“Whether you are a teacher, a kid or a parent, we’re all on a Jewish journey together,” said Karen Faust. And that is the case “even if you are not Jewish, because we’re always learning about Judaism.”
Faust is not Jewish. Yet ever since she began working at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center in 1997, she has been on a Jewish journey and has been helping children with theirs.
Today, Faust is one of the leadership team members at the JCC’s Gan Ami Early Childhood Education preschool program. And last month, her Jewish journey began to take a big step forward.
Faust is one of 19 early childhood educators from across the U.S. and Canada chosen by the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America to participate in its first Sheva-Covenant Directors Institute for early childhood educators.
According to a JCCA news release, the organization has found that about 40 percent of JCC early childhood education directors will be retiring in the next five to seven years, and there has been no plan in place for replacing them.
This institute seeks to address that problem. Funded by a $230,000 grant from the Covenant Foundation, the program includes three years of individual study, group retreats and a study tour to Israel.
The program is called Sheva — Hebrew for “seven” — because it is built around seven “core elements” that involve matters that include how children learn, “families as engaged partners,” teaching skills and Israel.
Faust said the first group retreat would begin at the end of July and involve primarily meeting the other participants, being introduced to the program and receiving the books that the group will study.
She will continue working at the JCC while she is participating in Sheva, and as part of the program is committed to stay there for two years after the study is completed, making the program last five years total.
It has taken some time for Faust to learn that early childhood education is her love. She grew up on a dairy farm in New Holstein and at Cardinal Stritch University majored in sociology and minored in religious studies.
Her first tasks at the JCC involved the after school program, camp and her first exposure to early childhood education. She left a couple of times, first to do therapy for troubled children in New Hampshire, then to earn a graduate degree in special education and to teach middle school at the Milwaukee Public Schools.
“I learned that middle school was not for me and that I liked to be with little kids,” particularly those 2 years old and under, she said. When asked why, she said she felt they have “passion for learning. You can just see it in the way their eyes light up.”
Loading ...