- Monica Rozenfeld -
What happens when you bring 20 passionate, experienced Jewish educators in a room together? And then mix in an outside organization such as S.I.T, Systematic Inventive Thinking? Six experienced coaches? Plus the backing of five organizations who believe in intrapreneurial fostering? It sounds like a Real World episode, and in some ways it is. But in this case, they all share a common goal: engaging Jewish teens around Israel and Peoplehood education. The process: to find out what happens when…
Project InCiTE, led by the BJE of New York, SAJES, UJA Federation of New York and iCenter, in partnership with Makom, has pulled off just that at the Pearlstone Center in Baltimore over the past three days. The fellows, who work with teens in Jewish schools, synagogues, federations and Jewish organizations, are forced to reflect on what they – within themselves and within their organization – have in reach to achieve their goals, what S.I.T. calls “getting creative inside the box.”
In the next six months, fellows will break themselves in to a new system of thinking – creative and focused inventive thinking. And over the next two years, they each will develop a project that will crash the party, so to speak, and change the way things are done in their institution to reach the institution’s potentials. What happens between now and then is open ended and is what many fellows say excites them about the program.
Using S.I.T. methodology, fellows have worked with the tools of breaking fixedness, dropping assumptions, to come to new solutions to a problem. If we do what we’ve always done, then we will get the same results. How do we drop our own assumptions and that of our organization’s to progress and not remain stagnant?
What if we “subtracted” something from our environment in order to give it a new purpose; to provide new opportunity? Subtraction is another S.I.T. tool which trains us to think inventively within our organization rather than reaching far and wide for something, or someone, brand new.
After an intense couple of days, fellows have said they find the program highly stimulating and invaluable. It’s just begun.
With the project just beginning, staff and coaches are in the mindset that not taking this project risk is probably the biggest risk of all. In the business world, innovation is front and center. Why not in education where the business is to create the future?
Can innovation be taught? Can our educators learn to change the innovator within, and instill that innovation within their institution? Stay tuned…
Follow us on Twitter @ProjectIncite for updates.
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