By Syd Holt
Before a long Sunday of Nachshon learning about our camp and campus projects, we were lucky to hear Shalom Orzach speak about experiential education. Although we have talked about this topic often during several Nachshon sessions, Shalom provided a different perspective on the experiential education, and truly made me feel more prepared when we began talking about our camp and campus projects.
Shalom illustrated the importance of knowing what you're doing in education and why you’re doing it. He stated that if you don’t know what you’re doing, you need to stop immediately and always hold yourself accountable, or else the education will not be successful or beneficial to the audience. He stressed the importance of what we’re doing, and how crucial it is for there to be intention behind it.
Shalom provided us with a Hebrew phrase: “תנוך לנער על פי דרכו” which means “teach according to this way.” He displayed that successful education is about looking deeply into the personality of the audience/person who you are encountering and creating something accordingly. Then, thinking about “על פי דרכו” or where is the path they are going to go? What is their reality? By organizing an educational program with this in mind, the audience is able to truly gain something from what is being taught. Shalom showed us that “success of educational experiences will be seen if the experience can live on or will live on outside the classroom.” After hearing this, I gained a lot more confidence in my ability to truly teach and impact my audience with my camp and campus projects.
I really appreciated listening to Shalom Orzach speak, especially right before we began planning our Nachshon projects. With his perspectives fresh in my mind, I was able to start brainstorming what I wanted to do for my program and how I was going to successfully impact my audience. Shalom's ideas provided me with more insight on how to be a great Jewish experiential educator, and will definitely help me with my projects and in the future at camp and in my career as a Jewish professional.
