Children express themselves in a myriad of ways. For Eliana Eshel, this is why it’s essential to incorporate interactive opportunities for children to learn about their faith.
“It’s about teaching the values we try to live by to our children,” said Eshel, a Jewish early childhood center (ECC) teacher at United Hebrew Congregation’s Saul Spielberg Early Childhood Center.
While Eshel is busy as an instructor in St. Louis, she is also hard at work coaching educators and collaborating with the Paradigm Project, an organization whose goal is to enhance Jewish early childhood education through educator empowerment.
The Israeli native recently returned from the Paradigm Project’s annual conference in Waynesville, Pa., and has spent the past year working on a special project with the organization to broaden the reach of Stories from the Field, inspirational stories that reflect on the practices of Jewish early childhood education. Now, these unique stories are available through an online platform and can be seen by educators around the globe.
A new teaching opportunity
Making the cultural transition to the United States took time; so did following a new career path.
Back home, Eshel taught puppetry and arts and crafts at the American Embassy school in Israel. After coming to St. Louis in 2016, she wanted to pursue another teaching opportunity. However, as a busy mom, any new job needed to work around her children’s schedules.
Lauren Lourie, the director of early childhood education and engagement at United Hebrew and chair of the ECC’s Director’s Council, offered Eshel a job as an ECC teacher in the toddler room — the same congregation where her children attended preschool.
“In the first couple of years, I was more in an observant stage of just like, ‘How do people practice Judaism here? How do they run their school? What does early childhood education look like here?’ ” Eshel said.
Teaching became more complicated when the pandemic hit in 2020 and Eshel was tasked with instructing students remotely.
Each day over Zoom, she met with students and parents to discuss ideas for fun, interactive activities, including arts and crafts, reading stories together, sing-alongs and more.
“We were all stuck in our homes, but seeking connections,” Eshel said. “The best thing to do for ourselves was bring us all together for community time.”
Fostering the future of education
After returning from COVID, educators knew old, outdated ways of teaching were no longer enough.
“What we decided as directors is that we really wanted to professionalize our field,” Lourie said. “We all approached COVID the same and relied on each other for support and collaboration, despite how different our programs can be.”
Brian Herstig, then-president and CEO of Jewish Federation of St. Louis (he departed in June), met with early childhood education directors and other interested parties to discuss this idea further. Several of the directors wrote a grant that was funded by Federation called the St. Louis Early Childhood Initiative.
Through the grant’s funding, the Early Childhood Council created communities of practice with the Paradigm Project. This involved monthly meetings, training with a mentor in the program and a pop-up conference in St. Louis. Later on, Eshel and other educators also began attending other conferences with the Paradigm Project around the United States.
Watching other educators share their experiences in the classroom fascinated Eshel. She recalls how a shared story from Josh Rifkin at a conference in Colorado affected her.
Rifkin, an early childhood educator at the Staenberg-Loup Jewish Community Center in Denver, talked about using technology during COVID.
“They started bringing people in through the projector, like a grandparent,” Eshel said. “They would project it to the children and have them kind of interact with the children in the classroom. I thought ‘Oh wow. This is amazing.’ ”
Though Eshel had little experience with technology, she decided to test the idea in her classroom after the pandemic.
“I plugged in a projector and I thought, ‘OK. Let’s play around,’ ” she said.
Eshel began projecting different kinds of images and videos on the classroom wall, starting with YouTube videos from under the sea.
“With a projector, when you walk in front of it, it actually projects on your body,” she said. “You can feel like you’re swimming with the fish in the ocean.”
The future of Jewish early childhood education
In 2022, one of Eshel’s mentors, Veronica Maravankin, invited her to help plan the Paradigm Project’s annual conference and share a story from the field. (Maravankin is now vice president of the Sheva Center for Innovation in Early Childhood Jewish Education and Engagement at the JCC Association of North America.)
By 2023’s annual conference, Anna Hartman, associate vice president at the Jewish United Fund, and Jenna Turner, head of the Paradigm Project, realized these stories needed a platform to share and connect with other educators.
With the help of Tiny Windows, a “digital communications consultancy to help leaders of Jewish nonprofits get strategic, confident, creative and lead with belonging in the digital age,” this vision became reality.
Eshel continues to work with the Paradigm Project and share Stories from the Field. Her most recent video is titled “Learning a New Language,” which emphasizes early childhood educator Loris Malaguzzi’s mantra that children have “100 languages,” a concept in early childhood education about how children can connect and explore their thoughts, feelings and imaginings in an infinite number of ways.
Now, whether it’s field trips to explore the synagogue or immersive activities in the classroom that shine a light on Judaism, Eshel continues to find new ways to enhance the teaching landscape for students and educators alike via shared experience.
“It doesn’t matter where you are in the world,” she said. “Now we have the ability to communicate, collaborate and share stories.”
Stay tuned. More Stories from the Field are in the works.
