As the kindergarten through eighth grade principal at Krieger Schechter Day School, Dr. Robyn Blum knows the school and the greater Chizuk Amuno Congregation community thoroughly.
This isn’t just another job for Blum, though. In fact, when it comes to her professional life, Chizuk Amuno and Krieger Schechter Day School are all she has ever known.
“My entire career has been in this building,” Blum said. “I cannot imagine any other place that has been so special for me, both professionally and personally. Both of my children graduated from here in eighth grade … this school and this synagogue have been my family’s home for 30 years.”
Blum came to Baltimore from her hometown of Boston shortly after graduating from Harvard. She said she was taken aback by Jewish life in Charm City.
“I was really blown away by the Jewish community here in Baltimore, and by the amazing community. The Jewish community has a real emphasis on living daily life Jewishly, and on Jewish education as the focus of the future,” Blum said.
For Blum, who loves her hometown and still diligently supports Boston sports, Baltimore represents a more fluent version of Jewish life.
“The Baltimore Jewish community provides a richness of community, culture and institutions. Any time I want kosher food, I have so many options. That was not the reality of growing up for me, where the only kosher restaurants were 45 minutes or an hour away,” Blum said. “To know that Shabbat and synagogue life is a part of the rhythm of this Jewish community, to know that this is a Jewish community where families of multiple generations still live close to each other, I think that’s a huge benefit.”
Blum is an administrator today, not a teacher like she used to be, but she still finds time to spend inside the classrooms at KSDS.
“I definitely miss [teaching] but I also feel very lucky that this is a tremendously wonderful faculty of excellence, and that I have a chance to work with the whole faculty and be in and out of their classrooms.”
The staff at KSDS is a large part of what makes the school so special, Blum said.
“It’s a faculty that loves being at the school, and that is thoughtful, creative, collaborative and really works in partnership with students and parents and in partnership with each other,” she said.
Focusing on the K-8 students is Blum’s passion — when she taught she was a middle school teacher. Middle school is not an easy time in a young person’s life, and Blum said that is reason enough why the job is so important.
“You can see the growth day to day. You can see all the things that they are open to and that they struggle with, and you kind of go along the journey with them,” Blum said.
At KSDS, helping those students along that journey is aided by a curriculum that intertwines everyday studies with Judaism, as opposed to keeping them separate. Blum said this helps kids grow as individuals, academics and Jews all at once.
KSDS uses what it calls a dual curriculum, which integrates Judaism, Hebrew and Torah into standard subjects. It also push students to learn how to think, not just what to think about.
“We are a school based on curiosity and teaching students how to think. We could pick so many different areas of content — this particular novel, this particular section of Torah, these particular vocabulary words in Hebrew or in Spanish — whatever the content is, our goal is to help students see their own curiosity, their ability to think, to evaluate critically, to ask amazing questions, and to take risks in their in their interpretation — there are risks in trying new skills,” Blum said.
In Blum’s experience, every generation of students faces unique challenges. Today, there are so many sources of stimuli that are pulling at students’ attention spans and making it hard for them to focus. That doesn’t change the mission, however, and it won’t change the goals that Blum works toward.
“We’re building all those human qualities of what it means to interact,” she said. “Krieger Schechter is a very special place.”
