This year I served as a member of the Clinical Faculty of the Rhea Hirsch School of Education at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religious Jack H. Skirball Campus. It was an honor to mentor a student in his work at Temple Beth Hillel. Today, the day of his graduation, I was able to offer him this blessing:

Time, precious time, continues to be a blessing and a curse. And so, as we do, I thought to turn to words from our Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, that marvelous source of wisdom and guidance, to reflect and to bless you on your journey.

לכל זמן ועת לכל-חפץ תחת השמים:

A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven.

So too, The Rhea Hirsch School of Education sets a lesson for everything, a time for every educative experience under heaven.

A time for Understanding by Design, and a time for throwing out the plan and generating a new one.

A time for John Dewey’s constructivism and a time for E.D. Hirsch‘s core knowledge in our Jewish educational settings.

A time for the structural frame. A time for the human resources frame. A time for the cultural frame. A time for the political frame.

A time for Bloom’s Taxonomy and a time for Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.

A time for a Dewey-ian deliberation and a time for noticing, appreciating, and wondering.

A time for a supervision cycle and a time for a walk-through.

A time for project based learning and a time for memorization of facts.

A time for camp and a time for the classroom.

A time to lead as a teacher and a time to engage as a student,.

A time to see the forest and a time to study each tree.

There is a proper time for it all.

May you go from strength to strength with your expanded tool kit to teach the next generation of our people. Amen.