negotiating peer pressure and high-stress situations. However, very few prevention programs target specifically this population. An overview of the risk factors and skills deficits unique to special education students is used to evaluate existing approaches to prevention and to make recommendations for future efforts.

Beyond Questioning: Inquiry Strategies and Cognitive and Affective Elements of Jewish Education.

Questioning-asking has not only long been seen as a central component of Jewish educational practice but has also been thought to be part of a broader culture of Judaism. In this article, we apply cognitive-developmental theories to advance the discussion of the use of questioning in Jewish education. Such theories allow Jewish educators to more fully understand the function of questioning and to appreciate affective elements involved in the context of question-asking. Further, these theories connect question-asking with issues of identity development. Recommendations are made for Jewish educational practice, including an example of a cognitive-developmentally based questioning strategy applied to a biblical text.

Reflection and Connections: The Other Side of Integration

Jewish day schools offer many experiences meant to foster the Jewish development of students. However, these experiences are at risk of being disconnected from one another, complicating a comprehensive approach to addressing issues of identity. This article uses a constructivist approach to identity development to frame the challenges posed by such a fragmentation. Observations of pluralistic Jewish day high schools are brought as illustrations. The author discusses an approach of scaffolded reflection as a way to integrate the identity—enhancing experiences in which a student participates.

Prevention programs and special education: Considerations related to risk, social competence, and multiculturalism

As one reviews the literature on culture-related factors influencing behavioral outcomes and responsiveness to preventive programs, it becomes clear that in addition to the more traditionally defined risk factors, “special education status” itself can be considered an at-risk cultural designation. Despite this additional vulnerability to failure, primary prevention programs for special education (SE) populations are found to be both underdeveloped and understudied. The authors discuss how issues of multiculturalism and cross-cultural competence can be understood and used to enhance the education of SE students. Recommendations are made to enhance the design and delivery of multiculturally sensitive health promotion and problem prevention programs for SE.

Experiential Jewish Education Has Arrived! Now What?

Experiential Jewish education has been experiencing a time of growth, during which theory development, research, and practice have established a strong voice for the construct. Much of the focus to this point has been on definitions (particularly the distinction between experiential and informal Jewish education) and on outcomes of settings often associated with an experiential Jewish education (EJE) approach. Along with increased understanding of EJE comes the potential to explore a more nuanced set of questions about the nature of educational experiences. This point of development of the field also raises question of the relationship of EJE and the broader field of Jewish education.

Social and Emotional Learning, Adolescence

A complete understanding of adolescent health and well-being must include systematic attention to their social and emotional competence. This entry summarizes current knowledge in this area, the relationship of social and emotional competencies to indicators of problem behavior, and principles to guide best practices for promoting social and emotional learning in schools, homes, and other contexts in which adolescents are socialized.

Learning From a Mussar-Based Initiative in a Community Day School

ABSTRACT Mussar, an approach to character growth emerging as a movement in the 18th century, has increasingly been incorporated into contemporary Jewish education. The purpose of mussar—the cultivation of character—is consistent with the goals of Jewish day schools and other settings. This article examines the implementation of a mussar-based program in a Jewish community high school. Particular attention is given to questions raised by the introduction of this program into a pluralistic school setting. Implications are discussed in terms of the broader goals of Jewish education.

Diversity, Community, and Pluralism in Jewish Community Day High Schools.

ABSTRACT Students in “community” (nondenominational) Jewish high schools represent a diversity of denominational affiliations, including those who affiliate with more than one denomination and those that affiliate with none. These schools strive to create communities in which students with varying Jewish beliefs and practices are, at the very least, respected and comfortable. At the same time, schools work to avoid internal Jewish communal fragmentation. In this article, the approach to diversity in three such high schools is compared. Each school, in addition to presenting an approach distinct from the others, has created opportunities for communal Jewish engagement through the enactment of practices that are rooted in Judaism and in the ethos of the school, and allow individualization within universal participation. Further, the range of approaches to Jewish diversity exhibited raises questions about pluralism as it relates to the Jewish educational goals of these schools.