| Incidentally, have I mentioned that my Hebrew school students are cool? |
[Oct. 10th, 2008|11:26 am] |
This post will make no sense to those of you who don't read Hebrew. Fortunately, enough of you do to make it worth posting. I'll try to explain as I go along, anyway.
In passing, I mentioned to them that the Hebrew vowels have names. (In Hebrew, the vowels are just little marks under the actual letters. They're really only used when people are LEARNING how to read, or if you're transcribing something that's not a real Hebrew word -- once you can ACTUALLY read, you don't use 'em.)
They decided that they didn't like the official names of them. And came up with their own for a few of them.
(The vowel sounds described are in the dialect "American Hebrew School Hebrew", a set of vowel sounds which is fundamentally unlike Israeli Hebrew or Ashkenazi Hebrew, and has only limited similarities to Sephardic Hebrew. Its vowel structure is simplified in much the same way that American vowel sounds are often simplified -- but even more so.)
Vowel
| Sound
| Official name
| My students' name for it
|
ֶ
| "eh" -- ɛ
| segol
| Ted
|
ֵ
| "ei" -- ei
| tseirei
| Laya
|
ַ
| "ah" -- a
| patakh
| Bob Jr.
|
ָ
| "ah" -- a
| kamatz
| Bob
|
ֳ
| "ah" -- a
| hatef kamatz
| Bob Sr
|
ְ
| as little as possible -- ə
| sheva
| Disputed: either Professor Ih, or Lieutenant Uh
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| Today was the last day of Hebrew School of the year. |
[Jun. 1st, 2008|06:12 pm] |
We only had about a half hour of regular class: I did a version of blackjack using the numerical version of Hebrew letters. The goal was to get as close to 613 without going over.
See, the values of the letters are, for the first ten letters, 1 through ten, for the next nine, 20 to 100, and then 200, 300, 400. So 613, which is the traditional number of commandments G-d gave to us (although, when you count them out, you have to be real creative to hit 613 without going over or under -- there are several different lists out there of what the 613 are), is a pretty good number for this.
We had a deck of cards with Hebrew letters; kids could hit or stay.
Since there was only half an hour, and the four kids I had were spending a good portion of their time talking (which I didn't mind for the last day), when we were told that it was time to go upstairs, Kalilah was ahead with 184 points, and Annessia was in second place with something like 92. But Kalilah wanted to do just one more round.
Annesia pulled a ת, the final letter in the Hebrew Alphabet, jumping her ahead to 492, and she won.
Anyway, none of the activities that we had in the all-school program were particularly Jewish-educational (just fun things like making things out of graham crackers and marshmallow fluff, things like that), so I didn't mind that Annessia and Kalilah didn't want to participate, so we just sat and talked. And they were annoying at me in the way that they tend to be. And when someone came by to give me my paycheck for the day, I stuck it in my guitar case, and Kalilah grabbed it, and ran into the other room to look at it and see how much I was paid per class.
She came back and gave me the paycheck and said, "That's not a lot of money. That's really pathetic." I pointed out that it IS only for one day of teaching.
"Yeah, but then the only other thing you do for money is tend bar."
Anyway, we kept talking, and Annessia asked who did the cleaning in our household, me or my wife, and I said, mostly me, and she asked about laundry, and I said, always me, and she asked about cooking and I said, almost always me. She said, "So what does your wife do?" I said, "She WORKS. A lot. She's a designer at a software company."
Kalilah nodded in sudden understanding. "OH! So THAT'S how you get money!"
Yes. Yes. It is true. A designer in a software company makes better money than a Hebrew School teacher/bartender. It's a fact of life, and one that eleven-year-old kids are quite aware of. I had to explain that the reason I tend bar and teach Hebrew school is because I really do genuinely love doing it, and Kalilah looked truly dubious.
Ah, well. It IS true, though. |
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| Hebrew school, back to the post-Purim grind. |
[Mar. 30th, 2008|02:57 pm] |
"Gabe, you are evil and Machiavellian. And that's not where I was intending to go with this discussion. Nonetheless, that IS an interesting idea."
Yep, we're back to discussing Jewish history -- we've finished the Purim stuff, so we're back to normal stuff.
Where "normal" is defined as students considering the instability engendered by having a monotheistic, anti-syncretic region of an empire which is bound together by syncretic polytheism. In which Rome has control of this region, but it's an ongoing potential source of conflict. But, of course, you couldn't abandon it, even if you wanted to, because that would be a show of weakness, and it would encourage other parts of the empire to break away.
Gabe's suggested solution: Rome should have funded and supported an underground anti-Roman organization, and encouraged and nurtured them to take anti-Roman violent acts, giving Rome an excuse to come in with their whole military and raze the place, squashing the potential instability under sheer military might.
After that, we ended up on another tangent, discussing what the mentality of suicide bombers was, and how they justified their own actions to themselves.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the leaders of tomorrow. Seriously, this is a good thing. They don't support the use of agent provocateurs or suicide bombers, but they want to understand how other people WOULD use them, and how to recognize and work against it.
There was a bit of an argument, however, about whether you should use an agent who know's he or she is working for you, who you extract before crushing the resistance movement, or just use a dupe who you kill along with everyone else.
I think I'm going to have to get a few Dover thrift editions of The Prince to hand out to my class. Although I'm not sure there's much in there they haven't figured out, already. . . |
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| Schpeil 2008 |
[Mar. 22nd, 2008|11:06 am] |
The 2008, Which is to say, the
5768, Purim Schpeil by the
Students of Temple B'Nai
Brith in Somerville,
Massachusetts
( Read more... ) |
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| The Purim schpeil script |
[Mar. 3rd, 2008|10:18 pm] |
Script for the schpeil under cut. If you're planning on seeing it, maybe you don't want to read it. Up to you, really.
( Read more... ) |
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| One of the reasons I really like my shul community. . . |
[Nov. 28th, 2007|10:54 pm] |
Just got an email over the shul email list. It's a holiday party. It's a Latke-Pasta bash. To celebrate Hanukkah. And Ramen-dan. Yeah, it's a Jewish/Pastafarian celebration.
The end of the email is a little ASCII Flying Spaghetti Monster.
_ _(o)_(o)_ _ Flying Spaghetti Monster
._.' `:_ ) ( _:' `._. Wishes You
/ ( )\ `-. A Very Pasta New Year
,-` _) (_,
</pre? |
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| Hebrew school stuff |
[Oct. 22nd, 2007|02:51 pm] |
Yesterday's class didn't go as well as last week's but it wasn't bad. Someday, I have to learn something or other about classroom management. Is it bad when every cartoon that my kids doodle of me has me yelling, "QUIET!!" (And I have had a number of students over the years who are quite good artists, so I've seen plenty of cartoon caricatures of myself yelling "QUIET!" Many of them are quite good.)
They don't mind when I yell; I think they find it charming. Generally, if it gets noisy, one or more of the kids -- including the ones who are noisy -- say, "Use your Teacher Voice!" I dunno. They seem to like it when I yell at them. I guess that means that they're comfortable with me -- they know that I love them, even when I'm yelling at them.
Anyway, I guess I'm more comfortable teaching history this year, because we appear to be covering the material more quickly, but with the same degree of comprehension. We started with the Exile from Jerusalem, and went over the Babylonian Captivity -- and talked about how the religion changed in exile from one based almost entirely on giving sacrifices to an elite group of people to take care of, to one based on daily communal prayer.
And we even got to Cyrus the Great, and the 50,000 Jews who went back to Jerusalem to re-establish the Temple when Cyrus gave Judea back to the Judeans. And how they had to fight against the people who were there, since it's not like nobody moved in in the past 70 years. . .
And then we finished off mentioning that, once the Temple was re-built, you were able to go back to the Temple-based religion of giving animals to an elite to sacrifice -- but that the communal religion didn't go away.
I said, "So, now we've got two types of religion going on, with the Kohanim running one, and the local scholars running the other. What do you think happens in this situation?"
One of my students said, "Political fighting to control the religion and government of the country?"
My students don't miss a lot.
You know, it occurs to me that if the current Administration had the grasp of political and religious power dynamics that my fifth-graders do, we wouldn't be IN the kind of messes that we're in. . . . |
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| Today: teaching AND bartending |
[Oct. 14th, 2007|11:34 pm] |
Hebrew school went pretty well. The one kid who I've been having the most trouble with, I think I'm starting to get a feel for how he works. And I think his parents are starting to come up with things that help, too.
I vaguely suspect that he's somewhere on the autism spectrum, although I don't know, and I think that him having more physical, tactile inputs helps him. Today, he came in wearing knit gloves, and a big straw cowboy hat with a rawhide chinstrap, and a rope hanging down the back, touching his shoulders and back. And he sat at a desk which is at the side of the room with his back to the room.
And he seemed to have a better time concentrating and an easier time learning than he usually does. I just have a hunch that, maybe, the extra contrasting physical inputs from the knit gloves, the straw hat, the leather chinstrap and the rope might have helped his busy brain have extra stuff to do.
To those on my flist who ARE autism-spectrum -- does that sound reasonable? I mean, first, does it sound reasonable that he might be autism-spectrum, and, second, if he is, does that seem like the sort of thing that might help?
In the second half of school, I'm teaching Jewish history, again -- but this time I've done it before. This means that I now have a chance to make new and better mistakes. Ah, well -- this is how I teach. By the seat of my pants, with no clue what I'm doing, but, somehow, they keep hiring me. There are times I wish I had actual training and skills -- like, I strongly suspect that y'all on my friends list who have taken actual teaching certification courses just might have better ideas with how to teach the kid I described above -- but I mostly muddle through.
So, in the first three weeks of school, we're still on the first event which I'm covering. Which is fine, because they're learning, but it does mean that there is no way we're getting even to the birth of Islam at this rate, let alone the twentieth century. . . still, I'm enjoying it.
We're covering the Babylonian exile, since I believe that's where Jewish history starts. Before that, you have the history of the Israelites, and before that, the history of the Hebrews. But Jews don't start until a whole community of people get kicked out of Judea, but decide that they're still following the religion of Judea, and start practicing Judea-ism in places other than Judea, as a community.
( Read more... ) |
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| I yelled at my class today |
[Sep. 30th, 2007|02:06 pm] |
And then lectured them about lashon ha-ra.
I feel vaguely guilty about yelling and lecturing, but I'd feel a lot worse if I hadn't taken some action about students hurting each other's feelings.
I just don't know if I handled it right. One student wrote something that could be construed as hurtful about another student in zir notebook. A second student looked over zir shoulder, read it, and called the student about which it was about over to also see it, who saw it, grabbed the page of the notebook, and crumpled it up. Only the last part of this was obvious, so I yelled at the third student. Who was more upset by this than zie usually is when I yell at zir, so I knew that something else was up, and found out the rest of the story.
I told them that all three of them had done things wrong, but that they weren't of the same magnitude. I said that writing hurtful things in one's own notebook is bad, but that, as it wasn't intended to be seen by anyone, and therefore wasn't intended to hurt anyone, that is mitigating. So it's bad, but not SO bad. I said that grabbing someone else's notebook and crumpling the page was absolutely unacceptable. But that the person who had done the worst thing was the second student. Because that was lashon ha-ra.
And I lectured them about that. And how we, in the classroom, are a community, and lashon ha-ra damages communities. You don't have to LIKE everyone in your community, but you ARE a community. And avoiding lashon ha-ra is one of the ways you preserve communities.
The three students looked abashed and ashamed at their actions, and the rest of the class looked intent and somewhat worried. And at the end of the lecture, I asked if we were all willing to, in a sense, pretend that this whole situation hadn't happened. That, to repair our community, we had to forgive each other, which, in this case, would mean trying to remember the lessons, but forgetting the incident as much as we could.
They all agreed that they would like to move past the whole thing and pretend it never happened. I did try to be certain that all of them knew that, if they DIDN'T feel comfortable moving on, we could still work on it, but they were all embarrassed by it and wanted to just have it over and gone, so we did.
I still don't know if I did the right thing. I think I did an okay thing, but I don't know if I was right.
It's hard to know if one was fair. It's hard to know if one was correct.
Was I right that crumpling up the page was more wrong that writing the page? Was I right that calling attention to the page was more wrong than either writing it, or destroying it? I don't really know. I THINK I was at least close enough to right, but I'm not certain, and am still feeling guilty and unsettled. But I would feel MORE guilty and unsettled if I HADN'T done something like that. I'm responsible, in part, for my kids' moral and ethical development, and for their emotional health. |
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| Now that the Hebrew School year is over, I thought I'd try to remember some of the lessons I taught |
[Jun. 11th, 2007|08:12 pm] |
So, I thought I'd try to write down some of the things which I taught to my students this year.
Every once in a while, I wonder why the Hebrew School keeps hiring me back. I mean, the board members' children have all had me as a teacher -- they KNOW what I teach and how, and yet, they not only keep hiring me, they LIKE what I'm teaching their kids.
So it might be a good idea to try to remember a few of those things:
( Read more... ) |
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| Discipline methods that don't work on my class |
[May. 7th, 2007|02:46 pm] |
Note to self: if a student in your class starts being all sarcastic, going to him and saying, "No dark sarcasm in the classroom!" won't actually help, unless your goal actually WAS to have the entire rest of the class sing large chunks of "The Wall" to the one student who hadn't heard it.
(Sixth and seventh graders -- eleven, twelve years old or so.) |
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| It's one week after Purim |
[Mar. 11th, 2007|10:05 pm] |
Today, after Hebrew school, a whole bunch of kids were standing around quoting lines from the Purim schpiel at each other.
Like it was Monty Python or something. |
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| My latest Purim Shpeil |
[Feb. 16th, 2007|03:55 pm] |
Okay, I was supposed to have done this earlier this week, but I finally finished it. If anyone wants to read it and critique it, I'd appreciate it. Please make any suggestions you have.
( The schpeil I just wrote ) |
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| On a different note |
[Dec. 18th, 2006|02:57 pm] |
I wanted to let you all know how cool my Hebrew School students are. So, I'm teaching the 5th/6th grade, and we split into halves for Hebrew, with me getting, theoretically, the kids who need more help.
I say "theoretically", because I don't. There is no measurable difference between the Hebrew knowledge on the kids in my group and the ones in Larry's, and, instead, I think the point is to give me the kids who are harder to control, because I'm better at dealing with them.
I have, of course, totally ignored the Hebrew textbook which we're supposed to be using, because I ignore textbooks. Don't like 'em. They give you, y'know, structure and rules and a tested and proven way to teach stuff, which makes things easier for the teacher. What's the challenge?
Instead, I'm photocopying things out of various large-print siddurim I have lying around my house (because I have learning disabilities, and have trouble reading out of normal-sized-print siddurim). With, y'know, Post-it-note tape blocking out any translations and transliterations that the book has. And then I also write out a sheet with translations of words which are in the prayer.
Then the kids have to read the prayer, translate it, and copy it out in script. Which is most of the skills we're trying to teach.
I wanted to share the translation of Modeh Ani which they came up with.
Modeh Ani is the prayer that you say in the morning when you wake up. In many families, it is one of the first prayers that small children are taught; in other families, people are entirely unaware of its existence. I like it for teaching purposes, partially because it doesn't have G-d's name in it, so I don't have to be super-careful about the sheets of paper.
Here's a fairly standard translation of the prayer:
I offer thanks before you, living and eternal King, for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your faithfulness is great.
Here's the translation my kids came up with:
I give thanks to your face, King who is life and forever, because you have given back to me my soul with compassion; there is lots of your faithfulness.
Can I just say that I really like "King who is life and forever" as a description of G-d? And they like "to your face" because they see that as the opposite of "behind your back". You're offering thanks to G-d directly, y'know -- you're saying it to Its face.
Which is correct and all, but the way they put it sounds better.
Also, when I asked them to explain what they felt the prayer was about, Julian came up with, "My grandfather says, every morning, 'Well, one more day above ground.' I think that's what the prayer is about."
Julian +1. |
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| Stuff that's been going on in Hebrew School |
[Oct. 28th, 2006|09:13 pm] |
Some of you may remember that I spent much of the summer working out a timeline of Jewish history, starting at 1000 BCE and going to modern day, which I hung up on the wall of my classroom and was to use as a major part of how I was going to teach the class this year.
It was thirty feet long, a hundred years to the foot. It was in two fifteen-foot sections, taped along an entire wall of the classroom.
It's gone.
Over the high holidays, my classroom was used for daycare, and someone took down the timeline, and it hasn't been found. Far as we can figure, someone threw it out.
Now that I think about it, I'm actually pretty angry about this. I spend many, many hours on that timeline, and it was going to be the fundamental tool which I was going to use this year. And it's GONE.
I don't know what I'm going to do. I guess I'm going to have to redo the whole thing. It sucks.
On the other hand, I'm a damn fine teacher.
So, my co-teacher this year is Larry Rich, who has two sons, Adam and Teo (as a baby, he couldn't say "Theo", and the name stuck) who help out as madrachim ("guides", a term for student teachers in Hebrew schools). He's covering the Hebrew portion, mainly, while I'm covering Jewish History. I presume that, once he gets a better idea of relative skill levels, he'll divide the class into two halves and he'll, probably, take the more advanced half.
That's what I'd suggest, anyway. Because I'm a better disciplinarian.
I don't think of myself as one -- but I am. The students, on the whole, appreciate it -- as long as they have to be in class, they'd prefer to get something out of it, and they're willing to let me ride herd on them so long as I ride herd on everyone else. If they actually were not even going to try to learn anything, then, sure, goofing off would be cool -- but if they're going to try to learn something, they want to have an outside chance of success, even if I have to force it on them.
That previous paragraph seems to be absolute gibberish, but I suspect that those of you who are parents, teachers, and/or child psychologists (and, come to think of it, I think that's pretty damn close to a majority) will recognize some of it as possibly true.
So it was frustrating watching Larry trying to cajole the class into behaving, because That Trick Never Works. At a couple points, some of the students turned to me and said, "Ian, use your Teacher Voice!"
So I did a couple times. Worked somewhat okay.
For my half of class, though, I handed out notebooks and pencils and told them, "Okay, you've got these notebooks for two reasons. If you are left-handed, I want you to take notes on the left-hand page. If you are right-handed, I want you to take notes on the right-hand page. On the OTHER page, you are to doodle. Because I know I listen better when I'm doodling, so I want to see if that's true of you, too."
Seems to have worked. We'll see how much they retained, but they were at least apparently attentive, and, even if they weren't, they weren't disruptive. |
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| First day of Hebrew School! |
[Sep. 11th, 2006|10:47 pm] |
So, after getting home from tending bar at 2:30, and talking to Lis for another hour and a half about what my day had been like, and how the party she'd gone to had been, I finally fell asleep at 4:00, and got up three hours later, at 7:00, to go to work for the first day of Hebrew School of the year.
Larry Rich is my co-teacher this year -- I think this is the first year that I've had a co-teacher more experienced than I am. Two of his sons are madrichim (assistant teachers) at the school, and he's basically the main Hebrew teacher of the school. Beth's two sons are in my class this year -- they're identical twins, but fortunately, one of them has a mole under his lip, so I can tell them apart. They're, of course, totally different personalities.
So, as always, they are putting grades together in order to get reasonable numbers of people per class. This means that I get to teach students from BOTH of the groups of kids that I taught before. So I'm truly happy about this class. If you remember me posting cool things about any of my students from any year before last year, I've got that student again this year.
What else? Mark, the other teacher who plays guitar, is back again this year, which is awesome, because it's more fun to lead singing together than by myself. Not that it's not fun to lead it on my own, but it's more fun with the two of us.
We did Hebrew review in the first half of the class. All of the students stated that they knew no Hebrew, and had forgotten the Hebrew they didn't know over the summer, which we allowed was reasonable and expected. And they stated that they couldn't write cursive. They then went on to write the Hebrew alphabet in cursive, which, of course, they had totally forgotten how to do, but somehow still could.
If these kids actually knew that they knew what they knew, Larry and I would have very little to do in class.
In the second half of class, I started teaching History. I started off, as I planned to do, talking about "what is history and why do we study it", and went on to "when does Jewish history start?"
A lot of what we talked about I posted to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) tbbhistoryclass, which is the discussion LJ community I set up for the class. Feel free to read along, if you like. It's primarily for my students, but feel free to pop in to correct information I get wrong, and so forth.
So that was most of it, really. I'm so looking forward to this year! |
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| One really interesting thing in preparing for my class this year. . . |
[Sep. 6th, 2006|04:54 pm] |
. . . which, incidentally, starts this Sunday -- I'm both really nervous and really excited -- is that I'm putting together a timeline to get all the events in Jewish history in order, and with a sense of how long they took and how far apart they were, and I'm including other events from around the world to put things in context.
And I've never seen a lot of them juxtaposed.
I mean, I guess most people are aware that Lao Tse came before Confucius, but that their lives overlapped -- but, for instance, were they both before or after Zoroaster? Or the Buddha?
Was the Babylonian exile of the Jews before or after the first Olympics, or the founding of Rome, or the Golden Age of Athens under Pericles? For that matter, obviously the first Olympics happened before the Golden Age of Athens, but was THAT before or after the founding of Rome?
The fact that the "discovery" of the Book of Deuteronomy, which allowed the Israelite people to have a formalized code of laws happened in the same year that Draco formulated HIS formalized code of laws . . . that's kind of neat. |
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| Dreams I've had recently |
[Aug. 20th, 2006|11:10 am] |
So, two nights ago, I dreamed that my father had a new table saw that he was showing me, that was so sharp that you could cut pieces of wood thin enough that they were translucent. He was very happy with this new table saw.
Last night I can remember two dreams. One was that Alan Rickman was giving a reading from Harry Potter book Seven on a beach somewhere in England. Or maybe Marblehead -- it wasn't clear. The whole beach was packed with families listening to the reading, and Lis and I were in a hotel room or something overlooking the beach.
I was the only person who noticed the huge wave coming in, and I tried to scream a warning, but there was no time. Hundreds of people were washed out to sea, although, since the wave didn't crest or anything, there was no crushing -- but the undertow picked up hundreds of people. I ran down to the beach to swim out and see if I could rescue people -- because of how the wave hit, I expected that everybody would be conscious, and anyone who could swim could get back, but there were a LOT of people, including a lot of children, and even infants. And Alan Rickman was wearing his Snape costume, which would NOT be good to swim in. . . Then I woke up.
The other dream I had was more useful. I dreamed that it was the first day of class at Hebrew school, and I was teaching Lesson One of my Jewish History curriculum that I've been working on all summer. And it did NOT go well. I just couldn't get the kids' attention, I couldn't get them to behave, I couldn't hold their interest.
Then I had the dream again, and tried different things, and it worked better. Still not perfect, but it gave me some insights into how I should teach specific students. (I had the 5th/6th grade class twice before, when they were the 3rd/4th grade, and when they were the 1st/2nd -- so I've taught these kids every other year since I've been teaching at TBB. This means that, even while asleep, I've got a pretty good idea how various students will react to things.) |
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| Things I've done yesterday and today: |
[Jun. 4th, 2006|02:06 pm] |
Met ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) shadesong for the first time. And a whole bunch of other people whose LJ names I don't remember, although I do, more-or-less, remember their meat-names.
Discovered that the Rte. 1 miniature golf course was closed because of the rain, which was disappointing, because it looks like a really cool course.
Went bowling instead, with the aforementioned folks, and had a great time. It was the first time I'd ever bowled ten-pin --I bowled candlepin a few times when I was a kid, and enjoyed it, but haven't in decades.
Bowling is a whole lot of fun. I had a great time. I want to go bowling more often. And if I get reasonably good at ten-pin, I wanna switch up to candlepin. Because it's such a fun sport, at least when you're with a group of people who are just having fun and not worrying about if you're doing really well or not.
Then I tended bar for Reunion Week at Boston College. There were five bartenders at the event I worked, the Class of 1976. It was a WHOLE lot of fun -- all five of us were more-or-less in the weeds from 7 pm to 11:30 pm, and people were tipping. We pooled tips, and all five of us walked out of there with an extra $120. That's the second-best one-shift tip total I've EVER made.
And today was the last day of Hebrew school. Each class put together a little something to show what we've learned. My class put together a play. Although there were roles for all the kids in the class, Sam didn't show up, so Max ended up taking both the role of Narrator 2 and Narrator 3. (I always do that -- write roles for everyone, with some roles collapsible in case some people don't show up.)
( Read more... ) |
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| Hebrew School |
[Apr. 23rd, 2006|01:37 pm] |
After the horribleness of yesterday, which Lis blogged about, it's good that today's Hebrew school was wonderful.
We weren't sure how many kids would show up, as today is officially the last day of spring vacation for Boston-area schools, but seven out of the eight did. Which is a remarkably large percentage for my class. . .
( Read more... ) |
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| A few unrelated comments |
[Feb. 7th, 2006|09:54 am] |
First, I downloaded Moby Dick to my PalmPilot, to have more random stuff to read with me -- it's important to always have a book or two on you, and the greatest strength of the PalmPilot is that it makes it practical to always have twenty or thirty books on you.
I'm only up to chapter six, but I'm really enjoying it.
Okay, I've avoided the book in the past, because everyone always talked about how Great it was, and how it dealt with The Human Condition, and never once did anyone use the adjective "wacky".
Like I said, I'm only up to chapter six -- but, so far, I would like to be the first to publicly state, "Moby Dick is wacky fun."
At least, the first six chapters are.
Anyway, on Sunday, after coming home from Hebrew School, I was so pissed off and angry that I decided to make something inedible. I was feeling mean and destructive, so I decided that a good way to deal with it would be to make an alcoholic beverage so nasty that nobody could possibly ever stomach it. And I didn't simply want to mix something unpotable -- I wanted to brew it.
As you know, Bob, anything with sugar in it can ferment when you add yeast to it, so I set about to take some of the nastiest sugariest stuff in the kitchen, and mix it with water and yeast in a gallon glass jug to set aside for a couple days to ferment.
Which is why there is a jug of Tang Mead bubbling away on my kitchen counter right now. Unfortunately, it's actually smelling lack-of-horrible, and, while there is no remote possibility of this tasting GOOD, it may fail to be completely undrinkable. |
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| Incidentally, I do like the parents of my kids, almost as much as I like the kids |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|11:19 pm] |
So, after everyone had started working on the candlesticks, I decided to see if I could get a discussion going on the laws of Shabbat, just for fun and more learning. And, y'know, to get the taste out of my brain.
So said that, by the laws of Shabbat, we weren't supposed to do work on Shabbat, but how did we define "work"?
Obviously, the very first definition suggested was "the cross-product of force and displacement." As, y'know, I expected, and had been planning for.
What can I say? I know my community.
So I said, "Let's explore that notion -- fundamentally, what that comes down to is a definition that work is, at some level of abstraction, the use of energy -- and I think it's clear that, if we accept that definition, then metabolizing would be a violation of Shabbat."
(Just got hit by esprit d'escalier -- I SHOULD have said, "And, as we've established, death is the penalty for NOT following Shabbat, it cannot therefore ALSO be the requirement FOR following Shabbat. . . ")
One of the other parents broke in, "So really, the only way to TRULY follow Shabbat would be to put yourself in a suspended animation chamber? But if you did that, how could you study and read the Torah on Shabbat?"
I nodded. "Yes, and, anyway, while a suspended animation chamber would prevent the use of energy within the closed system of the INSIDE of the chamber, it would have to exist in a larger system, and use energy that way. I don't think that you can avoid disordering energy into heat on Shabbat. Therefore, I think we can safely disregard the physics definition of 'work' here."
The original parent said, "Disregard physics?!? NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 8th, 2005|01:25 am] |
So, this Sunday in Hebrew school, I did some teaching about Lashon Ha-Ra.
See, at the staff meeting (the one where I was dressed as Jayne Cobb), the topic of bullying came up. Now, there isn't a big bullying problem that I can see in the Hebrew school, mainly because we're only there for two-and-a half hours a week, and the kids are always under adult supervision. But a lot of kids have been having problems in their regular schools. And we were trying to talk about if there was anything we could do, as religious instructors, to help give kids tools to deal with this.
Now, the bullying that they're really having trouble with is the emotional kind -- teasing and the like. One kid in my class said that she'd lost all of her friends, because someone had spread lies about her. And the only person who she still had left as a friend was someone she didn't even LIKE that much, but it was the only person who'd still talk to her. And my point in the staff meeting was that Judaism teaches that this is really serious stuff -- but it doesn't really offer many solutions. I mean, you could argue that someone who really humiliates people should be stoned to death, but you can't actually DO that in the modern world. But the point that some other teachers made was that, if nothing else, being told that the reason this hurts so bad is because IT'S ACTUALLY GODDAMNED SERIOUS, and it's NOT a failing in them for feeling bad, since this IS actually that bad -- that, even if that was ALL we could do, that would have some value. Validating their feelings was important, and useful enough to do for that reason alone.
( Read more... ) |
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| Updates on my life |
[Oct. 30th, 2005|06:36 pm] |
Lis asked that I do a better job of blogging the minutiae of my life while she's in North Carolina, so that she can keep up with stuff while she's away.
( Read more... ) |
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| So, a couple things about Hebrew School |
[Oct. 5th, 2005|11:24 pm] |
Hebrew school has been going on for three weeks, now. I have been INTENDING to tell y'all about stuff, since, well, a lot of you mainly read this lj for my cute stories about teaching Hebrew school, and my fun bartending stories, and I haven't tended bar regularly for over a year now.
Some basic stuff. Rafi, my former boss, is now teaching at Kesher full-time, and isn't at our Hebrew school any more. I miss him, because he's cool and all (and he's now married, as of the middle of August, and they look all newleywedy together, and they seem like the sort of people who will continue to look newleywedy together long after they have great-grandchildren), but the school's doing okay without him. We're also working without Mark, who was my boss TWO years ago, and was very happy to turn the educational director job over to Rafi, and just become a regular teacher. But he gave up teaching here in order to focus on politics in Somerville. Still, they're both around, and are going to be available for substitute teaching and stuff, which is good, because the kids miss them. And, y'know, so do I. Of course, we all got to at least exchange hugs and catch up outside of Rosh Hashana services today and yesterday.
Isaac also retired, in order to spend more time with his great-grandchildren, and to focus more on running community outreach stuff to the Russian immigrant community at Temple B'nai Moshe. And to do lots of other stuff there -- I think he's helping run THEIR Hebrew school.
Y'know that whole joke about how Jewish communities just don't interact with each other and are mutually hostile? Not so much true in Boston. People don't so much choose one and diss all the others, so much as over-commit to multiple shuls and have to pull back and spend their time with just two or three of 'em. I mean, me, personally -- I've got connections with B'nai Moshe, Temple B'nai Brith, Tremont Street Shul, Chavaurat Shalom, Congregation Eitz Chayyim, B'nai Or, and Cherie Koller-Fox, who is her own community just by herself. Among others. That's a pretty typical list.
Anyway, this looks like it's getting long enough to deserve a ( cut tag ) |
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| I've been in the grip of a particularly bad bout of depression |
[Aug. 1st, 2005|09:14 am] |
It's been bad for several weeks, if not longer, and it got incredibly bad over the weekend. And this morning -- well, when I'm depressed, I often just sit in front of the computer instead of doing useful things, but today, it was a genuine challenge to even get over here to sit in front of the computer.
And then I got an email, from Julian Murphy, who was one of my students:
hi ian, julian here!
i would like you to know that my soccer team beat our division so we went to
the cup and won it against the hardest teams we ever faced!
i miss you!
I'm still really depressed, but that email's given me enough of a boost that I think I'll be able to get a couple things done today, anyway. Thanks, Jules. I love that kid. Okay, I love all the kids. |
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| Shavuot |
[Jun. 13th, 2005|08:04 am] |
As a good portion of my friends list is aware, it's the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. On Shavuot, one eats dairy foods, and, ideally, stays up all night studying Torah. I didn't manage to do this, 'cause I was tired.
Lis and I managed to move back into our apartment yesterday!
Okay, the place is still a mess, but it's almost marginally habitable. The downstairs isn't, and won't be for months. But we've got our bed back, which is REAL nice.
Temple B'Nai Brith, where I teach Hebrew School, and the Tremont Street Shul, where like 80% of my friends go, decided to do stuff together this year. There was a dinner at TBB, with some study sessions, and then, at 9:00, everyone who wanted to could troop over to Tremont Street to continue studying until five in the morning, and then go back to TBB for breakfast, and morning prayers.
The only part I showed up for was the dinner, and helping run the kids' stuff at TBB during the study sessions. Then I just went home instead of going over to Tremont Street.
None of my friends from Tremont showed up at TBB, which disappointed me. I'd hoped to see folks.
The kids' program I helped with was fun. It reminded me of the birthday hunts which my family does.
Each team of kids got a clue. The clue led to a second clue, which led on and on, seventeen clues in all. The point of it was mainly to have fun running through the shul and seeing all sorts of weird corners and bits that you wouldn't otherwise see, but at the end, everyone did get a little bouncy ball. But the point was the doing of it, not the getting of the prize. And the kids had a total blast.
Then there was ice cream. |
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| Last day of Hebrew School today |
[Jun. 5th, 2005|01:06 pm] |
Sad. . .
Four out of seven of the kids showed up, which was about what we expected. We drew pictures summarizing things that we learned this year, and I was really pleased with what they all remembered. When we called the kids up to get their certificates of completion for the year, which, incidentally, they really get excited about, I whispered to each kid, "You're my favorite student". Afterward, Max asked me, "What you said -- is that true?" I told him, "Yes. I did say it to everyone, but it is true."
For t'filah at the end, each class led a part of the prayers. My class did the Sh'ma and V'ahafta. And did it well, which made me proud.
Also, Ben (a fourth-grader who I taught last year) came up to me after school and told me that I'd successfully gotten him addicted to "Firefly", and he'd watched the first two DVDs. |
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| Trivia questions |
[May. 26th, 2005|01:20 pm] |
I'm doing a trivia game for the kids tonight at our indoor-because-it's-raining Lag B'Omer party at the shul.
I really ought to write some questions for it.
So therefore, I turn to you, my friends -- any good suggestions for trivia questions, on any subject, suitable for an audience ranging in age from, oh, five or so to, oh, maybe thirteen or so? |
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| Lag B'Omer is on Thursday night. |
[May. 23rd, 2005|09:29 am] |
My Hebrew school is putting together a little Lag B'Omer celebration for this Thursday. We're going to be at Sandy Beach on the Medford/Winchester line. I'm brainstorming fun things to do. One thing that occurred to me is that we've got firespinners. The MDC is unlikely to let us get away with a bonfire, but fire spinning just might be possible. Any poi folks interested in coming out and playing with us? |
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| I forgot to mention when I talked about Hebrew School |
[May. 17th, 2005|07:41 pm] |
Another reason I so love Anessia, besides that she's really annoying but then draws me pictures to apologize for it. . .
So, she was talking about how she had seen a play a couple days before -- a staging of The Secret Garden. And she hated it.
"I thought that it might be good, because I love the book, but the play was not as good as the book."
Since this was in the beginning part of the Hebrew school day when we're just doing art projects and chatting, we asked her what was wrong with the play.
"Well, it was a musical. And I've seen musicals before -- I think I know how they're supposed to work. You have conversations, and you have songs every once in a while. But this one -- you have a song, and then half a conversation, and then another song, and then . . . it was just too much. Also, the piano was too loud so you couldn't hear the singers. . . I saw another play last week that I liked better."
"Oh, what was that?"
"Um, I forget the title. Amid A Summer's Dream or something like that."
"A Midsummer's Night Dream?"
"Yeah, that was it! That was was great! It was so funny! People kept falling in love with the wrong people, and there was this one guy who's head turned into a donkey, and there was this play that was really awful!"
So, that's one reason I like my students, in general. They know the difference between classic literature and mediocre adaptations of classic literature, and also the difference between mediocre musicals and great plays. |
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| I'm typing this while sitting in my empty classroom |
[May. 15th, 2005|04:11 pm] |
I'm starting to have the "end-of-the-school-year blues" even though we've still got two more Sundays for this year. But my co-teacher, Tamara, is leaving for Israel -- she's going to be moving to Jerusalem to work on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. I'm chatting with Ben, who was one of my students from last year. It turns out that I'm the only teacher who will be coming back for next year. Which is a bit scary, but, oh well.
(I'm now back home, no longer at Hebrew School.)
Annessia was being something of a jerk today, which was annoying, but, after school, she made me an apology picture, which was incredibly sweet. And we played some after school. I love her a lot, and will miss her over the summer.
Ben was talking about how it's weird and a little scary that I'm the only teacher coming back, but I mentioned that Anna, who's been a substitute teacher a few times, is going to be teaching next year, which made him feel better. He said that he hoped that Anna would be teaching his grade, and I told him he should go tell the education committee that -- since they were meeting right at that time in the next room, and it was an open meeting to which the entire community was welcome, and he was part of the community. He thought that was a good point, but I suspect he was just going to tell them after the meeting was over. Which would work just as well, I suppose.
I also attempted to get Ben addicted to Firefly, since I had the DVDs and my laptop with me. Just by showing him the opening bit of "The Message" where Jayne gets a nifty hat from his mother. He liked it. |
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| For a day when everything went wrong, today's gone pretty well so far |
[Apr. 10th, 2005|02:34 pm] |
I got to Hebrew school nice and early this morning, so I could finish learning the song Rafi asked me to learn, and do some class prep and so forth.
And when I got to Hebrew school, I discovered that I left my keys at home, so I couldn't get into the school, 'cause I was the first one there.
Anyway, Tamara, my co-teacher showed up pretty soon. But she didn't have keys, either. So we just sat and talked about what we'd do.
Rafi eventually showed up, and opened the door. And stuff went pretty well for the first half of the day.
The schedule was different for today. We had a normal first half of the day, except snack was going to be in each classroom individually, and therefore a little earlier. When we all got together at the time that we would usually have snack, as a whole school, instead, we would start our whole-school program.
Of course, Rachel, who handles snack didn't get the message and brought snack at the usual time so things started late. Oh well.
Then it was time to start the program, and we got ready to teach the song.
And we discovered, with a moment of amused horror, that the song Rafi had me learn and the song Rafi was thinking of and had brought lyric sheets for and had planned the lesson around were two different songs.
Yeah. That song which I was bitching about learning? That wasn't the song I was supposed to have learned. (It also wasn't the song that Matt Blum found for me, which makes me feel a little better -- it was an entirely THIRD song by that title.)
So we winged it. And it went okay.
Then I came home and Lis had cleaned the foyer because she rocks like Roxbury Puddingstone, and then we watched an episode of Stargate SG-1 on DVD, and now we'll maybe go out for a walk because it's GORGEOUS out. |
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| Hebrew school today |
[Mar. 27th, 2005|01:05 pm] |
We did the for-the-school performance of our purim shpiel today, which went much better than the one on Purim itself, because, one, everyone was there, and two, everyone could hear us. People laughed at the funny parts. I'm proud of my kids.
I never actually finished writing the shpiel for the teachers, so we ended up improvising it, which went far, far better than I expected, had any right to expect, or, frankly, could have written. I kidnapped two members of the Ed Committee to be the "nice judges", and it turned out that they both watched American Idol. And Rafi, of course, was familiar with both American Idol and Pop Idol.
It worked SO well. All of us teachers sucked, but, you know, that's really not a downside for a purim shpiel where we teachers were portraying American Idol contestants. |
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| Other cool things about my Hebrew School class |
[Mar. 20th, 2005|07:54 pm] |
Almost all my students are geeky. The girls playing Bigtan and Teresh asked me if they could be "the palace guards who say 'Ni!'" I thought that was great, but said that it didn't go with what we were doing. But that I am all up ons the idea of doing an entirely Monty Python themed skit for NEXT year.
One of the other kids (the one who wants to be a systems librarian when he grows up, actually) asked me if I had ever read Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper. Which, by coincidence, I'm in the middle of right now. So is he.
I love my class. |
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| I like my Hebrew school class. . . |
[Mar. 20th, 2005|06:36 pm] |
So, Purim is next Thursday night. So we did Purim-related things in school.
I showed up wearing my Mad Scientist Local 42 lab coat and a Mardi Gras jester hat. Should I be worried that, when I explained that I was wearing this because I accidentally put on my NORMAL outfit instead of my TEACHER outfit, everyone accepted that as perfectly reasonable and believable? Everyone in the school believes I'm a jester/mad scientist.
Of course, they're probably right.
I wrote a Purim skit. It's the second half of Chapter II, plus Chapter VI of the Megillah. You know, the B plot involving Bigtan and Terish.
( My play. )
They made costumes in the second half.
I think this is gonna be fun. I just hope they all show up. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 13th, 2005|12:53 pm] |
One of my students in Hebrew school said today, "When I grow up, I wanna be a reference librarian. No, I wanna be a SYSTEMS librarian -- that's even better!" |
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| The most flattering thing ever. |
[Feb. 6th, 2005|01:35 pm] |
Okay, so, if you were me, can you imagine anything more flattering than one of my Hebrew school students inviting me to a party at their house? (It's partially a birthday party for her stepfather, and mostly a "it's cold and winter" party)
For her to specifically mention that it's a pot luck party, and that I should bring that chocolate pie that I make.
It's at the same time as the Hot Foods party, but I don't see why I can't stop in at both parties. . . |
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| I've been negligent in letting y'all know about my kids at Hebrew School |
[Jan. 11th, 2005|05:37 pm] |
Well, okay, we had two weeks off for winter vacation, so this past Sunday was the first time we'd had class in a while. Still, I need to tell you about them. . .
It took me an hour and fifteen minutes to get my car out of the driveway Sunday morning, so I got to school right at 9:30 when class starts, so I was totally unprepared. Max actually got to class before me, by a minute or two, and I had him help me set up the table. We're working on mitzvot related to animals, and I'm using names of animals for teaching Hebrew.
Also, Tamara, the other teacher in the class, is in Israel, so I was soloing this week.
Only four students showed up, and, despite that, things didn't go smoothly.
I've mentioned how one of my students is resistant to Hebrew school, even though she likes the people, likes me, and so forth. It got bad. She was reistant to everything, and, in the second half, I sent her out of the room to wait for a few minutes. J decided to go with her to keep her company, (he'd also been rambunctious) which meant that I only had two students to work with. M has had problems with Hebrew all along, so it wasn't bad to have a little more time to work with him, and it was good to help E, too, but still -- half my class, y'know?
So, what did the two of them do when they were out there?
They made me a card. It's now hanging on my refrigerator. It's a picture of a Shabbat table, and challah, curtains, it's gorgeous.
I really love my kids.
After school, one of my students from last year commented that his class was a little crazy when they were with me, but they're not so crazy with Mark. So, yeah, it's me. . . I really need to figure out this whole "classroom management" thing.
After school, A and J wanted to play with my PalmPilot while I cleaned up the classroom and they waited for parents, so I let them. When I got it back, there was a new note in the voice recorder, and a new message written in the notepad, which boh said the same thing: "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die, you six-fingered FREAK!!!"
Yes, they're aware that the last part isn't part of the quote. They don't care; they like it better that way. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 7th, 2004|11:28 pm] |
As I am many years, I'm struck by how little the Channukah story really has to do with the historical events on which it's ostensibly based.
And I taught my class, again this year, the story of Channukah. Which is a different thing than the story told in the Books of Maccabees I and II, which is why those books aren't in the Jewish scriptures, and is a very different thing that the historical events which actually happened.
And of those three things -- the historical truth, the Biblical record, and the folktale passed down from generation to generation -- I decided, and rightly so, that the important one to teach was the folktale.
Because that's the one with the lessons that I want them to learn. And I'm quite willing to tell them that this is the folktale, not the historical events. And that, in this case, the folktale is more important than the history, at least for them, at least right now. |
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| Last night's odd dream |
[Dec. 5th, 2004|09:07 pm] |
I went to Great Britian. While there, I got a chance to stare in at the House of Lords. I was quite relieved to note that they all DID wear crowns that looked more or less like the ones we wore in Iolanthe, and they also all wore robes that looked EXACTLY like the ones that Tony and Len wore as Lord Mountararat and Lord Tolloler.
Also, the people who appeared to be the heads of the parties, while they clearly weren't Tony and Len, did have distinct Tonyish and Lenlike features.
The House of Lords did not, in fact, sing, but did spend most of their time marching around in lines, led by the people who looked kind of like Tony and Len.
Today, I taught Hebrew school. After school, I was schmoozing with Rafi, and we started talking about odd dreams, and I mentioned this one. Since he's from Great Britian, I asked if that was more or less accurate, and he confirmed that it was.
My boss at Hebrew school is quite possibly nearly as weird as the rest of my friends. |
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| Have I mentioned that my students are insane? |
[Nov. 26th, 2004|11:30 am] |
I don't think I mentioned that, last Sunday, one of my kids decided to speak only in code all day. By the end of class, I only figured out that "Whee" meant "yes" and "chicken butt" meant "no". And he did explain, after school, that he was just doing it to avoid having to do Hebrew. I love my kids.
We're off of school this Sunday since so many people will be out of town for Thanksgiving. |
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| You know what's even better than fudge? |
[Oct. 25th, 2004|07:35 pm] |
A Lis who makes fudge. Yummy, yummy fudge.
Mmmm. Fudge.
So, teaching Hebrew school yesterday, some of the kids were doing their copying of words into their notebooks (I give them one word, they glue it in, read it, then copy it over five times, then I give them the next one.) I'd prepared several phrases -- actually, chunks of blessings. Shayna finished the two I was planning on for today, and asked for another one. I told her I wasn't sure. . . I had been HOPING on doing the other ones for next week.
"PLEEASE can I do another bracha?"
"Well. . . . I don't know. . . "
"Oh, come on. . . .PLEEEEEEEEAAASE?"
"Hmmm. Tamara, what do you think? Should we let Shayna do another bracha?"
"Well. . . maybe just this once we can let her do another one. . . "
"THANK YOU!!!!"
We spent more time on the writing exercise than we expected to. Because once the kids saw that SHAYNA got to write more Hebrew, they all insisted on doing more, too. And we had to be fair to them -- we couldn't just let ONE kid do extra work and then refuse to let the other kids do so, too. |
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| Just got back from Hebrew School |
[Oct. 17th, 2004|01:28 pm] |
Very mixed day. Some things worked well, some things didn't. Tamara was out sick, so I had the class to myself. She'd also done, last week, most of what I'd been considering doing this week -- she phoned this morning to let me know she was sick and all, so I got a debrief of last week, and redid my class prep.
Since Tamara was sick, we started off making get well cards. I need to drop them off to her -- they're really nice cards. The kids are genuinely good and loving folks, one and all -- that worked well. But Julian made a comment that it was very quiet the past week, because more than half of the kids weren't there. Anessia took this personally, and felt that Julian was saying that class went better when she wasn't there. Which, I don't think, was anything like what he was intending to say. But Annessia kept acting up and seeming to be trying to get me to send her out of the room -- which WOULD have made things easier for me and for the rest of the class, but I didn't have anywhere to send her, and I didn't want to get rid of her, either.
Annessia is really having a tough time with Hebrew school, and I'm not sure why. It seems to be an identity thing for her. She feels overwhelmed by having to learn Spanish AND Hebrew, but I don't really think it's just the amount of work -- I think SHE thinks it's just the amount of work, but, to me, it feels more that she's not sure WHAT she is or where she fits in. I need to talk to Rafi about this -- I've got some ideas about talking about Jews around the world and bringing in Ladino and the great flowering of Spanish Judaism, but I don't want to overdo it or take time away from other kids.
Naturally, Julian and Anessia ended up setting each other off behavior-wise. Not in a hostile way -- instead, I really got the feeling that they were acting up almost as a bonding method -- Julian felt bad about making Annessia feel bad, so that naturally ended up with the two of them putting chairs on their backs and pretending to be turtles to cement their friendship. I can understand it, but it's really disruptive to the rest of the class, and I'm not sure how to deal with it. I can stop them from doing stuff for short periods of time, but it requires my direct attention. And Rafi, of course, was teaching Tamara's class so wasn't available.
Things were pretty muich rough all day. Hebrew actually went, in some ways, a little smoother, and in others, much, much rougher. Annessia has REALLY been fighting the Hebrew part of class a LOT. We tend to do three things in the Hebrew section -- copying words into notebooks (writing practice), reading stuff out loud (decodng practice), and games (speaking practice). Annessia and Julian both really hate writing, and Shayna claims to, but I notice that pretty much everyone else either doesn't mind, or actually likes it. Max, for instance, likes it because it's got defined goals and he knows what to do, and does it well. He's not the fastest at writing, but he can do it, and it looks good, so he feels comfortable with it. Eli is good at writing, if very sloppy, and so enjoys it. Emma and Ella both appear not to mind it.
Decoding practice, on the other hand, Max hates, because he has a lot of trouble with it. Ella does well with it if she's given a chance, but she's quiet so it's easy for people to step on her. Annessia pretty much refuses to participate, as does Julian, and, well, when they decide to refuse to participate in concert, that's when you get turtles playing Go Fish.
We did a couple fun things with the mah zeh game -- I actually passed around one of the smaller chairs which everyone thought was funny, and then Shayna asked, "How do you say 'hat' in Hebrew?" I told her, then she put the chair on her head and said, "zeh kovah." That was pretty funny.
I love my class. I want them all to be happy and to feel safe and enjoy being there. And to learn a lot. And it's not always easy to get all those to happen at once. |
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| Wow. I did most of the busy things I intended to do. |
[Oct. 4th, 2004|12:29 am] |
Okay. So, I got to sleep at 3 AM last night, and got up at 6:30, and did my class prep then.
Rafi, Tamara, and I had met up at a coffee shop close to the beginning of the week this week, and Rafi gave us some ideas about lesson planning, lesson trajectory, and stuff like that with names that sound like they'd be some sort of faddish educational theory, except that they actually make sense and work. And he said that he'd sit in today in the first part of the class to observe how it went.
Yeah, okay. So I did the majority of my lesson planning on three and a half hours sleep, three hours before class started. I DID have the outline to work from. . .
( Read more... ) |
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| Hebrew school went well. |
[Sep. 26th, 2004|12:45 pm] |
Tamara had prepared a mosaic art project -- glue squares of paper to paper to make a sukkot related picture. I prepared a few other things. After the art project, we sat on the floor and I handed out fourteen sheets of paper, each with a name on it. It was the seven Ushpanizim and seven women who I chose as Ushpanot. So it was Avraham, Ytizchak, Yaakov, Yoseph, Moshe, Aharon, and David, and Sarah, Rachel, Leah, Rivka, Miriam, Ruth, and Esther. We talked a bit about who those people were, and then each kid chose a piece of paper and drew a picture of that person.
I was surprised at how well it came out. We got a picture of Avraham smashing some idols, David fighting Goliath, Miriam watching over a baby in a basket on the Nile, Aharon talking to someone, Moshe on the top of Mount Sinai with a voice coming out of the clouds saying, "Hey, dude," a picture of Ruth just standing there. And a picture of a goldfish in a bowl. Okay, they can't all be winners. "No. Ya'akov did not have a pet fish." "How do you KNOW he didn't have a fish? LOTS of people have fish..."
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| Hebrew school and stuff |
[Sep. 19th, 2004|05:21 pm] |
So, last night, I cut out of the Lefton's End-of-Summer party for like an hour or two to go home and do class prep for this morning. Then I went back to the party and stayed until about midnight. I was in bed by quarter to one or so, and woke up at seven-thirty or so, which has been a reasonable amount of sleep for me recently.
I got to Hebrew school around 8:45 -- class starts at 9:30. And I found that my classroom had been used for childcare during Rosh Hashana services. Which is fine. And that the room hadn't been put back together again afterwards. Which is not fine. I mean, it wasn't a mess or anything -- but my table was gone, my whiteboard markers were gone (and they're MY freakin' markers -- they don't belong to the school), my sign on the wall which says "Kitah Gimmel" and all the kids' names in English and Hebrew was gone, there were piles of toys and games in the corner -- I know my class: toys and games in the corner of the room is a BAD thing to have -- my papers and stuff were all stacked on a shelf in the corner.
I went and did some photocopying of worksheets I'd make up, and came back downstairs, by which time all the other teachers had shown up. It was a Gan day -- the kindergarten class only meets every other week, and only for an hour -- so Tamara, who is the Gan teacher besides being the Gimmel co-teacher, would only be available for the first hour.
That's when Rafi got the phone call that Isaac, the Kitah Bet teacher, was in the hospital with a fever.
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| First day of Hebrew school was today! |
[Sep. 12th, 2004|09:17 pm] |
Went surprisingly well. I tend to worry when things go this well. I really like co-teaching -- Tamara and I seem to be pretty good together.
I got the room put together a few nights ago. The room has a blackboard that is actually black, and sort of holds chalk marks. Which is better than it was before, when it was green, and didn't sort of hold chalk marks. It's not perfect, but it's better than it was. It's not as good as a big piece of rock would be, but it's okay. The new whiteboard looks nice, though. And the poster I made up with a giant gimmel, and all the kids' names in both Hebrew and English looks great.
(SHAYNA: Oooh! I wanna see what color you wrote my name in. . . . BROWN? How come I have to be brown?
IAN: I LIKE brown. Besides, I wrote my own name in black, and brown is better than black.)
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| What I did today. |
[Sep. 9th, 2004|11:10 pm] |
Well, Lis and I went out to buy school supplies. I bought a new whiteboard, a pad of newsprint, some shiny stickers, some blackboard paint, and a paint roller and tray.
Blackboard paint is neat stuff, at least in theory. The idea is that you paint this stuff onto a wall, and it turns it into a blackboard. I don't, frankly, know how well it works, but since the existing chalkboard sucked rocks through a straw -- a chalkboard that does not show chalk marks, and, if you DO manage to get chalk marks on it, the marks don't ever come off, that's not a very good chalkboard -- it can't be worse that what we already had, anyway. It takes three days to dry completely, but that should be fine.
And I painted one of the chalkboards, made up some stuff for the walls, put the whiteboard somewhere potentially useful, and attached the newsprint pad to the wall.
I also helped Lis with dishes, at least a little. Okay, a very little. But SOME. |
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