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Are you an educator or youth professional seeking an innovative approach to teaching teens about prayer? Project-based learning is a great way for teens to explore their own spirituality and create meaningful prayer experiences for themselves and their fellow students. My advice would be to start by sharing what you find meaningful, as a role model to inspire your students.
Last year, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for my Master of Arts in Religious Education (MARE) program at HUC-JIR, I completed my Capstone Curriculum, titled “Ruach Rock” Tefilah: A Creative Prayer Curriculum for Teens.” Designed specifically for 7th-10th graders, I used my “Ruach Rock” Tefilah as the kickoff session for a semester-long exploration of the reform service liturgy in which teens are encouraged to learn more about the prayers in order to create their own interpretations of them. Recognizing that music is not everyone’s area of creative expertise, I designed the curriculum to use a different mode of approach for each prayer, based on Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which has long informed my work with teens. Utilizing a mixture of games, art, technology, writing and movement, students are empowered to explore what is meaningful to them in our tradition and consider how to articulate those feelings and share them with peers.
Last fall at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City, we used a project-based learning (PBL) approach to liven up our weekly 8th-12th grade minyan and charged the teens with creating their own service. They formed small groups to pick tunes, set up the space and select/create readings. After a few weeks of planning, we reconvened and they presented their Tefilah – which turned out to be a very traditional Shabbat evening service, nearly twice as long as our typical minyan, in our usual location!
From this experience we realized that it is not so easy for students to think outside the box about prayer. For them, choosing between two or three familiar tunes for each prayer was the most leeway they felt they had. This experience strengthened my commitment to experiment with the prayer curriculum I was developing for my Capstone which I believed could offer teens a much-needed opportunity to create their own meaningful prayer experience.
So during our minyan on Tuesday nights, I adapted elements from the curriculum into our service:
- Taking 5-10 minutes each week to creatively explore one of the prayers as it occurred within the service
- Moving our minyan to a different location in the building
- Utilizing visual Tefilah which allowed me to refer back to some of our previous creative exercises
Over the weeks, I began to see signs of life from our teens as they engaged in conversations, brainstormed their ideas in groups, and tried out new spaces. I found their singing to be more invigorated, and even drew smiles from them! We managed to find a space in our building that better fit the group size and engaged students who were previously in the building but had abstained from the minyan. I integrated students’ ideas into the service as the weeks went on, so that piece by piece our minyan was transformed to reflect our process.
Given the new energy we were able to bring to our Tefilah experience in such a short amount of time, I am excited to imagine the possibilities of what students could learn and create if they had dedicated time each week to explore our traditions. I am looking forward to continuing to innovate with students to turn what is sometimes the most dreaded part of religious school into something that is meaningful, personal, and engaging.
Jay Rapoport is the new Director of Lifelong Learning at Temple Sholom in Chicago and a composer/performer of Jewish music. He recently completed his Master’s Degree in Religious Education at HUC-JIR along with his second crowd-funded album of Jewish music for children, teens and families. www.ruachrock.com
