Submitted by Rina Hoffman, Co-Director
Note: The information in this profile represents SY2012-13 unless otherwise indicated.
School Overview
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School Description
The Binah School is an experiential Orthodox Jewish middle and high school for girls located in Sharon, MA that combines the best of contemporary, research-based educational methods and traditional, text-driven Jewish studies in an interdisciplinary curriculum designed to nurture and develop the next generation of Jewish women thought leaders.
Blended Learning Program
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Program Model
Program model: Station Rotation, Flipped Classroom, A La Carte
Model description
The Binah School is experimenting with different blended-learning models for different coursework. Hebrew courses are delivered entirely online using an online teacher-of-record based in Israel. For math, students rotate at the teacher’s discretion among classroom-based learning modalities, including one station for online learning. The school has also experimented in blending science and history classes by having students rotate between face-to-face teacher-guided practice and delivery of content and instruction from home where the primary delivery of content and instruction is online.
Program Description
How much time do students spend on campus in this blended-learning program? How much of this time do students spend learning online or with educational software?
Students at the Binah School are on campus 100 percent of the time. Although the time students spend learning online or with educational software may vary from class to class, administrators estimate that students spend an average of 15 percent of their time learning online or with educational software.
Briefly describe the offline components of this blended-learning program.
The school has placed on focus on project-based and experiential learning. In addition to traditional offline learning modalities such as direct teacher instruction, in-class group work, reading discussions, and paper-and-pencil assignments, students also have the opportunity to learn off campus. Students engage in service work and hands-on design work the real world. For example, in order to help strengthen the students’ understanding of the concept of justice, students selected a social justice issue, chose an organization that embodies that issue, and then visited to the organization to observe the work, interview some of the employees, and create advocacy videos around the issue of their choice.
How does this blended-learning program fit into the rest of the students’ school day?
The students’ daily engagement in blended learning is at the teacher’s discretion. The school day always begins with a prayer class and from there students either go to a science class that could include some online coursework or students could head to a Judaic class that is not blended at all. The days during which students are engaged in blended learning depend on whether or not the teacher’s lesson plans include station rotations or online coursework on that day.
What are the teachers’ roles and responsibilities in both the online and offline components of this blended-learning program?
Teachers at The Binah School are responsible for creating lesson plans, delivering face-to-face instruction, and creating assignments to further understanding. They are also responsible for analyzing real-time student data to address individual needs, and blending direct instruction with assignments using online software to help differentiate the students’ learning experiences. For the Hebrew class, teachers are based in Israel. Their responsibilities as online teachers include traditional crafting lesson plans, direct online instruction, ensuring students stay on track, and creating assignments and projects for students to work on.
What other adults are involved in this blended-learning program (e.g., paraprofessionals, learning coaches, counselors) and what are their roles and responsibilities?
The Binah School employs a tech support employee to assist with any technological issues or issues with the computers. The school also employs two Hebrew proctors who serve as the face-to-face support employees for students in the online Hebrew class. The school also employs advisors for each student to help them continue to make progress and work towards graduation and a blended-learning consultant to aid in analyzing student data and help teachers and students become more familiar and comfortable with the blended-learning initiatives.
Briefly describe the set-up of physical space for this blended-learning program.
The students work in classrooms and because students bring their own devices to school with them, none of the classrooms are equipped with computers. The classrooms are furnished so that students can choose their learning environment. There are tables set up for group learning and there are also lounge areas for when the class breaks out into individual work and students are looking for a more comfortable place to complete their individual assignments.
How are students grouped within this blended-learning program?
With only nine students in the entire school, many of the classes, although not all of them, are multi-age classrooms and most of the classrooms have all the students together. Once in the classrooms, students are usually separated by achievement and academic progress.
Do students have some element of control over the pacing of their learning? Are students tied to a semester-based course schedule or can they complete courses at any time? Briefly describe any requirements or benchmarks in place to ensure student progress.
Students at the Binah School have very little control over the pacing of their learning at least in this school year. Students are tied to a semester-based schedule and while students are able to move ahead in some of the classes and there is some variation within each class, students of the same grade level are generally always in the same place in terms of the curriculum.
Describe the academic results of the program, using quantitative data where possible.
The Binah School is in its first year of operation and doesn’t have any quantitative academic results as of yet.
Describe any financial impact this blended-learning program has had on your cost of operations. Use numbers when possible.
The school is hoping that their blended-learning models will boost the cost-effectiveness of their operations. The multi-age classrooms have helped the school save money on hiring additional teachers and staff, the online simulations and coursework has helped the school save on the cost of equipment. Additionally, the opportunity to offer additional content courses online has helped the school save on hiring additional teachers for those classes.
What have been the biggest obstacles in implementing this blended-learning program? What has needed adjustment along the way?
The school has felt that even the online coursework and online education software it uses is taught in a very traditional sense, which makes it more difficult to use in a school that values a more experiential way of education. Administrators and teachers have found that the online coursework isn’t very user-friendly and some of the online coursework looks very similar to what a textbook would look like, only it is being delivered online.
Have you or are you planning to scale your program model to more/other schools?
The Binah School is planning to expand next year and beyond. The school hopes to become a 6-12 school with no more than 150 students. Next school year the school will be adding 10th grade and six new students. Although 150 students are the most the school will ever enroll, the school’s first goal is to reach 60 students, at which point the school will become financially self-sustainable. The school is also looking in to adding a boarding program for its students as administrators have already received interest in students from other states interested in a boarding program.
Contact Information
Name: Rina Hoffman
Title: Co-Director
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.thebinahschool.org/