Rabbi Tzvi Hametz blends technology with Jewish tradition at Berman Hebrew Academy, where he is in his fourth year as the director of STEM education, innovation and education technology.
Hametz was inspired to take on this work as a Yeshiva University student who was bored by a professor who read directly off of the lecture slides. After class, he asked the professor about this approach given their self-described expertise in cognitive psychology and learning development.
“‘You’re an expert in all these things, and yet you read from your slides. Can you explain why you did that? It wasn’t particularly compelling,’” Hametz recalled asking the professor.
Hametz realized there was a significant disconnect between what we know about the brain and how we teach and wanted to bridge this gap by guiding teachers to teach more effectively.
“A friend pointed out that no teacher was ever going to listen to me until I had experience in a classroom,” Hametz said.
He dropped the class, became a part-time student and pursued education, first as a teaching fellow, then a full-time educator. Hametz and his wife, Malkie, are teen youth directors at Kemp Mill Synagogue and live in Kemp Mill.
Tell me about your Jewish upbringing and background.
I grew up in Edison, New Jersey, and had a pretty normal upbringing; [I] went to Jewish day school from first through twelfth grades. [I] went to Israel for two years and then returned to study at Yeshiva University, where I studied psychology and [neuropsychology] and had a great time.
I hadn’t intended to go to yeshiva, but I had a lovely rabbi in high school who challenged me and said, “You’re very open-minded; very open to new experiences. You should go.” My intention was originally to go straight to the [Israeli] army, and [my rabbi] said, “You should try [going to yeshiva].” It started off as a rocky activity; I didn’t love sitting and learning, and eventually came to really enjoy it. Just weeks or months before I attempted to join the army, I had a pretty extensive knee injury, and an army recruiter told me, “This is not for you.”
I was planning to make aliyah, and my mother wanted me to come back and get a degree in the States and then make aliyah. So she got on a plane and came to Israel to get me to come back to America.
Have you always been interested in STEM education and technology?
Definitely not. I started at Yeshiva University as an engineering major; I declared a major of physics with a plan to do engineering, and I was doing fine, [but] my heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to build and make things, and I thought I was going to pursue architecture. I interned at an architecture firm in 2008, and it was a horrendous time to be in architecture. A mentor of mine said, ‘You’re pretty good with kids. Why don’t you see if you want to work with kids?’
When I got to the classroom, I felt so insecure about my teaching skills, I was willing to play with every “toy” [the school] gave me. I would spend countless hours playing with every tech tool. I found a deep love for technology, and I found that the more I let kids construct and build their own learning, the more engaged [they were].
How do you incorporate Jewish teachings into STEM education at Berman?
I taught fourth grade at a school in Los Angeles, and we went through two or three educational technology directors in a year and a half, so I asked the head of school if I could do that job. … I started building this Maker Space: this educational room deep in what’s called constructivism and constructivist education, where students could come and really apply their knowledge and use what they were getting in classrooms, as opposed to trying to memorize facts and figures. And that’s what I did; it was a lot of fun.
I teach four classes at Berman Hebrew Academy. I teach Intro to Video Games and Video Game History, which involves middle schoolers learning coding, game design, history of games and video games, and we apply that knowledge to build our own video games. Everything’s seen through the light of reinterpreting biblical narratives so we can turn those into video games, as well as understanding how we can gamify Jewish law.
Another class is Animatronics, Puppetry and Robotics; it’s the foundations of making things move. We’re again looking through the lens of Tanakh, of Torah, and the demons, saying, “What story could we reinterpret through technological means?”
One high school class is an introduction to computer-integrated manufacturing, which we do through the lens of Judaica design. Kids are learning at a more advanced stage: laser cutting, 3D printing, [computer numerical control] machining, woodworking, creating [Jewish] ritual items. The final class is an open Maker Space time. It’s a time for kids to explore the Jewish call to creativity.
What do you like best about working with children and teens?
It’s always fun and it’s always different. My experience working in offices and working with adults is often dull and not my jam. Teachers talk a lot about getting kids to be motivated and engaged, and I find that I rarely have the issue of lack of engagement because I have the luxury of not teaching a specific curriculum, but saying, “What do we want to explore? What do I want to learn?” Kids have genuine inquiry. I find with grown-ups, we lose the skill of inquiry, the skill of curiosity, at some point.
