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August 29, 2008
TA Moves To Help Kids With Problems
Maayan Jaffe
Staff Reporter
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School bells are ringing across Baltimore, but Talmudical Academy is starting off the 2008-2009 school year with a bang.
The 91-year-old institution in Pikesville is “changing its perspective,” according to Dr. Joel Pleeter, the school’s chairman of the board, and taking a more comprehensive approach to its student body.
TA will be the first yeshiva day school in Baltimore to hire a full-time elementary school counselor and the first in the nation to implement a program called Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports (PBIS).
Rabbi Norman Lowenthal will move from the position of secular studies principal of the elementary school to counselor. His work will deal primarily with the social/emotional development of TA’s 500 students.
Rabbi Lowenthal said his move fills a void at the school, which has more than doubled in student body but has not increased in administration. With administrators bogged down with day-to-day business, many social issues at TA fell through the cracks. He said schools are always focused on education, but commonly forget to deal with children’s social growth.
“There is more to school than just academics,” said Rabbi Lowenthal. “Kids need to learn in school how to be successful in the world. There’s that book, ‘All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten’ [by Robert Fulghum], and that’s what kids should learn. But some kids aren’t getting it, not only at our school. It’s societal.”
But Jewish schools in particular, he said, have always been focused on the meat and potatoes of education — a good Jewish education, reading, writing, arithmetic — because there is just not enough time in a day or resources. A school counselor was considered a luxury.
“Kids need an outlet,” Rabbi Lowenthal said. “They need someone to talk to.”
Said Rabbi Yehuda Lefkowitz, the school’s president: “Rabbi Lowenthal has a master of social work [degree] from Washington University and a master of science in education from Johns Hopkins. He’s a perfect fit.”
The PBIS program will be overseen by Mia Severin, the new elementary school secular studies principal. Mrs. Severin comes to the school from Weinberg Academy, where she served as coordinator for curriculum instruction.
She said PBIS exists in 8,000 schools nationally, often the best schools, “already very good schools, striving for excellence.”
PBIS, administered locally by the State Department of Education, is an application of a behaviorally based systems approach to enhance the capacity of schools, families and communities to design effective environments. Attention is focused on creating and sustaining systems of support that improve lifestyle results for all children and youths by reducing problem behavior, while making desired behavior more functional.
At TA, four goals for its students have been identified. They should be b’nei Torah, responsible, safe and respectful. A team of teachers, rabbis and elementary administrators plotted out on a grid what actions students would need to take to be these things in five different environments — the classroom, hallway, cafeteria, playground, and at arrival and dismissal — to meet these goals. If students display desirable behavior, they are rewarded with “ben Torah bucks,” for which they can “purchase” a prize with a certain number.
The program comes with a computer program to track office notes/undesirable behavior so administrators can gauge if there are certain times of year where students struggle more.
“Students need to hear the same language from everybody to internalize it,” said Rabbi Nachman Kahana, elementary school Jewish studies principal. For example, he said that if children hear that certain behaviors make him a ben Torah, and others do not, they will begin to understand what they’re striving for.
The mission of the school, said Rabbi Kahana, is to imbue each student with a love of learning and sterling character traits, so he can contribute to his family and community.
Mrs. Severin said other area yeshiva schools are considering the program, following TA’s lead.
Mrs. Severin also will be adding the STAR Assessments reading program, making TA the first yeshiva in Baltimore with this Renaissance Learning technology. The program allows teachers to diagnostically test students several times per year, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and establish children’s reading grade levels.
“We’ve realized we need to better monitor a child’s progress,” said Mrs. Severin. “You need data in order to drive instruction.”
“The main message is individualization,” said Rabbi Kahana, “the individual success of each child.”