Before the 2024-25 school year, Executive Vice President of ConnectED Noam Weissman invited Head of School Jennifer Ciccarelli to partner with his organization. This collaboration will allow the Marlborough community to benefit from the educational organization’s resources that revolve around underscoring the nuance and complexity of news, conversations and learning.
“We partner with academic institutions to achieve their goals of fostering a culture of critical thinking, empathy and respectful discourse on our core content areas: Israel-Palestine, antisemitism, Jewish history, media literacy, and courageous conversations,” the ConnectED website reads.
Director of Studies Jonathon Allen is leading the development of multiple events to implement ConnectED’s goals in the Marlborough curriculum. The first event occurred during community time on Nov. 1. ConnectED representative Yoni Buckman spoke in 50-minute sessions split between the Upper and Middle Schools. The sessions were dedicated to building the skills required to approach potential disagreements and have productive deliberations. Julia ’25 attended the Upper School event and described what she appreciated.
“There are complexities when you do these conversations, but you have to understand and embrace those complexities and embrace the awkwardness so you can actually be engaged and be an active listener and have useful conversations,” Julia said.
On Dec.17, ConnectED will host an All-School Meeting (ASM), which aims to describe the history of the current war between Israel and Hamas using the dual-narrative approach of allowing two perspectives in one conversation. The ASM will dissect the complex past of the land, including its significance to both Jewish and Arab people and the 1948 United Nations Partition Plan. Allen described how this opportunity will allow students to practice skills learned from the first event to discuss the topics of the ASM.
“Participants will be able to apply the courageous conversation lessons to engage in an informative, respectful discussion,” Allen said.
Allen will also work with teachers across departments to understand how conversations about current events are transpiring at Marlborough and how to foster productive discussions about important developments.
“The next generation of Marlborough students will have six years of real, solid understanding about reliability and bias so they can confidently face misinformation and disinformation,” Allen said.
The last scheduled ConnectED event will be a media literacy skills workshop during a 9th Grade Class Meeting on March 19. A representative from the organization will discuss how to decipher the dependability of sources and similar topics, giving students the tools to stay informed as they advance through the Upper School.
Allen said that these three ConnectED events on the calendar represent Marlborough’s attempt and hope to bridge the divides in today’s society. He emphasized the importance of taking time to make smaller steps and work towards mitigating larger contentions.
“I feel like the entire learning community will benefit from this because what this is, at the end of the day, is an educational series,” Allen said. “I think that that’s always needed in schools to actually carve out time intentionally, despite a very busy schedule, just to make time to talk about courageous conversations and to do some skill building.”
