Full-bodied Learning and Teaching

In Sammie Brenner’s preK classroom, learners practice moving their bodies and cultivate a rich educational ground from which to grow. Unlike her completely online experience in the Hitlamdut Fellowship at The William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education, Brenner is on the move all day.

It wasn’t a hard decision for Sammie Brenner to become a teacher. She grew up in Bergen Country, NJ, in what she calls a “Jewish bubble,” and is a graduate of Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County. At Muhlenberg College, she studied English and Jewish studies and in her senior year decided to pursue a career in education. Brenner loved Jewish day school and was thrilled to accept a position teaching preK at Ramaz in New York City, following in the footsteps of her grandmother who taught preK at the Moriah School in Englewood, NJ for 20 years.

“Having gone through the ‘system,’ of Jewish education, I know that I have been shaped by the Jewish educators in my life,” said Brenner. Becoming a teacher would enable Brenner to make a similar impact going forward.

Brenner spent most of her childhood summers at Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, and she has remained on staff for the past 10 years. It was director Rabbi Ami Hersh (see profile in this issue) who connected her to the William Davidson School of Jewish Education the summer before she started working at Ramaz. “Ami introduced me to then-dean Shira Epstein who suggested I apply to for the Hitlamdut Fellowship.” Brenner graduated from Muhlenberg in May 2021, started working at Ramaz in August and entered Davidson in September.

The Hitlamdut Fellowship is designed for novice Judaic studies teachers. Participants are enrolled in Davidson’s online, part-time, asynchronous MA program while they are teaching in a day school full-time. The name Hitlamdut reflects the Mussar-based value of mindfulness through learning. A key feature of the fellowship—in addition to coursework with Davidson and JTS faculty–is individualized and cohort-based coaching and feedback.

For Brenner, whose 2020 semester abroad in Israel as a Nachshon fellow was cut short by Covid, online learning had become second nature by that point. “Davidson had been offering asynchronous classes for some time already, and I was fortunate that Hitlamdut was a perfect match for my schedule.” While Brenner acknowledged that the isolation of sitting and studying alone was challenging and even lonely at times, she gained much from the intensity of the program and camaraderie with the other Hitlamdut fellows.

“Being part of a small cohort of other novice teachers created a community in which I could learn and grow, whether it was in person or not,” said Brenner. “I had only been to the JTS campus a few times throughout my years in the fellowship, and the other fellows were the only students I knew. Hitlamdut was really a savior,” she said, adding that she still has yet to meet one of her cohort members in “real life.”

By teaching at the same time as she was herself learning, Brenner found an ideal combination. “We would unpack case studies on ways to strengthen teaching, and I could then bring these ideas into my classes right away,” she said. “My professors were right there for me, helping me work on lesson plans and then reviewing my self-recorded teaching.”

As a preK teacher, Brenner has no choice but to keep things moving, a welcome change from the solitary and stationary part of her graduate studies. “Our schedule is built for a lot of active learning,” she said. When learning the letter C, for instance, Brenner’s class practices moving like cats. Brenner knows that children at this age learn through play, and creativity is a powerful teaching tool.

“I have learned a lot about movement,” said Brenner, confirming that some of the basic modalities that work for young learners establish patterns that lead to lifelong social and emotional health, as well as good habits for learning. “We are attentive to the physical needs of the children in our classroom; we know that their bodies have to be ready to learn just as much as their minds.”

In Brenner’s classroom, for example, she encourages her students to relax their bodies. “We want to be loose like cooked spaghetti,” she tells them. “We don’t want to be like raw pasta that has trouble going with the flow.”

With preK being a transitional year for many, in Brenner’s classroom there is a deliberate “January shift” in an effort to prepare for the expectations of kindergarten. “We start to flip our model and have the children sit for longer times, practicing for kindergarten,” she said. Using timers and games, she still incorporates moving around but models and explicitly teaches ways for students to control their bodies more.

When she reflects back on what it was like to finish college during the pandemic and complete her MA sitting by herself in her apartment, Brenner finds further resonance in the term Hitlamdut, which is often translated as “self-learning” or “internalizing what you learn.” “Making your learning a part of you comes so naturally to young learners,” said Brenner. “The challenge is to continue that ‘full-body reflective experience’ throughout a lifetime of learning.”