the custom approach
For me, civic participation is the measure of success for any learning community. I offer a range of topics and workshops to help communities better understand American and Israeli politics, current events, and the intersection between civics and identity.
Learn more about how I can help guide your community through challenging and vital conversations.
Review the options below to learn how I can best meet your needs or to identify how else I might be helpful.
CUSTOM Consulting services OPTIONs
1. Serve as a speaker or teacher on any of the following topics:
Israeli politics (key ideas and debates, then and now)
American politics (key ideas and debates, then and now)
American Jews and the White House
Israel 101b (overview of the conflict and how to have conversations about it)
Current Events in Israel
2. Facilitate conversations or dialogue among key members of your community on difficult or challenging conversations on key issues in American politics or American civic life. Conversation participants could include any of the following groups:
3. Facilitate conversations or dialogue among key members of your community on difficult or challenging conversations on key issues in the American Jewish community or related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Conversation participants could include any of the following groups:
4. Facilitate a visioning exercise on identity formation in your community and explore the role that difficult conversations (both content and approach) can play a role in identity formation.
5. Consult with a group on conceptual frameworks and an arc of learning for an Israel travel experience that both meets the needs of your institution and your constituents affiliated with your institution.
6. Consult on other projects in the area of Israel education, American civics education, or how to have difficult conversations in an academic setting.
Background: My Story as a Civics Educator
I like to call my classroom a John Dewey inspired experiment in democratic education. I take to heart John Dewey’s assertion that the most important goal of American education is to prepare students for democracy and citizenship. My lessons focus on bringing students inside the most important and challenging civic debates and discussions of their time. I bring to light the different points of view on any given topic and guide students on how they can engage in the debate and come to their own positions.
How did I come to this work? I grew up in a household with two politically engaged parents; one who was Republican and another who was a Democrat. Every night, around the kitchen table, I would listen to my parents debate thoughtfully about the issues of the day. How would I decide what to believe when my parents, whom I loved, sometimes had significant disagreements on key political issues?
Through a career and life dedicated to democratic education and public service, I began to understand. I read widely, and I am proud to have family and friends in a great variety of political camps. I taught courses in American history, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and current events (just to name a few) to hone the skills of active listening, open questions, seeing the big pictures, and judging the implications of any civic choice. In 2021, I began to practice what I preached to my students by becoming a local election official in Brookline Town Meeting.
Find out how this approach to civics and democratic education can benefit you, your colleagues, and your school.
HOW DO MY approachES WORK IN PRACTICE?
“The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.”
John Dewey