Contractually Blogging: Maturing Systems in a Congregational School

Shearith Israel is a conservative congregation in Dallas with a strong religious school, approximately 200 students.  We have pre-k-10th and we are in the midst of developing a HS component through 12 grade back into our program. 

The biggest challenges we face are related: apathy and communication.  Over the last couple of years we have tried to address both of these issues.  Each of our teachers was required to communicate with parents on a bi-weekly- monthly basis, giving them information about what their children were experiencing in the class. 

We also have a weekly newsletter from the school, but this is more general information, and not usually specific to classes. We also decided last fall to use a text system for updates for parents: Remind 101.  We had many parents sign up for this- but not all. 

Ellen Dietrick has been our mentor in the Darim Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, and she has guided us through various explorations.  Each year Dallas has a Yom Limmud- day of learning where all of the educators come together and this past fall one of the featured presentations, from November Learning www.novemberlearning.com , was about tech in the classroom, featuring Twitter.  So we eagerly joined Twitter as luddites.  Ellen helped us explore what to do with it, but learned that our best bet was to set up blogs for our classrooms.  This would be a better focus for students, parents, and even our teachers to interact with and learn from each other.  Back in February we presented this idea to our teachers at a professional development session.  At first they were reluctant, but they grew very interested when they found out about the various ways to communicate, engage and share the content of what goes on in their classrooms.

Showing the various steps of the learning process, as well as what the students take away for it will definitely serve the students better, and help their parents understand and hopefully engage them and us a bit more.  We decided to make this compulsory as of the coming school year and it is written into the teacher contracts that they need to submit a post each week we have school.  At this point we are exploring whether to use the template we created on Blogger or to invest in using Edublogs (which is part of WordPress).  We are very excited about this and will be suspending our weekly newsletter that we send using Constant Contact in lieu of this improved and interactive tool.  I am already thinking about who will be our ‘plants’ on the blog- hoping to quietly designate parents to generate/comment on posts to build and keep the conversation going.

We should tell you as well that back in the fall as part of a separate grant, we began creating a teen Israel blog which is a blog about Israel by teens, for teens.  This has been a great learning experience for the teens and the professionals working on this project. 

In addition, we are fortunate to have smartboards in our classrooms, as well as iPads for teacher and student use.  Our students have been working to create apps…. Now we can actually tell the world about this and use them to enhance our blog communications.

We hope that this project will improve parent communication, as well improve the students’ engagement with what they are learning.  We want to thank Ellen Dietrick for her assistance and Darim and The Covenant Foundation for the opportunity to make our school a better learning environment.

 

Shearith Israel participated in the Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, a year long program generously funded by The Covenant Foundation.  This series of blog posts this spring chart the learnings of the 10 teams in this year's cohort.

 

Using Collaboration to Create Content

 

Our goal upon entering the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy was to utilize social networks as a means to tell our story.  So many wonderful things happen at the school every day, and we felt with Facebook, in particular, that we had a great opportunity to re-energize our current parents and to reach new audiences in a visually compelling and easy-to-share (or “like”) format. 

We took a very strategic approach to launching our Facebook page, from the type of content we wanted to post, how we would promote the page, and who we would target.  We found our social media strategy to be an outgrowth of our website strategy.  When we launched our new website nearly three years ago, we took very deliberate steps to tell the story of the school through photos on the internal (password-protected) pages of our website.  So whereas many schools struggle to produce quality content on a regular basis, we had already laid the groundwork that would become essential to our success.  Our experience with the JDS Social Media Academy pushed us to refine this process of collaborating with our community members to drive the content that tells the story of the school.

Our content curation strategy began with us trying to figure out where the story was, and realizing we would need input from faculty members, administrators and parents.  We have to rely on these key players to let us know the compelling events and stories happening day by day.

We felt the best way to truly paint the picture of life at CESJDS was through cultivating these relationships.  I reached out to faculty members individually, urging them to let me know when they had special projects taking place in their classrooms.  And every time a teacher contacted me, I went to take photos which would later be posted to the Facebook page and school website.  It didn’t take long for them to get excited about being featured; it validates their hard work in the classroom and gives our community a window into life at the school.  It soon became second nature for them to email with interesting classroom news or projects. 

A great example of how parents contribute to our strategy is Families in Action Day, a day of service where 800 people volunteer at more than 20 projects in the area.  I coordinate directly with the parent volunteers to generate photos from the various locations, something I could not do alone.  We use this approach for many of our larger events–Dor L’Dor, Color War, Arts Chai-Lights—and find it works well because people are excited to be a part of the story.  I also work with our student photographers (from the student newspaper and photography class) to feature their work online.

Many other individuals in the school have news to share, and we have worked to make sure this news gets passed to us to post to Facebook and the school website.  The athletic director, guidance and college counselors, development director, and other members of the administrative team routinely share news, accomplishments and other updates.  All of this helps to tell the story of CESJDS.

By changing the dynamic of the school, we established a network of collaboration where others create content and invite me to the story, rather than me searching it out.  This process has been vital to accurately portraying life at CESJDS through our Facebook page and school website.

 

Kimberly Dudash is the Marketing Associate at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School.  The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy
 
The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.
 

 

Networking the Unintentional Network: RAVSAK as a Case Study in Progress

Are there limitations to networked thinking? Can networked learning be taught and learned? Rabbi Hayim Herrings's blog post last month on eJewishphilanthropy, "How to Minimize the Risk of Network Un-Weaving," questions whether a relationship-based network approach to community building and shared learning might be too antithetical to the hierarchical systems embedded in much of our institutional structures. We believe the two are not mutually exclusive. Schools are certainly places where institutional hierarchy remains important in ensuring educational excellence and the fulfillment of mission and vision, yet in our work we have found that formal and informal networks as well as networked thinking provide tremendous opportunities for shared learning and growth.

RAVSAK: The Jewish Community Day School Network offers an opportune case study in the evolution of networks and networked thinking. Founded as a grassroots network of Jewish community day school leaders, at a time when the fax was the latest technology, we have nonetheless only recently begun to recognize the implications of the word network and its centrality to how we fulfill our mission. As each of us separately began to realize the power of cultivating networks to satisfy our personal and professional goals, we started to consider how this way of thinking could stimulate change in the field of Jewish education.

Today, RAVSAK understands the need to embrace strategies and tools to maximize the potential of our Jewish community day school network for the broad cross-section of our 130 member schools and their own internal networks of professionals, board members, students and stakeholders. Over the past year we have been working with Darim Online’s Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, a program generously funded by The Covenant Foundation, which has invested in the development of many networked approaches across the field.

When we started with Darim, we thought it was all about finding the right technology, but as we’ve worked with our internal team (made up of committed professional staff and lay people) and our terrific coach, Lisa Colton, we’ve realized that it’s actually about finding the right people and building the right relationships, and only then figuring out what the right technology might be to help these relationships thrive. As a network, RAVSAK is in many ways an unintentional one. Its members share certain affiliations, yet often have interacted primarily through the professionals in the RAVSAK office. In our attempts to change the culture of our network from a hub and spokes model of learning, we are promoting new ways to decentralize knowledge and increase peer-peer learning and interactions, through the creation of a variety of network sub-groups.

We understand that successful networks emanate from relationships that inspire trust and are considering new ways to engender this trust, by emphasizing common interests, pre-existing relationships and shared needs. We know that learning stems from listening and we are beginning to implement new ways to hear the conversations that are happening within our own network and those that intersect with ours, as well as finding opportunities to generate new conversations. Beyond just providing the technology for a network conversation, we are experimenting with various approaches to designing and facilitating the learning experience in the network. By engaging in an intentional process of trial and error, we can measure the effectiveness of different tools, platforms and facilitative strategies. By training and supporting a network facilitator, we can simultaneously design the network, deepen relationships and cultivate a network culture of reflection amongst the network’s members.

Critical to this culture shift’s success within our network is to shift attention from the network as a product, and focus on cultivating the individuals who build these relationships and think deeply about how networks work – the network weavers. That’s why RAVSAK recently brought Yechiel Hoffman on board to work with us on transforming our unintentional network into an intentional one. Together, we hope to elevate RAVSAK's network engagement by understanding the nature of the network's member's needs and positioning within the network.  We are working together and with our members to create a model that reflects RAVSAK's strategic plan, and embodies and inspires the values and learning goals of the network’s participants. We need to recruit, train and coach the network facilitators to support RAVSAK’s networks and become part of a new cohort of network weavers impacting our field.

Eventually, we may not need individual network weavers woven into our institutions and networks. Eventually, every Jewish educator, communal professional, board member and Rabbi will naturally gravitate to fostering, nurturing and facilitating those in their networks to connect, grow and collaborate. But as referenced in Rabbi Herring's blog post, until institutions embrace networks and systems thinking, we depend on those who gravitate personally and professionally to this mode of thinking and behaving.

At this moment when technology has created disruptive opportunities for decentralized systems and shared learning, questions like Rabbi Herring’s are important opportunities for interrogating what formal and informal networks offer to Jewish organizations, the field of Jewish education and our work as Jewish professionals. We have found the theoretical and historical frameworks underlying network theory as well as the demonstrated learning and growth that comes from utilizing and activating natural and designed networks to be valuable in our own work. Rabbi Herring may be accurate in determining that many organizations rely on vertical hierarchies operating under command and control, and are more activity driven than mission driven. We believe the horizontal platform model of networks, oriented around influence rather than power, is the very reason we need networks and network weavers in our system. We should not be afraid that new models demand a shift from old paradigms, but rather explore how these new models prepare us for the inevitable new paradigms. The question becomes less how we un-weave our networks, but how we cultivate a field in which learning through networks becomes commonplace and as essential to leadership as any other skill.

Dr. Idana Goldberg is the Associate Executive Director at RAVSAK. You can reach her at [email protected]

Rabbi Yechiel Hoffman, is an Educator, Nonprofit Leader and Community Organizer, who is working as a consultant to RAVSAK on their network-weaving efforts.   He can be reached at [email protected]

RAVSAK participated in the Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, a year long program generously funded by The Covenant Foundation.  This series of blog posts this spring chart the learnings of the 10 teams in this year's cohort.

 

 

 

Jewish Day School Social Media Academy 2013-14

For the past two years, Darim Online has produced the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy to help schools advance their work in the connected age.  Through the Academy, schools learn about new tools and strategies for fund development, recruitment and alumni engagement in the social media age, and then put their new skills to work, and mature their internal operations.   Schools that have been accepted into the 2013-14 Academy participate in an intensive year of training, coaching and project-based learning, and are encouraged to share their learning and accomplishments with the field.   

“We have changed so significantly how we do everything. We communicate so much more effectively. For us it’s been an incredibly dramatic improvement.  I would do this Academy again in a heartbeat.” –- Denver Academy of Torah, 2012-13 cohort

“Our coach acted as mentor, cheerleader, consultant, expert and supporter.  It was invaluable.  It made all the difference.”   — San Diego Jewish Academy, 2012-13 cohort

Other schools and day school representatives are welcome to learn along with us.  We have a webinar series that is open to all, and we invite you to join and participate in the discussion in our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/jdssocialmedia/

Interested in joining our webinar series?  Sign up below!

 

 

 

 

 

Clarity

 

I recently drove my son to his doctor appointment. I hadn’t been to this doctor’s office in nearly a year and didn’t have directions, but I had a pretty good idea of how to get there. As I approached the general vicinity of the doctor’s office I realized I wasn’t as familiar with the area as I thought and the landmarks I was counting on just weren’t showing up!

After navigating a few semi-familiar twists and turns I did manage to get him there – although we were a bit late. Once there, I quietly vowed that I would always get directions before I embarked on another “leap of faith” trip (G-d help me if my wife reads this!)

So, what does my son’s doctor’s appointment have to do with the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy? Well, as I “hoped” my way to the appointment I also realized the quiet anxiety I encountered was the same feeling I had setting up and managing our school’s social media pages. I kind of knew where I was going; I figured I would see familiar places and instinctively know where to turn and when. That is no way to drive to an appointment and definitely no way to oversee a social media campaign.

Through our coaching calls and exercises in between, I’ve learned to map out a specific direction of where we want to go and how we plan to get there. I feel so much better now than I did embarking on this journey. The ambiguity I subtly felt has faded. It has been replaced with clarity and with that – a sense of relief.

Now that I am clear on our direction and how to achieve our set goals, I feel as though I finally have the flashlight I needed to help us find our way through the dark! OK, enough with the metaphors. The bottom line is that I really feel as though a weight that I was barely aware of has been lifted. OK, now enough of the metaphors.

Our social media experiment, along with that of our social media fundraising project, is well underway and our goals are clear. I am able to articulate these goals and the objectives along the way to our Board Members and to our staff. We have seen our membership grow, our “likes” increase substantially and, most importantly, we are effectively fundraising in a new and unique manner that I believe will become more and more familiar and commonplace as time passes.

Looking back over the whole process it reminds me of the simplicity of writing down a “to-do” list and then crossing off each item as I accomplish them. Oops, one last metaphor slipped in.

Harry Katcher is the new Director of Communications and Marketing at San Diego Jewish Academy. He replaces the outgoing Director of Marketing and Communications (note the subtle difference?). Harry has a BA in Journalism, a M.Ed. in Education, and a GPS for directions.

 

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.

 

 

Edah: Bringing our Community Together with Online Communications

edah_with_megillah.jpgEdah’s Jewish learning programs for K-5 students were already ahead of the curve when it came to understanding how to engage students, families and communities. Edah’s experiential and project based learning infused with rich Hebrew and Judaic content has been reaching children who participate in its programs since 2010. Parents directly benefit from Edah too. The regular updates on educational units, family programming, and retreats provide family learning opportunities connected to the Jewish calendar. Even our organization’s name “Edah” meaning “community” speaks to the intergenerational and social nature of our educational philosophy and approach. Until recent months, Edah’s communications existed in a very basic set of website, email, and facebook group channels.

Participation in Darim’s Social Media Boot Camp for Educators was an indication of Edah’s intention to strengthen our community’s online networks by increasing our web presence and utilizing digital communications tools. One message that came across in all sessions of the Boot Camp was that a functioning, enhanced online network could strengthen Edah’s community. By community, they meant not only our community of participants, but also our larger community of stakeholders and funders that have supported our emergence and growth. Joshua Venture Group’s May 29, 2013 report Change the Conversation, Change the World echoes the need to remain visible to funders and align with funding priorities – two aspects of organizational sustainability and growth that can be achieved in large part through the online communications world.

edahs_basic_social_system.jpgIn spring 2013, Edah built a Facebook page, connected it with our Twitter account, launched a new colorful website and set up a blog. While Edah has been building an extensive library of multi-media documentation of our innovative “complimentary” Jewish educational program, we now have tapped into the critical digital systems that will more efficiently present our work to families, stakeholders, and colleagues alike. The private Edah Facebook group that was set up when we began in 2010 continues to serve its purpose well, as a hub where parents, staff, lay leaders, and our wider network members share information about Edah and community interests.

For our afterschool and out-of-school programs, the outstanding Edah educators put in tremendous effort to provide our students with integrative learning stations, and to equip our youth with authentic and engaging ways to absorb Hebrew and Judaism and deepen their personal Jewish identity. For our camp and special day programs, educational leaders have the freedom to develop adventurous participatory storytelling, creative and artistic multi-sensory exploration, and project-based studies. Bright excerpts of Edah life can now be viewed, understood, shared, and enjoyed through our new social channels.

The biggest internal change that was required by our renewed focus on social media is that Edah is building communications into our business infrastructure. It takes time to grow comfortable in all the online platforms in order to manipulate each to serve its purpose effectively for the organization, so it helps that our staff person responsible for the communications system has experience utilizing the online tools. Now that our basic system is almost in place, our next step is to establish a regular communications calendar routine that involves educators, administrators, and leadership to capture and share the exciting Edah curriculum and media out into virtual realms.

In Edah’s environment of thriving Jewish learning, leaders and educators do not struggle with concepts like emotional intelligence, empathy and middot, digital learning, inclusivity or design thinking. Our savvy leadership has its finger on the pulse of research regarding learning, in general, and Jewish learning, in specific, and helps apply that to our own program as well as through Nitzan – a network of innovative Jewish afterschool programs throughout North America that Edah leaders catalyzed and facilitate. We look forward to applying our social media strategies and new online systems to upgrade our broader professional collaborations through Nitzan’s website and other upcoming web-based venues.

Wendy Kenin is the Coordinator for Edah.  This year Edah participated in the Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, a year long program generously funded by The Covenant Foundation.  This series of blog posts this spring chart the learnings of the 10 teams in this year's cohort.

Launching Teacher Blogs at JCDSRI

 

This year we were lucky enough to be accepted into the Social Media Boot Camp for Jewish Educators. We were provided with a coach to help us achieve our goal of school wide classroom blogs.  We met with our coach, Shira Liebowitz, about the milestones we met, the challenges we faced, and to chunk up our goals for month to month, measurable, small successes. Shira was a great sounding board and provided us with wonderful suggestions to help us reach each objective.  

Through a combination of the Darim Boot Camp and our school's own 21st century learning initiative, we have made great strides in teacher blogging.  We used WordPress to create an overall cohesive structure and designed look where we share classroom news, student work, and ideas with our parents, community, and the greater educational world.   With our blogs, parents, and grandparents, without stepping foot in the classroom, have been able to see what we do and engage with their children in a meaningful way. 

“With Darim's guidance, we were able to bring blogging to a new level,” said Sari Guttin, 2nd grade teacher.  “Not only have our blogs replaced newsletters, but they have become a forum for discussion between parents and students, students and administration, and students and teachers.”

Blogs help to extend the school day by providing discussion topics for families to think about at home.  Because all our blogs are hosted on the same platform, it allows for uniformity and connectedness between individual classrooms and the school.  

jcdsri_blog.png“Starting a classroom blog this year has allowed me to be a reflective practitioner and invite others into the classroom,” said Jessica Perlman, Kindergarten teacher.  “By composing the blog posts and questions for readers, I have been able to truly reflect on the learning and goals of each lesson, as well as the steps taken, allowing the curriculum to become a living document.” 

Initially, our blog postings were weekly summaries. As the year progressed, they emerged into detailed accounts of classroom activity, complete with photographs and direct student quotes.  Additionally, teachers incorporate questions aimed to encourage parents and students to want to engage in further discussions. 

“Our blogs have enabled me, a part-time, specialty teacher, to stay connected with class happenings,” said Karolyn White.  “I can easily check the blogs to learn what’s new. I especially appreciate the depth of the blogs, which frequently include explanations, goals, results and descriptive photos. Our blogs encourage me to reflect on the class updates, collaborate with teachers and modify content or format of my library lessons, making them more informative and pertinent.” 

Our blogs have become valuable resources that promote our students, families, faculty and administration to stay connected.  The mentoring provided by Darim has helped scaffold this process as well as provide a great sense of comfort and support.  As a faculty, we are feeling excited about this "21st Century" way of communication and collaboration and we thank Darim Online and The Covenant Foundation for launching us on our way.

Shari Weinberger is the Curriculum Coordinator at the Jewish Community Day School of Rhode Island, and wrote this post with input from team members, Sari Guttin, Grade 2, Jessica Perlman, Kindergarten and Karolyn White, Librarian and Communications Manager.  To view our blogs click on the link http://www.jcdsri.org/podium/default.aspx?t=142596&rc=0

This year JCDSRI participated in the Social Media Boot Camp for Educators, a year long program generously funded by The Covenant Foundation.  This series of blog posts this spring chart the learnings of the 10 teams in this year's cohort.

 

 

 

 

Becoming Social: Risk Taking, Transparency and Innovation

Prior to participating in the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy, our school culture was pretty conservative when it came to social media, so many ideas that we brought home from the kick off meeting felt very risky and foreign to us.

Within the first week of this program, we turned on the tagging function on our Facebook page to allow for interaction and transparency. At the time, letting go of this control felt unintuitive and scary.

zumba.pngThat same week, we noticed a student-led Zumba class happening in the courtyard and we impulsively took a 30-second video. We never would have posted something like this previously because it felt personal and exposed in terms of the students, and it was also an activity that was wholly social and not connected to any mission-specific message. In short, it was just fun. In response to the post, we received an unprecedented number of likes, comments and shares from students, parents and community members. This “experiment” started a ripple effect in terms of taking risks.

The only video that had ever been leveraged for fundraising at JCHS was very high-end, in that it was professionally shot and produced. So Lisa Colton’s suggestion to “be brave” and do quick and dirty videos was intriguing and exciting. The discussion at the kickoff meeting about how to deal with negative online feedback made us feel as if we could jump and go for it with our own videos.

We shot a short video with teachers and students that showed areas the Annual Fund supports at JCHS such as athletics, drama and science.  We shared this video on our web page, through eBlasts and on Facebook which added a much-needed spike in parent momentum/interest. The video resulted in 12 online gifts the first night we posted it – which was also unprecedented. From here we became addicted to both making fun, creative videos and the momentum they inspired. We got sillier and people liked it.

As the year progressed, through the Annual Fund and into our Darim fundraising challenge and spring fundraising event, we became comfortable – and quite happy – with this new cultural norm of risk taking, transparency and innovation. Our “capstone” project for the Academy was a fundraising challenge to our 271 alumni. The greatest percentage of them to give in one year to date had been 9%. We challenged ourselves to receive at least 50% participation from our alumni during the month of April to receive a matching grant from AVI CHAI. JCHS is only 12 years old. Most of our alumni are still in college and not financially independent, so this was a big challenge for us.

teacher.pngWe kicked off our alumni campaign with a slide show of 8 JCHS graduation ceremonies.  This video created our first wave of momentum, but we noticed immediately that the “fire” required constant stoking to keep gifts rolling in. We then came up with a teacher campaign asking students to give Our alumni mavens were key in tagging these photos and creating a buzz that increased with each new teacher photo. During this photo campaign, one of our alumni mavens suggested that what would really work with older alumni is to see photos of their teachers from the early years who are no longer teaching at JCHS. As one of us has been here for 10 years, reaching out to these teachers on Facebook was easy and they all responded quickly and enthusiastically.  See an example of the reactions on Facebook. 

Not only did we achieve our 50% goal, but in the final push, which was very targeted from alum to alum, we achieved 61% alumni participation (166 alums). The impact from this challenge continues to show through feedback about how much they enjoyed talking to each other and reminiscing about JCHS, to a record number of alumni attending the spring fundraising event. This year of social media was educational, fun, and it truly shifted our culture in a way that supports community at JCHS.

Julie Vlcek-Burke has been at JCHS since 2003 and is the Director of Development. Maura Feingold has been at JCHS since 2007 and is the Marketing Manager.

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.

Social Media Brings Alumni into the Conversation at Brandeis Hillel Day School

As a two-campus school serving 600 students and their families in the San Francisco Bay Area, we keep our community engaged and informed through a robust website, two packed weekly e-newsletters, class-specific updates and other publications. Yet, as our 50th anniversary approached last year, we wanted to quickly and effectively invite alumni and alumni families – along with the rest of our community – into the celebration (and conversation).

At the time, our Facebook page was in its infancy, with a few “likes” and content mirroring our website. Our separate alumni Facebook page had waxed and waned – and seemed disconnected from our daily life as an institution. Then came the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy– and everything changed.

Within the first few months, we developed a plan to invite alumni back into our daily conversation – as part of our extended BHDS family. We decided to focus our social media efforts on just one Facebook page, where our entire community could celebrate our 50th anniversary – as well as our daily life. We thought more creatively about making putting the “social” back in our social media by inviting more two-way conversations – and by experimenting with content and types of media. 

Some posts worked well – some did not. We learned as much from our failures as we did from our successes. Most importantly, we “discovered” much of what we knew all along – that our alumni have treasured memories from their years at BHDS, and that they they like photos and video from school days. We also noticed that they like to see news from the present…and that they care about helping the school build its future.

Encouraged by our coach, we decided to take a big chance on online fundraising. Thanks to the generosity of the AVI CHAI Foundation and all our learning through the JDS academy, we designed a fundraising drive to challenge our alumni to a 2:1 match to a donation of $18 or more to the school through Razoo, a social media fundraising site. The results were thrilling. Thanks to the enthusiastic response from our alumni and their families, we raised an unprecedented amount for BHDS in two weeks. More importantly, we brought our alumni and their families into our conversation and celebration in a way we never had before.

We learned a great deal from the chances we took this year – how to set up a social media-based fundraising drive, how to think through posting challenges and how to connect with our alumni in a more authentic way. Most importantly, we ended up with perhaps more even more valuable takeaways from our failures – knowing what doesn’t work is just as important as knowing what does.

Our social media foundation is strong. Our Facebook page has become a critical tool in our daily interaction as a community, more than tripling in users and updated with frequent, fresh posts several times per week. We recently launched our YouTube page, and we’re experimenting with best practices there as well. We’re considering additional social media tools, and look forward to build on the progress we’ve made. Along the way, we plan to take chances, experiment, and continue to learning as we move forward.

Join our conversation! Visit us on Facebook or contact Sonia Daccarett, Director of Communications at Brandeis Hillel Day School at [email protected].
 

Joan Fishbein Feldman is the Director of Communications of Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Baltimore, Maryland. Beth Tfiloh Dahan is the area’s largest coed Jewish day school, with students from PreSchool through Grade 12.

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.

 

Facebook: A Transformation

 

Imagine this: a school without a Facebook page! How could this be?

We asked ourselves the same thing, prior to joining the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy. With approximately 400 students ranging from 18 months – 5th grade, Temple Beth Am Day School is a large Reform Jewish Day School that is part of Temple Beth Am in Pinecrest, Florida. While the Temple had an already existing and active Facebook page, the School was overdue in its use of social media. Upon joining the Academy, we realized immediately that it was imperative for the School to have its own page. Upon starting the new page, we had 5 likes, which included two community members, the Temple Communications Director, the Campus webmaster, and me. We knew we had work to do! With the help of our exceptional coach, Jenna Silverman of Big Duck NYC, we merged our various groups, pages, and places to create a clean and efficient Facebook page. Voila! It was time to launch our “Like Campaign”. In just a few months, we acquired 158 “likes”, and counting. Our active page is the place to go for the most up to date photos and information from our school.

The shift was palpable in our administration, as well as our parent body. Parents delighted at the opportunity to share our posts with their friends and family. We delighted at the opportunity to break down the walls of our regular e-mail blasts, and use social media to engage our parents. I (as the Admissions Director) continue to delight in the opportunity to access a whole new group of prospective school families in a way that is sincere and direct!

Our very supportive school administration is constantly informing me of school “moments” or events that should be posted on our page, and linked back to our website. Our Communications Director “shares” relevant posts between the Temple and School pages to make for one consistent social media “thread” from our facility. This has allowed for an opportunity for School families to have knowledge of Temple happenings, and vice versa. We truly take pride in the social media collaboration that has evolved from this experience.

As our School evaluates how we will use technology in a way that is purposeful, meaningful and effective; the leaps that we have made in our use of social media are on target.  We eagerly anticipate the future use of a School blog, Twitter account, and updated website. We also hope to create an alumni page that allows Temple Beth Am Day School alumni to be aware of all that is happening today on this vibrant campus. We have truly evolved in our knowledge and use of social media, and we are grateful for this transformation.

Cari Altman is the Director of Admissions at Temple Beth Am Day School in Pinecrest, Florida. A Pinecrest native, she truly appreciates the importance of the values-based education that comes from a Jewish Day School education.

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.