Frances Sussna

Frances Sussna (born October 23, 1933) is an American educator and innovator best known for her work in multi-cultural education. Her methods of motivating students of diverse ethnic backgrounds to higher achievement and social responsibility, including respect of self and others and skills of peaceful conflict resolution, won her the support of the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, Rosenberg Foundation, and the San Francisco Foundation, among others.

Biography Early life Sussna was born on October 23, 1933, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant Joseph Sussna and his wife Ethel Stein. Sussna and her older sister were the only Jewish children in a strongly antisemitic neighborhood in North Philadelphia. Due to the absence of any Hebrew schools in the area, Sussna and her sister received no formal Jewish education.

Sussna attended Olney High School in Philadelphia where she befriended future award-winning Yiddish poet, Rukhl Fishman, the sister of renowned linguist, Joshua Fishman.

Sussna attended Temple University for a year and a half. In college, she held multiple jobs one of which was as a librarian in the English department at Gratz College. At the Jewish college, she was exposed to books and resources about the Jewish experience. She read books about The Holocaust, the State of Israel, and on kibbutz movement. Sussna's time working at Gratz College and a fateful conversation with her friend Rukhl, influenced Sussna's decision to leave Temple University and go to Israel.

Israel Arriving in Haifa in 1953, Sussna decided to join a group of Jewish teenagers from South America to create a kibbutz and military outpost along the Jordanian border. Sussna lived on other kibbutzim and later lived in Jerusalem where she worked as an editor for The Jerusalem Post.

Brandeis In 1960, Sussna accepted positions on the faculties of San Francisco’s College of Jewish Studies and Hebrew High School. She became convinced that the answer to adequate Jewish education for children was a Jewish day school. She recruited a prominent local Jewish leader, Rabbi Saul White, to help her raise funds to start one. On September 4, 1963, the Modern Hebrew Day School opened its doors with Sussna as its Founder and Director, and with Rabbi White as an important member of the Board of Trustees. A few months after its opening, the school changed its name to Brandeis Day School. the Rockefeller Foundation, Students were taught the language, literature, history, geography, music, fine arts, and folklore of their own ethnic heritages. Selected parents, teachers, and administrators from public and parochial schools in those cities participated in summer trainings of the Sussna Teaching Method at San Francisco State University. Staff from the Multi-Culture Program in San Francisco worked with and supported them throughout the school year. She was the youngest person and the first woman to receive that degree from this University. That year, Sussna delivered the major address at the National Education Association's Conference on Civil and Human Rights in Education. The Bellagio Center Residency Program gives prominent individuals in various fields the ability to spend weeks at the Villa to peacefully contemplate their work. Between 1973 and 1974 the Ford Foundation sponsored Sussna’s travel abroad to investigate the potential of introducing her program to other countries.