Today is February 6, 2012 - 13 Shevat 5772
A New Look at Informal Educational Practices
Informal Jewish Educators always wonder about the impact they are making on their students. Over the years, I have been part of many late night staff conversations at USY conventions and camps where we discussed whether the participants liked the educational material, whether they thought it was relevant and most importantly, what effect our sessions have on their lives.
While there is significant research regarding formal education and informal Jewish education in camping, youth groups unfortunately have not received the same attention. This is surprising since every event provides us with an opportunity to understand our youth and our programming better.
I am pleased to announce that this year, the METNY Department of Youth Activities will survey our USYers and Kadimaniks after each regional event and use the information to better understand the work we do and the impact of our programs. This will be accomplished by collecting and analyzing information regarding our educational themes and materials. It is our hope that this information will allow us to create a solid foundation for creating an overall pedagogic approach for all of METNY’s youth programs.
This past August we surveyed the USYers and Kadimaniks at the beginning of METNY Encampment, where 411 youth participated for nine days at Ramah Berkshires, and again at the end of the week. The questions in these surveys targeted information regarding their content knowledge, attitude and personal behavior regarding Judaism in general and the subject of Kashrut, which was the week’s educational theme, in particular. Whereas the Encampment surveys provided us with fertile initial data, at this point it can only be used to measure a change in their level of content knowledge. The next step will be to redistribute the surveys on kashrut at our METNY Winter Kallah in February. This will allow us to measure if there was any extended change in the youth’s attitude and behavior.
Although it is still early in our process, there were several encouraging numbers from the Encampment surveys. When the participants were asked whether or not they felt that it was a good idea to discuss kashrut, 57% of the participants responded “yes.” Of the remainer, only 11% responded “no” (32% not sure.)
Another interesting statistic was that 90% (32% A Lot, 58% Some) responded that they learned a significant amount of information during the week. Finally, we asked the participants if their kashrut observance would change after Encampment. Remarkably nearly 60% of the participants answered that their observance would or may change (12% Yes, 47% Maybe).
One final statistic worth noting at this point is in regard to how the students thought they would feel about kashrut in regards to their own children someday. According to our data 84% would like kashrut to be an important part of their lives when they have families.
While this is only the first phase of our research, it is clear that METNY’s Department of Youth Activities is taking important steps to better serve our children. As the year progresses we will update our findings and present a final analysis at the end of the year. Using this information we will be able to tailor our informal educational material and overall program to meet our goals and those of our youth.
We are grateful to David Hauser, PhD for his guidance with this project. David is a former USY Divisional Director and currently serves as the METNY Senior Leadership Coordinator.
It is our intention to present more findings via email and at the Spring Leadership Conference in March.
For more information, please contact me at (212) 533-0800 or siegel@uscj.org. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
