HIGHER ED TODAY
COURIER L 18 IFE, AUG. 28-SEPT. 3, 2020
Life savers
New ambulance corps operates by
Hasidic women, for Hasidic women
BY ROSE ADAMS & TODD MAISEL
A dozen Orthodox Jewish women
gathered in Midwood to celebrate the
offi cial kickoff of the Ezras Nashim
volunteer ambulance corps, an all-female
paramedic corps for Orthodox
women who don’t want to receive medical
treatment from men, according to
its director.
“Women now have a choice of who
to call, and while there are still a few
against us, most average people are so
happy,” said Leah Levine.
The group received its license from
the New York State Health Department
on Aug. 13, allowing the corps
to purchase their own ambulance and
distribute lights, sirens, and special
plates to emergency responders.
Ezras Nashim — Hebrew for “assisting
women” — was founded in 2009
for women who wanted to be treated
by female healthcare professionals in
cases of sickness, injury, and childbirth.
The service received a license
to be a “basic life saving” service, but
was denied the right to get an ambulance
by the city in 2019 after a push
by its rival, all-male ambulance corps,
Hatzolah.
Hatzolah bars women from becoming
fi rst responders, reasoning women
must be modest in public and are not
equipped to handle emergency cases.
Its members allegedly told the founders
of Hatzolah to start their own organization
when they tried to join the
corps, so Levine was surprised by the
group’s opposition after she founded
Ezras Nashim, she said.
“Hatzolah doesn’t accept women
paramedics, so they even told us to
form our own group, the rabbi even
told us to, and then they fought us,”
Levine said.
The Aug. 13 decision reverses the
city’s 2019 ruling — but Levine said
that the legal battle against Hatzolah,
who allegedly hired attorneys to
thwart Ezras Nashim’s efforts, cost
the all-female group nearly $100,000.
Despite the opposition, Ezras
Nashim has found plenty of public support
and has already started a fundraising
campaign to secure its fi rst
ambulance, Levine said.
“My husband has been saying how
excited he was and so many people
have expressed support – this is not
the behavior of average Jewish men,”
she said. “But there is still a few people
with a lot of power who are using
propaganda making noise against us,
and what they are saying really isn’t
true.”
The group didn’t wait for its ambulance
license to begin serving the
Chani Richter, an EMT, delivered her baby,
Sarah, with the help of the all-female Orthodox
ambulance corps Ezras Nashim.
Photo by Todd Maisel
public. So far, they’ve responded to 450
emergency calls this year, with members
using their personal vehicles to
bring two-way radios, medical gear,
and defi brillators with them to wherever
they are needed, according to
Levine.
As of now, Ezras Nashim are 21
women training to be EMTs, and
Levine is conducting the training
sessions while running the organization.
There are currently 45 EMTs in
branches in Flatbush, Borough Park,
the Five Towns in Long Island, and 11
EMTs training in Monsey, New York.
The volunteers dress modestly and
“appropriately,” Levine said, with special
vests, and are trained to make
their patients “feel right and feel comfortable.”
One volunteer said she gave birth to
her daughter, who is now nine weeks
old, with the help of Ezras Nahim.
“I had them on speed dial because
they were incredible, it was like boom
the baby is here,” said Chani Richter,
35, as she held her sixth child. “The
whole street was then fi lled because
911 sent three ambulances and police
cars, but if Ezras Nashim had an ambulance,
they could’ve taken me.”
Levine said that while they have
the license to move forward, they must
now step up fundraising to buy an ambulance
and get a garage to keep it. She
said they raised $30,000 in one month
and are starting new branches.
Like universities across the country,
CUNY has worked intensely these
past six months to keep our students on
track for graduation despite the unprecedented
obstacles of the pandemic. It’s
the technical challenges of teaching and
learning from a distance that get most of
the attention, but we are just as focused
on helping our faculty become more effective
teachers — and our students, better
learners — in ways that have nothing
to do with laptops, digital platforms
or video conference apps.
In the education world, the word for
this is pedagogy: How teachers teach,
how students learn and what methods
and approaches have proven most effective
at elevating student achievement and
outcomes. It’s a recognition that teaching
is an art, a science and a craft. That consideration
is one of our key priorities at
CUNY — a way to both boost student success
and support the invaluable resource
that is our faculty. Improving and innovating
our teaching strategies was front
and center before the coronavirus, and
we haven’t let the scramble to put courses
online throw us off track.
CUNY students began the fall semester
this week, and the vast majority of
their nearly 50,000 course sections — 98
percent — are being delivered virtually.
They will surely benefit from the work
their professors, their campuses and
their university have done to adopt instructional
practices that put a priority
on the needs of online learners. For obvious
reasons, much of the professional
development training we have offered to
faculty in recent months has focused on
the improvement of distance learning.
But that effort is part of a bigger project at
CUNY that will far outlast the pandemic.
Studies have supported the notion
that improving pedagogy can make a
significant difference in student success.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise, but
this should: Most college faculty undergo
almost no professional development to
build these skills, or to improve their
teaching methods, while in graduate
school. It’s just not something that universities
have traditionally emphasized
as much as they ought to. I began my career
as a history professor and taught for
many years, and whatever training I got
in pedagogy was not something promoted
by the University. That is why I have prioritized
a long-term series of initiatives to
fill a demonstrated need.
At the top of the list is the CUNY Innovative
Teaching Academy, which will
serve as a hub for professional development
and the vibrant exchange of ideas
for new approaches to student engagement
and success. Last year, we forged
partnerships to launch several pilot projects
for the academy aimed at helping faculty
master best practices for both online
and in-person teaching.
For starters, we are teaming with
the Association of College and University
Educators (ACUE) and the National
Association of System Heads (NASH)
on a 25-week program in which 300 faculty
from CUNY senior colleges will be
trained in practices that improve student
achievement and close equity gaps.
This fall, another 420 faculty will be
trained and credentialed in online teaching
methods that focus on areas such as
creating an inclusive learning environment,
inspiring inquiry and designing
learner-centered courses.
More recently, we announced a $10
million gift from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation that includes $2 million to
train humanities faculty in ways to make
their classes more participatory and prepare
students for a world that requires
collaboration, communication, analytical
reading and cross-cultural thinking.
We hope the Innovative Teaching
Academy will become a national model.
The pandemic has required us to focus
our professional development efforts
on training that helps our faculty improve
student engagement and foster an
inclusive, encouraging instructional atmosphere
in the online modality. It’s been
an all-hands-on-deck effort this summer
to provide programs with noted experts
and partnerships with other academic institutions.
Leveraging the expertise of the CUNY
School of Professional Studies, a longtime
national leader in online degree programs,
CUNY created online developmental
workshops for more than 2,000 faculty
members across the system to improve
their online instructional practices. I’m
confident that the benefits will be apparent,
and that they will be just one part of
our long-range commitment to improved
teaching.
We’ve been confronted this year by
enormous challenges to our broad educational
mission, and to our specific efforts
to help our students complete their
courses, earn enough credits each semester
to graduate on time and pursue
careers that will allow them to climb the
economic and social ladder. But even as
health and budgetary circumstances remain
uncertain, CUNY’s commitment to
improving student outcomes and supporting
our faculty is unwavering.
After all they’ve endured in coping
with the challenges of the pandemic, our
students, faculty and staff deserve nothing
less.