School Programs

TCI recognizes that every school is different, and is committed to working in partnership with students, teachers, and administrators to customize TCI’s resources to best fit the needs of each school.

TCI is available to help plan and facilitate all-school programs. From film-screenings to guest speakers to panels, we work with diversity directors, chaplains, and deans to plan programs that celebrate Jewish holidays or bring Jewish lenses to bear on topics relevant to school communities. For example, TCI partnered with California’s Menlo School to run a day-long program on the diversity of Israeli society and culture, that helped students and teachers to hold nuanced and productive dialogues about a charged and sensitive topic.
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TCI educators are available as guest teachers for history, literature, and comparative religion classes. We bring Jewish methodologies and content to a range of subject areas. For example, in New York in the years following September 11, TCI ran classroom programs at schools such as Dalton, Hewitt, Packer, and Riverdale on multiculturalism in the Middle East. The classes helped to dismantle stereotypes about monoculturalism in the Middle East through a particular examination of historical, cultural collaboration between Jews and Muslims.
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TCI educators are the primary Jewish club advisors at a range of schools including Washington DC’s Edmund Burke. At other schools, we work closely with the designated faculty advisor. Jewish student clubs are a great way for Jewish students and their friends to learn, socialize, plan school programs, and develop critical leadership skills. TCI provides mentoring, resources, and training to students and faculty to turn clubs into robust and enriching experiences.
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Lunch is a perfect time to bring students together for a discussion. At the Trinity school in New York, TCI ran a series of discussions with the Jewish and African American Student clubs. One such discussion explored Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I have a Dream Speech,” in which King referenced not only Abraham Lincoln, but the biblical Jewish prophets Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Students explored the reasons and relevance behind King’s decision to position himself in line with the Jewish prophetic tradition.
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TCI can plan special, off-campus trips such as a day-long program developed for Baltimore’s Bryn Mawr School. TCI brought the entire 10th grade class to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for a day of learning and discussion with museum scholars as part of the school’s history curriculum.
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TCI provides service-learning opportunities for students to learn about the nexus between Jewish values and social justice. Our model, developed in partnership with New York’s Ethical Culture Fieldston School, has taken students as far afield as post-Katrina New Orleans. Our recent focus on local service-learning opportunities has included programs such as trips with the Friends School of Baltimore to the Kayam Farm and Environmental Education Center.
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TCI can facilitate learning opportunities that bridge different school communities, broadening a program’s impact and forging new relationships between schools. Examples include a Seder planned and facilitated by students from New England’s Dana Hall School and the Cambridge School of Weston. Another example is San Francisco’s Jewish Teen Coalition, which brings together students from schools across the San Francisco Bay Area for regular service projects, socializing, and learning.
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