Who's Teaching the Teachers?

The purpose of this blog is bring the Shabbat table to each and everyone's level. Please print and share.
In honor of all the teachers out there - wishing you a successful 5782!

The past couple weeks we've been running our annual JTI training program for new Jewish day school teachers.

Teachers who receive proper training and mentoring (known as "onboarding" in current lingo) are significantly more likely to stay on the job long-term. Kind of obvious, right? What is less obvious is how much money it saves a school by investing in such training and mentoring. 

Due to the "early" Rosh Hashana, every school seems to be on a different schedule and to make it even more interesting, this year's teacher shortage is even greater than usual and there are some very last minute hires happening.

These last-minute hires often have the three C's — caring, conscientious, and clueless.

The clueless part can be overcome with training and mentoring. That's where JTI comes in.

One of the teachers I trained this week couldn't believe it when I told her not to expect middle school students to know how to take notes. I explained how to teach note-taking by chunking the information and constantly checking for compliance.

In my opinion, one of the keys to being a great teacher is to take the time to figure out where your students are and start there, rather than to expect them somehow to raise themselves up to whatever level you decide to teach at.

Question for your table - what are the keys to being a great teacher in your opinion?

Shabbat Shalom

PS - Countdown to Rosh Hashana

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My Child, My Teacher

The purpose of this blog is to turn the Shabbat table into a learnable-moment. Please print and share.
Happy Birthday shout-out to Shelli! Wishing success to all those starting their school year.

Every couple years I dust off the story of my grandfather's advice.

Since we now have a new generation among us, and since the school year is starting, maybe this is a good time to pass on that legacy to anyone who has an ear to hear it.
 

It was about this time of year, when I was headed off to college for the first time, my grandfather of blessed memory took me aside and said, "I have one word of advice for you for college."

 

I thought, "Fantastic, this is going to be one of those memorable moments that I'll tell my own children about and maybe I'll even blog about it one day (once blogs are invented)!"

 

"One word?"

 

"One word: don't take classes."

 

OK, for starters, that was three words.

But I was far worried about the content of the message than I was about my grandfather's numeracy.

Perhaps this was not a senior moment? Perhaps there was going to be a punchline? 

I waited.

 

And then the punchline came: "Take teachers."

 

"You see," he explained, "You could take the most interesting class with a boring teacher, and learn nothing. And you could take what you think is the most uninteresting class with an excellent teacher, and you'll learn everything."
 

That advice actually made a lot of sense and I'm happy to say that I followed it most of the time in all of the places that I have studied since then. And I continue to do so.

Tomorrow in our home, Goldy and Moshe are hosting a kiddush in honor of Devora Esther. I asked Moshe to share a preview of his planned remarks for the sake of those who cannot make it:

"The Talmud says that our Rosh Hashana prayers should include "anointing God as King". What's the purpose of this? Isn't God ruler of the universe independent of us? Perhaps the idea can be explained by contrasting a king with a dictator. A dictator has just as much power as a king however, he forces himself unto the people and his rulership stays if he enforces it. However, a king is accepted amongst the people as the rightful ruler, and he is coronated by the people. The Jewish People's mission is to bring Godliness into the world - i.e., to honor God the best we can. By declaring God our King we are stating that not only is He the one in exclusively charge but we desire His kingship. This is the greatest way to honor Hashem. Each one of us has the power to turn him from a dictator into a king. Therefore, the blessing I want to give Devora Esther is that she should be such a person - who honors God, who brings Godliness into the world and is always a source of honor to her family and the Jewish People."

To connect Moshe's thoughts to my grandfather's wisdom, here's a question for your table:

When choosing a teacher, does holiness matter, or just knowledge and pedagogy?
Can a child be a teacher?

Shabbat Shalom

PS - Countdown to Rosh Hashana

 

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Birth of a Nation?

The purpose of this blog is to turn Shabbat into a legacy. Please print and share.

Mazal tov to our daughter and son-in-law on the birth of a healthy baby girl and to my dear wife and yours, truly on our promotion to Bubbe and Zayde.

The birth of our granddaughter last Friday was too late to get it into my email.

It's unintended coincidence with last week's story, Long Island Railroad (thanks by the way for all of the positive feedback on that), has given me pause.

In my opinion, the tragic back-story there was about the total loss of a legacy in the world - and then redemption. Isn't that ultimately what we all want - to leave a legacy?

When you have a child, you have anxiety. How will this child turn out?

Even when the child turns into a well-adjusted healthy adult, until they settle down and start their own family, there's that lingering anxiety.

Obviously, the birth of a grandchild isn't a guarantee of anything. But it's definitely comforting to that subconscious worry, "Will I leave a legacy?"

Question for your table: You - yes you, dear reader - you are somebody's grandchild. What are you going to do with your life that will be your grandparents' legacy?


Our granddaughter was named last Shabbat: דבורה אסתר (Devorah Esther). May she grow up healthy, wise, kind, and holy, and become a light to the Jewish People and to the world.


Shabbat Shalom

PS - Countdown to Rosh Hashana

 

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Long Island Railroad

The purpose of this blog is so not to leave the Shabbat conversation to chance. Please print and share.

Countdown to Rosh Hashana

On the morning of January 9, 1948, Marcel Sternberger boarded the 9:09 train to Woodside, where he caught a subway to his 5th Avenue Manhattan office. 

He always took the 9:09 train. 

But this particular Friday, he did something different.

En route, he had a sudden idea to visit Laszlo Victor, a Hungarian friend who lived in Brooklyn and was ill.

So at Ozone Park, he changed to the Brooklyn subway and went to his friend's house. In the afternoon he returned to the subway to head to his office.

Here is what happened on that fateful train, in Marcel's own words:

The car was crowded, and there seemed to be no chance of a seat. But just as I entered, a man sitting by the door suddenly jumped up to leave, and I slipped into the empty place. I've been living in New York long enough not to start conversations with strangers. But being a photographer, I have the peculiar habit of analyzing people's faces, and I was struck by the features of the passenger on my left. He was probably in his late 30s, and when he glanced up, his eyes seemed to have a hurt expression in them. He was reading a Hungarian-language newspaper, and something prompted me to say in Hungarian, I hope you don't mind if I glance at your paper.

The man seemed surprised to be addressed in his native language. But he answered politely, "You may read it now. I'll have time later on."

During the half-hour ride to town, we had quite a conversation. He said his name was Bela Paskin. A law student when World War II started, he had been put into a German labor battalion and sent to the Ukraine. Later he was captured by the Russians and put to work burying the German dead. After the war, he covered hundreds of miles on foot until he reached his home in Debrecen, a large city in eastern Hungary.

I myself knew Debrecen quite well, and we talked about it for a while. Then he told me the rest of his story. When he went to the apartment once occupied by his father, mother, brothers and sisters, he found strangers living there. Then he went upstairs to the apartment that he and his wife once had. It also was occupied by strangers. None of them had ever heard of his family.

As he was leaving, full of sadness, a boy ran after him, calling Paskin bacsi! Paskin bacsi! That means Uncle Paskin. The child was the son of some old neighbors of his. He went to the boy's home and talked to his parents. Your whole family is dead,? they told him. The Nazis took them and your wife to Auschwitz.

Auschwitz was one of the worst Nazi concentration camps. Paskin gave up all hope. A few days later, too heartsick to remain any longer in Hungary, he set out again on foot, stealing across border after border until he reached Paris. He managed to immigrate to the United States in October 1947, just three months before I met him.

All the time he had been talking, I kept thinking that somehow his story seemed familiar. A young woman whom I had met recently at the home of friends had also been from Debrecen; she had been sent to Auschwitz; from there she had been transferred to work in a German munitions factory. Her relatives had been killed in the gas chambers. Later she was liberated by the Americans and was brought here in the first boatload of displaced persons in 1946.

Her story had moved me so much that I had written down her address and phone number, intending to invite her to meet my family and thus help relieve the terrible emptiness in her life.

It seemed impossible that there could be any connection between these two people, but as I neared my station, I fumbled anxiously in my address book. I asked in what I hoped was a casual voice, "Was your wife's name Marya?"

He turned pale. "Yes!? How did you know?"

He looked as if he were about to faint.

I said, "Let's get off the train." I took him by the arm at the next station and led him to a phone booth. He stood there like a man in a trance while I dialed her phone number.

It seemed hours before Marya Paskin answered. (Later I learned her room was alongside the telephone, but she was in the habit of never answering it because she had so few friends and the calls were always for someone else. This time, however, there was no one else at home and, after letting it ring for a while, she responded.)

When I heard her voice at last, I told her who I was and asked her to describe her husband. She seemed surprised at the question, but gave me a description. Then I asked her where she had lived in Debrecen, and she told me the address.

Asking her to hold the line, I turned to Paskin and said, "Did you and your wife live on such-and-such a street?"

"Yes!" He was white as a sheet and trembling.

"Try to be calm. Something miraculous is about to happen to you. Here, take this telephone and talk to your wife."

He nodded his head in mute bewilderment, his eyes bright with tears. He took the receiver, listened a moment to his wife's voice, then suddenly cried, "This is Bela! This is Bela?" and he began to mumble hysterically. Seeing that the poor fellow was so excited he couldn't talk coherently, I took the receiver from his shaking hands.

"Stay where you are," I told Marya, who also sounded hysterical. "I am sending your husband to you. We will be there in a few minutes."

Bela was crying like a baby and saying over and over again. "It is my wife. I go to my wife!"

At first I thought I had better accompany Paskin, lest the man should faint from excitement, but I decided that this was a moment in which no strangers should intrude. Putting Paskin into a taxicab, I directed the driver to take him to Marya's address, paid the fare, and said goodbye.

Bela and Marya Paskin's reunion was a moment so poignant, so electric with suddenly released emotion, that afterward neither could recall much about it.

She later said, "I remember only that when I left the phone, I walked to the mirror like in a dream to see if maybe my hair had turned gray. The next thing I know, a taxi stops in front of the house, and it is my husband who comes toward me. Details I cannot remember; only this I know that I was happy for the first time in many years.....Even now it is difficult to believe that it happened. We have both suffered so much; I have almost lost the capability to not be afraid. Each time my husband goes from the house, I say to myself, Will anything happen to take him from me again?"

Her husband is confident that no horrible misfortune will ever again befall them. "Providence has brought us together. It was meant to be."

Question for your table: Chance or Providence?


Shabbat Shalom

Adapted from Paul Deutschman, Great Stories Remembered.
 

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