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I’m sure it would be paradise to kids if,
at any given moment, they could face a grownup who’s addressing them, look the
adult in the eye and say, “What right do you have to tell me what to
do/think?” Then again, they only respond
that way when they feel cornered, whether it be physically, emotionally,
functionally, etc. While this makes
things difficult when trying to teach kids anything, the paradigm also implies
a destructive situation, where adults expect the kids to be voluntary, gentle
sponges, ready to sit there and absorb whatever information we throw at them.
Imagine sitting in a room with a
message to deliver to the person walking in.
You have no idea where that person was before walking in. You don’t know what they’re thinking,
pondering, worrying about. And they have
an instinctual coping mechanism of associating people with other people, as a
means of seeking familiarity with a situation and, therefore, a comfort level
in anything that comes at them and their capacity to handle it.
So, here comes a kid – maybe your
student, maybe it’s your own kid, maybe even your kid’s new friend – and you
don’t know how to approach them in order to teach your lesson or communicate
your message. At this point, sure, I
calm down and observe them, maybe asking some open, innocuous question to gauge
their response, mood, attitude du jour. But then I try to ask myself the same
question, the mantra I roll back over repeatedly throughout my time with the
kids.
What is my point?
In Jewish education, if you’re truly
trying to reach and influence and instruct and educate a Jewish child, you
really should figure out what the point is of what you’re doing. For me, honing in on that purpose, that
underlying goal of Jewish education, involves am examination of the philosophy
of the institution I’m in, be it a synagogue, school, camp, etc., or even the
family of the child I’m teaching, especially if I’m tutoring one-on-one. Then I consider how often the kid received
any Jewish education during the week as well as their exposure to it at home. This is why I occasionally have class
discussions on traditions and legacy and customs and holiday celebrations: not to test the kids but to ask what do they do, where do they go, what do they
make or eat or create to celebrate any holiday?
My point certainly changes over time,
not so much evolving as morphing to fit the needs of the children and the
situation at hand. Honestly, if it’s
raining outside and I’d planned a day of games for the kids, no matter what I
say, they still might feel like dragging their feet or complaining about broken
pencil tips even when I tell them I have fun things to do with prizes and open
rules and – they don’t care if they don’t care.
If they’re not in the mood for learning, then my point is to get them in
that mood, get them to where I want their attitude to be before launching into anything else.
The other day, I had a student who
reads Hebrew well but flat out refused to read, at all, shutting down and
clamming up even though she’d just spent 10 minutes before class loudly
chatting with friends. Guess what? My priorities changed, right then and there,
to getting her and the others onto the same page before moving on. So, remembering that the kid LOVES mythology,
I asked her to read the translation of the line of prayer I wanted her to read,
then used it as a launching pad into talking about metaphor.
The line I wanted her to read, which
four other kids had just read aloud before I got to her, talks about G-d’s
house. I asked her what it could mean
for a god to have a house. She
demurred. Another kid jumped and said it
could refer to a temple of worship, and I responded by confirming that it might
specifically have meant the Temple in Jerusalem. What else, I said. Another mentioned that G-d’s house might be
the world, since G-d built the world to suit His plan, then that’s like
building your own personal home or space.
With all that said, I circled back to
the kid in question and asked her not about the prayer itself, just to make
sure she didn’t shut down again, but now that she was listening to her friends,
I asked generically about a god having a house.
She said, it could refer to Olympus.
I responded, devil’s advocate, that Olympus was the mountain that the
pantheon lived on. She argued back, no,
Olympus was the name of Zeus’ palace. I
asked if it was his or if all the gods shared, and she said it was his palace,
but the gods all met there. I led her
into a tangent arguing about gods versus Titans, who was who, who won, which
god represented what, if Prometheus was a god or a mortal, what was a demigod
like Perseus, and she loved it.
And she didn’t read a thing in Hebrew
that day. What she did, though, was get
engaged in conversation, not isolate herself, hear her colleagues involved both
in that conversation and in the Hebrew reading so as to normalize it all in her
eyes, then bound off to recess in the building auditorium, where she and her
friends sat with notebooks and pencils and proceeded to write out the names and
attributes of every single Greek divinity they could remember. I tried to contribute and was cut down each
time, either for coming up with someone they’d already written down or coming
up with a name that didn’t belong on the list.
What’s the point, indeed. That table, the writing of the names of
mythological creatures, that was only mildly related to the context of the
prayer that, frankly, I wasn’t interested in discussing but, rather, just
wanted the kids to try reading the first 3-4 lines. Something that should’ve taken 10 minutes at
most ended up taking 30 minutes of time, in which the kids got a solid context,
from me and each other, of the meaning of the words. I used that talk to get into translation,
which I then used to break down longer words on the board, which led to repeat discussion
of Hebrew roots and morphology, etc. etc. etc.
We were supposed to practice the
prayer. And we did. But we also discussed and learned why the
prayer was there, what it meant, and what the kids might be thinking of while
reciting or singing it. And we
reinforced their reading skills along the way by doing more than just reading
it over and over. If you read the same
word, you’ll memorize the word, and good for you, until I show you the same
word but with a prefix or suffix on it.
If you’re a kid and you read until you memorize, or you sing or chant
something into rote memory, you aren’t learning a thing about reading Hebrew,
and you’re truly cheating yourself out of the opportunity.
But that’s what I did, then what they
did, and what we did, and what happened for the first part of class. That’s not delving into the point of what we did, or I did that day. So what was the point, and how can it be
universalized to fit an overall mantra on teaching the next generation of
Jewish souls?
The point, the mantra, was that I wanted
to spot the kid in that group who was having the toughest time and find a
reasonable, relevant, but respectful way to get her back into our good graces. Yes, I stopped the reading activity. But then we together broadened the activity
into something more meaningful before I ultimately did bring the activity back
to having kids practice reading the Hebrew.
Again, whatever happened, happened, but my intention was to do what I could
to get that kid back on track with what the class was doing overall.
In fact, while the mantra might be “each
kid is their own person and has a right to be included in the class,” the
broader goal I have almost every time I enter the classroom is to have the
children leave the classroom at the end of that day with a smile on their face
about Hebrew school. Their lasting
impression should be of a place of fun and philosophy, offering ideas but
asking for their input, where everyone’s ideas are valid and experiences
valued. They feel how wonderful it is to
celebrate their Jewishness, creating and developing their own Judaisms ahead of
their b’nai mitzvah.
And at the end of a really good day, I can’t
get them to leave.
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