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Hello everyone, I am Rachel Silton and I teaching 7th grade Judaic Studies at the Emery/Weiner School in Houston, Texas.  I have been participating in JCAT with my students at EWS since the 2014/2015 school year and my participation as well as that of my students is the highlight of my academic year.  My favorite thing about JCAT is seeing my students completely transform into someone else and through this process learn about history and practice empathy.  A specific highlight is when I assign my "Boxed in Time" project during which students create a box that represents their character's life and collect and analyze primary resources related to their character.  I had a student a few years ago who played Eleanor Roosevelt and he really liked dressing up as her when the students presented their boxes.  He still talks about this experience many years after it took place!

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I'm Heather Kantrowitz, and I teach at Austin Jewish Academy in Austin, TX. I will be using JCAT with my 6th graders in Jewish Studies class, and this will be my 8th year participating in JCAT. I love SO MANY things about JCAT - it gives us an opportunity to delve deeper into a period of history that may not otherwise be covered. It allows students to practice "perspective-taking" which is critical for middle schoolers! It gives students space to practice making inferences based on what they know from researching their character. It allows them to bring part of themselves into the simulation via character selection - but at the same time, leave their own attitudes and opinions out of it, as they work to represent their character's views. They get to grapple with real-world issues and even brainstorm solutions after exploring evidence. I love, love, love JCAT!

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My name is Daniella Penn. This past year was my first year teaching English at Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy (prior to that I was in graduate school for religion, and prior to that a web developer). The 8th grade graders will be participating in JCAT through their Jewish History course this upcoming year. It will be my first year with JCAT.

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Hi! My name is Stacey Delcau and I am the Director of Education at Tempe De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle/Bellevue, Washington. My daughter participated in JCAT as a day school student in 6th and 7th grades with Nance Adler and it was transformative. I participated in a session last spring on how to bring JCAT to supplementary schools and this is our first time running the program. We are planning to use it with our 8th graders and then hopefully bringing it to our high schoolers in the future.

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Hello, all!
My name is Benjamin Foote.  I teach Jewish Studies at Portland Jewish Academy (Oregon).  We'll have 7th graders in the program this year, my fourth.  Our curricular theme for 7th grade is "engaging other voices," and JCAT is the *perfect,* fun, super engaging way for our students to do that, a perennial highlight.  I think my favorite JCAT story, a double, is when students came to be complaining, "this character is so mean, you should report her!"  I think it was Shirley Phelps-Roper, or some similar character who was doing a superb job playing that abrasive, aggressive character.  I found out at a subsequent JCAT training that the student playing that character was super shy, hardly ever spoke, etc.  It gives students (and teachers, mentors, etc.) a chance to try out different voices and personas, and also wrestle with very real, always spot-on timely, important issues.

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Hello! My name is Leah Robinson and I have been a host and lesson and simulation designer for JCAT since 2017. Before that, I taught social studies and educational technology at the middle and high school levels for 10 years. My work with Jeff and Michael (from the University of Michigan) goes back to my time as a graduate student participating in JCAT’s secular version Place Out of Time. As a teacher, I always tried to weave these fantastic simulations into my classes, as they magically bring history to life and join it with contemporary issues in a relevant and meaningful way for the students. A couple of my favorite things about JCAT is getting to highlight the interactions among student characters and hearing from them in the greenroom, as the debrief on their experiences at the end of the game. I look forward to meeting and working with you all this year!

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My son Oliver is helping me with my introduction.

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Hi everyone!

My name is Jenny Einberger and I teach 5th grade humanities at Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School in Chicago, IL. This will be my fourth year teaching JCAT and I’ve loved every year’s experience with my students. My favorite thing about JCAT is similar to others who’ve posted but hearing the discussion of big, tricky, real life issues is very rewarding. I notice kids being more aware of who they are as people and decisions they make after the JCAT unit.

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Hi All!
My name is Stephanie Stavsky. I teach at Brandies Marin in the Bay Area. While I have taught for 20 years I’m switching back to JS after many years teaching GS. I will be using this program with my 6th grade Judaic Studies class . This is my first time teaching JCAT but our school has used this program for a few years and I watched from a distance as a parent when my daughter was in 6th grade and loved the program!

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I am Meredith Katz from the Davidson School (of Jewish Ed) at JTS . I have been part of the JCAT Project Team since 2013.  It is such a privilege to be in a year long collaborative process with my Project Team colleagues as we brainstorm, reseach and create, and to share and learn with you and your fabulous students each fall. JCAT is an amazing opportunity for our MA students for so many reasons-  especially for giving them a sense of the dynamic thinking of real, live middle school (and a few high school) students.  Thank you for making the time to be with us this summer. Can't wait to see you tomorrow!

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Hi. I'm Ted Pierce. I have taught JCAT with my 8th graders at Yavneh Day School in Los Gatos CA for 4 years. I like many aspects of JCAT but perhaps my favorite is the moral questions that the cases present. The moral ambiguity is often difficult (but always enlightening) for my students to navigate. Like life, there are no "right" answers in JCAT and watching them discuss serious issues is rewarding for them and me.

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Hi.  My name is Polly Waibel.  I teach at De La Salle North Catholic High School in Portland, Oregon.  My students and I are so excited to be part of JCAT this year.  I will be weaving JCAT into my Morality and Catholic Social Teachings classes. My students will bring a diversity of race and religions to the simulation.  Leah Robinson, a wonderful friend and former colleague,  invited my students and I into the program.  I am so excited to be part of the program this year.

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Hello all! My name is David (pronounced in the Hebrew at all times) Solkowitz. I teach middle school Tanach and Mitzvot to middle school students at the Jacksonville Jewish Center's Martin J Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Florida. I will be participating in this with eighth graders. One thing I love about JCAT is it gives me a chance to see and learn about my students as young Jewish adolescents. I can see who they look up to, what they find interesting, and find a way for them to connect to Judaism and Jewish history in a meaningful way.

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Hi. I am Nance Adler from JDS in Seattle. This will be my 10th year, I think, in JCAT - all but the first year. I do JCAT with my 7th graders. I consider JCAT to be one of the very best things I get to do as a teacher and love how it teaches empathy and introduces my students to lots of people from across history that they might not otherwise meet. Very much looking forward to this year's new and challenging topic.   Lots of great JCAT stories/moments but I would say having one of my students (one of my very best students) discussing how to "teach love" and deprogram those who have been raised in hate with one of the mentors two years ago would be at the top of the list of moments when the value of JCAT was so clear for me.  A more light hearted moment would be revealing my secret character a few years back after I had spent the entire simulation "harassing" one of my students. I asked if any one knew who my secret character was and that student leapt up from his chair and yelled "Peter the Great!!!"  He was correct.   Looking forward to our training/demo and this fall's JCAT. Shalom!

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I am Oriane Falkenstein from Bialik Hebrew Day School Toronto ( Viewmount Brach) I am very excited to be back again as I could not participate last year in JCAT due to a complete new teaching  structure we had to institute for Covid. it meant seeing our students daily with huge weekly gaps which would not have worked for this amazing program. I believe this is my sixth year participating and I am bringing a large group of close to 80 Grade 7 students in partners. JCAT is always an extremely busy and exciting time in my classes as students climb into their characters shoes,  seriously take on their roles, connect with others and think critically about their responses online. It always amazes me how sorry they are to see their characters go at the end ( same with their teacher) Overall the program allows us to touch on so many important 21st century skills, aside from immersing ourselves in an important event - current or historical and truly having the opportunity to have our voices heard. I look forward to another great JCAT year!

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Hi, everyone.  I'm Nili Isenberg, from Pressman Academy in Los Angeles.  This is my third year participating in JCAT with our 8th graders.  Something that I love about JCAT is that it brings a new challenge to the classroom every year.  Teaching the same old material can get boring, so I relish the challenge of taking on a new topic every year, while the basic structure of the program is a constant.  We teach this as a part of our "Jewish History" curriculum, so any topic can apply and provide a chance to explore interesting ideas.  It's an exciting time for students and teachers alike!  And this is clearly a huge endeavor for the JCAT team each new year, so I want to thank you for all the incredible work you all do behind the scenes!

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Hello, my name is Sarah Clarkson, I am the Congregational Learning Coordinator at Temple Beth El, Temple School in Aptos, CA. We would like to offer JCAT as a Hebrew High elective this year for grades 8th, 9th, and 10th graders. We ran JCAT last fall and a small group participated on zoom once a week. We tried to run it again last spring but did not have enough participants. I really hope we get enough students to sign up this fall. Last fall, we had a lot of fun learning about our characters and talking about the case. We did a lot of posting all together in a small group setting. I am interested in how this will work "in person" (with devices to post) since my reference is now as a zoom class.

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I'm Michael Fahy and I teach with Jeff Stanzler at the University of Michigan School of Education.  Jeff and I have been teaching the secular precursor and counterpart to JCAT for (hard to believe) twenty years which have encompassed a wide range of scenarios.   What I have come to most love about doing this work is witnessing the sheer power of imaginative play and the under-recognized brilliance of middle schoolers who, year after year, never failed to impress me.  There is something very powerful for students assuming the voices of the characters they are playing which allows them to access states of mind and feeling embodied in those characters (e.g., powerful, brilliant, admired, etc.) that are rarely afforded to young adolescents.  With the students in our university seminars, we often invoke what we term "the iceberg principle," which is to say, what is happening offlline, in your classrooms, by virtue of what has taken place online: we very much look forward to your stories about that as well.

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Hello, my name is Farrah Schiff, and I am one of the hosts of JCAT and a mentor. As a host of one of the two games, I do graphic design, write some content (like announcements), and upload our content (like exhibits, testimonies, and polls) to the website. I read a lot of your students online work every week so that I can highlight it in announcements. As a mentor, I take part in the game and have the great honor of interacting with your students directly.

I have been involved with JCAT since I took Jeff Stanzler & Michael Fahy’s class in grad school over a decade ago.

My favorite part of JCAT is, and always will be, when the students start to really ‘click’ with their characters, and all of those weeks of research and higher order thinking they’ve been doing mixes with their creativity and imagination. That’s when we start to see original poetry, artwork, storytelling, and much deeper interactions. Sometimes a student character makes a passionate stand for something that changes the game. We always say student work is what drives the simulation, and we are not kidding!

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I'm Jeff Stanzler and I teach at the University of Michigan School of Education. My students--both graduate and undergraduate--serve as mentors for the simulation, engaging with your students and helping both to honor their work and sometimes to spice up the proceedings. Earlier this year, we ran a pilot of JCAT for students in congregational schools. We were't sure how it would work, but we wound up feeling very impressed with how quickly the students engaged with the spirit of the undertaking...a reminder, perhaps, that people really like to bring a playful spirit to their learning.

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My name is Rebecca Shargel,  I teach at Towson University (Maryland). My students serve as graduate student mentors. One story is that my students researched the Jewish day schools in the simulation. Some of them had never heard of Jewish schools  and it was eye opening for them to learn about the industry. They presented your schools to the class (a couple of years ago). Working with the JCAT project team is an incredible experience as we have a very smart and innovative team. This year's scenario is extremely engaging and I look forward to working with you. Best, Rebecca