Ellen Berju
Chairperson: Missy Wayne
Ellen Berju and her family joined the Temple Beth Sholom Community in 1991. She grew up in Philadelphia and attended Pennsylvania State University and Temple University where she received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Art and Recreational Therapy. She did graduate coursework at Holy Family University in Early Elementary Education.
Ellen worked as a therapist developing Jewish Culture and Fine Arts programs in the Alzheimer’s Research Center at the Philadelphia Geriatric Center. She went on to co-direct a Recreational Therapy program at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital for 8 years.
Upon moving to Cherry Hill in 1991 both Ellen and her son Jordan started at the TBS Preschool, as it was called then. Jordan went through the preschool and Kindergarten then onto religious school. Ellen never left TBS preschool. From the time she walked into the classroom it was a magical mystery tour of over 10 years of teaching 2s, 3s, 4s, afternoon enrichment as well as creating a looped classroom curriculum teaching her class through two years of school leading up to Kindergarten.
Through the years in the classroom she rallied and coordinated communication guidelines for TBS to develop a partnership with the Public School districts to enable children requiring special services to continue their enrollment in a Jewish ECEC. It is a partnership that exists today now in all of our schools.
In 2001, Ellen became the TBS Preschool Director and led the way for the Temple Beth Sholom Preschool to become the Eric B. Jacobs Early Childhood Education Center including a full daycare program. Through the years, the school has come to be recognized as an innovative and visionary program that not only guides children into their first experiences in a inclusive Jewish environment but engages families into making a home and raising their children in the vibrant Temple Beth Sholom community.
Ellen’s role at Temple Beth Sholom has been exclusively dedicating herself to the growth and administration of the Eric B. Jacobs Early Childhood Education Center for the past twenty years.
Her children Candice and Jordan have grown up at Temple Beth Sholom