As the academic year drew to a close in late June 2011, a series of Project Presentations were held at Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem. Participating in the event were the Cohort 18 Fellows of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership and the Cohort 28 Fellows of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows. At each session, Fellows presented their individual projects to the members of their group, experts and mentors in the field, and members of the MLI Faculty, marking the culmination of a lengthy period of individual and group learning, research, exploration, and structuring of the subject matter that each Fellow chose to focus on.
According to Adi Nir-Sagi, director of MSEL: "The presentation of the projects is part of the individual learning process that each of the Fellows experienced and led at the School over the course of their two years of study. This year, there was an intensive effort to create a unique structure—a final session that generates continued learning as an outgrowth of the learning process of every Fellow…"
The presentation of the projects marks a high point that reflects each Fellow's sense of seriousness and commitment to the learning process, always with the goal of improving education, society and community in Israel and around the Jewish world.
Meaningful Learning- MSEL Project Presentations New Format
The unique format of the Project Presentation Conference was developed this year to create an element of meaningful learning in addition to the ceremonial aspect of presenting the projects. The use of panels and roundtable sessions led to fruitful, in-depth discussions, with the participation of outside experts and scholars. Adi Nir-Sagi adds that "the presentation of projects is an invitation to a penetrating, wide-ranging, and tolerant intellectual discussion of subjects that have engaged the Fellows over the course of the program. To a large extent, the individual project is a significant reference point in the learning process at MSEL, but it is not the end of the journey; rather it is a milestone along the road of continued study and involvement even after the conclusion of the program."
Dr. Yehuda Ben-Dor, Dean of MSEL's Cohort 18, who has accompanied the Fellows from their first days at MLI, states that "the final project should express the Fellow's social-educational perception of what should be, and his/her ability to 'read' a situation, identify problems, and offer appropriate intervention. As such, the project represents an integration of all aspects of the curriculum and reflects the 'genetic code' of MLI, which is built on a close interconnection between vision, theory, and action.
"Distilling a complex two-year journey into a presentation of just a few minutes is always a difficult challenge that leaves a 'taste for more' and invites the listeners to study the broader, written version of the project."
Ben-Dor hopes that the principles underpinning the project will stay with the graduates throughout their future professional activity, and that, in the midst of all the urgent day-to-day pressures, they will have the insight as leaders to stop, consult with experts, ponder, understand, and plan their actions with wisdom.
To read about the Mandel School for Educational Leadership, click here.
Adding new Perspectives
The projects presented this year by the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows covered a wide range of topics related to Jewish education, among them the encounter between Jewish sources and art, building a process of change in the FSU, and creating constructive discourse within the Jewish community around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The projects were presented in a format similar to the workshops given over the course of the year, in that those present were included in the discussion of the projects; but they were nonetheless unique, since the end-of-the year presentations were given in the presence of senior figures from the world of Jewish education, who added their perspectives.
This year, Gidi Grinstein, Founder and Director Reut Institute and Dr. Michael Marmur, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Hebrew Union College were among the participants. In the words of Abigail Dauber-Sterne, director of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows program, "bringing senior figures from outside the organization is intended to help the Fellows take the first step away from Mandel and to introduce them to work in the field in a more concrete way."
Summing up the academic year and the process experienced by each of the Fellows, Dauber-Sterne stated that "they must remember the dialogue and the tools provided to them over the course of the year, because the final project is only the beginning. It is the start of the work for which they came to Mandel."
To read more about the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows, click here