Just a few months ago I received my
Certificate in Jewish Education for Adolescents and Emerging Adults from
HUC-JIR in the mail. An entire summer and fall have passed since I completed my
coursework, and life after this program has begun. This new certificate will
soon be proudly displayed on my wall in my office at the American Hebrew
Academy, an international Jewish boarding school in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Founded
in 1996, the Academy was established to provide an outstanding co-educational
college preparatory program and Jewish secondary education to intellectually
motivated and high achieving Jewish teenagers from around the world. In
addition to being the Administrative Coordinator for Student and Jewish Life
and a teacher in the Jewish Studies department, I have the honor of being the
House Parent for approximately twenty freshmen and sophomore girls.
As I entered my third year at the
Academy last year, I knew I wanted to continue my education. I loved the Academy’s
ability to create a unique Jewish environment, truly blending formal and
experiential learning in a way that I had never seen before. When the new Certificate Program was
announced, I jumped at the opportunity presented to me and applied.
My HUC-JIR program was
cohort-based, in addition to being a combination of face-to-face seminars and
distance learning. We met as a cohort in person three times during the year in
addition to taking online courses via videoconferencing technology. Our very
first class, taught by Dr. Betsy Stone ( a warm, funny and charismatic
psychotherapist and HUC-JIR adjunct faculty member), focused on adolescent
development and emerging adulthood. Fascinated to learn the science behind the
teenage brain, I began to create a knowledge base of adolescent psychology
based on fact, rather than my own personal experiences. My favorite lesson I
learned from Betsy defined the term “emerging adult.” As we learned about the
identifying characteristics of emerging adulthood, such as marriage, job
stability, kids, and so on, I came to a slightly terrifying realization. This
was about me but I hadn’t yet achieved any of the abovementioned milestones! I
was not alone in my realization as the younger part of our cohort came to the
same conclusion, while the more mature end of our cohort probably giggled as we
panicked. The most interesting fact of the day came at the end of the class;
your brain doesn’t really finish developing until you are 25 years old! In
fact, emerging adults are really just teenagers without the raging hormones.
When I heard these facts about
brains still growing until this age it was if a light bulb went off in my head.
The Academy has a Fellowship program designed for recent college graduates to
work and live on campus with students doing social, educational and Jewish
programming with the students. In return, they gain work experience by having
various internships on campus geared towards their interests. We expect that
these staff members are adults, regardless of where they are developmentally.
My HUC-JIR course has resulted in me giving serious thought to the idea of
restructuring our program with the understanding that emerging adults have
different needs than adults.
This past summer, when it came time
to brainstorm for a keynote speaker for our Student Life Staff Orientation, it
was a “no–brainer” (no pun intended!) My campus invited Dr. Stone to spend
several of our sessions teaching about adolescent development and counseling
skills to enable us to better work with our students. My time learning at
HUC-JIR has already extended beyond the virtual classroom. I am still in close
contact with my cohort, amazed by the bonds we developed in just nine months.
Kelly Kossar is the
Administrative Coordinator for Student & Jewish Life, a synagogue skills
teacher and Beit Shalom (Freshman & Sophomore Girls) House Parent for 20
awesome teens at the American Hebrew Academy (http://www.americanhebrewacademy.org), an
international Jewish boarding school in Greensboro, North Carolina. In her
non-existent free time she enjoys singing, learning guitar, figuring out how to
transition from being an emerging adult to adulthood and blogging at http://www.reformingjew.blogspot.com
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