Educator : Anne Stein

Anne Stein is the full-time Director of Education at Congregation Etz Chaim, overseeing our religious school programs from preschool through Confirmation. Before coming to Etz Chaim, Anne was the Director of Education at synagogues in Skokie and St. Louis. At the Mayer Kaplan JCC, she started the Shalom Sunday religious school program for newly arrived Russian children and their parents. In Dayton, Ohio, she developed the educational resource center at Temple Israel.

Anne received her degree in education from Ohio State University. She currently serves on the Board of the National Association of Temple Educators, and is president of the Chicago Association of Temple Educators (CATE). Anne was on the faculty at Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute (OSRUI) for 14 years and also teaches programs in Chicago-area Catholic schools about various facets of Jewish life.

Anne places great emphasis on family education since she believes strongly that educating children in a vacuum is not enough. As a result, we now have a family education program for every grade level in our school, such as our second-grade family Sunday school class which a child and parent attend together.

Anne believes, as do our rabbis, that it is very important to allow the children time to socialize and have fun with their Jewish peers, making the religious school and the synagogue a place where the children want to come. Etz Chaim’s extremely high rate of post-Bar/Bat Mitzvah attendance, involvement, and volunteerism by our young people is unusual, and is testimony to the wisdom of Anne’s approach.