The more I teach, the more I learn about how children think and understand. Nearing as I am the end of my first month of teaching, I'm daily coming into new situations, etc. Every day, I teach with students who want to study and learn. Many of them are successful; others are not. Sometimes, students have bad days, and the same student who memorizes the English names for the numbers up to 100 in a single day will be unable to remember what "garden" means. Sometimes, students encourage and learn from each other, and two good students can become a couple of great students when paired together. More frequently, one boy or girl among three or four others will distract his or her classmates, and make it difficult or impossible to concentrate. Speaking of concentration, in a stroke of luck, the electricity in the English room is malfunctioning, and although the ceiling lights work perfectly, the computers do not function. Some of the students are in denial about this, but it is easier to convince them to sit still and pay attention to their English lesson.
I am learning to be a disciplinarian, which is not fun for me. Marsha, my ITF supervisor, watched me conduct some classes on Monday, and gave me some advice. She told me that the students here expect to be yelled at and told what to do, and that I should worry less about individual students bearing grudges against me for being strict with them. If it helps, she told me, I should imagine that I am playing the part of a strict teacher; the way I act towards misbehaving students does not existentially define who I am. Moshe and Chani's supervisor, who visited last week, told me almost exactly the same thing, when she saw me offer no resistance to a group of boys who ran in during a break between classes, in order to play on the English Room computers. She told me that I need to learn to "wear my Spiderman suit," and put on a tough exterior with students at the school, or else they'll walk all over me. Once on Wednesday, and once on Thursday, I needed to act stricter than I really was. On Wednesday, I was playing basketball with a group of boys outside, trying to teach them basketball terms, and, with time, get them to speak to each other in English when on the court (they found that saying "back," as in "[pass the ball] back [to me]" is preferable to the Hebrew equivalent). Another boy, who arrived late to school, walked over, and insisted on playing with us. He is one of the more severely learning-disabled students in 8th-grade (which is saying something); I suspect Aspergers syndrome, based on the way he interacts with others. After a couple of minutes, I managed to convince him to leave. My Hebrew isn't great, which I know hinders my ability to get my point across. I felt the same feeling of frustration at my own lousy Hebrew, a few minutes later, when one of the students punted the basketball over the barbed-wire fence surrounding the school; after we had managed to get it back, I tried to tell him, clearly, that although I wasn't angry with him at the moment, if he or any other student ever do that again, they will never play basketball with me again.
My second time enforcing discipline this week involved a very disrespectful girl whom neither TZ nor I had ever taught before. She was acting incredibly rude towards us both, and actively trying to distract other students. So I told her, emphatically, in Hebrew, to leave, and to return to the teacher. She pretended at first that she couldn't understand my accent (How hard is "צאי" pronounced "tzei'i," to understand, given my tone?), but within a minute, she stomped back to the classroom. I didn't know whether to feel as if I had successfully encouraged an atmosphere conducive to learning through discipline, of if I had just acted as a complete bully. After the fact, both Moshe and TZ told me that I had done the right thing in sending her back to her classroom; learning in the English room with the two of us is a very special privilege, in theory; we don't have time to teach everyone, and, therefore, we should not take students who are going to be disruptive in class. That, anyway, is how I justify my actions.
I've unfortunately had a rather frustrating weekend. TZ left school early on Thursday, following which my Ulpan was cancelled. I had a good Chevruta session with Rachel, but on Friday morning, I realized that my wallet had gone missing. I believe that I lost in on the bus home on Thursday (the last time I saw it was when I got on, and I was a bit agitated when I boarded), which is very frustrating. All of my ID cards other than my passport, including my drivers' license, Cornell Student ID, Sorbonne Student ID, Israel bus pass, Israel Klalit insurance card, American insurance card, credit card, debit cards, Red Cross donor card, bone marrow donor card, and TCAT bus pass, were all there, in addition to about ₪75 and $5.00. This kept me from really being able to relax after Shabbat started, my mind was in such agitation. Furthermore, I finally had the chance to Skype with my Mother for a short spell of time, and I was unsuccessful, because she has bought a new computer, and had not installed Skype on it, so we were unable to actually talk. Except for a 10-minute session right after Sara's Bat Mitzvah that was cut short, I have not been able to speak at all to any members of my family back in the U.S. I had set aside the entire afternoon to being at the computer at the right time, and accomplished exactly zero that day. On Saturday, I hoped that I would be able to visit some friends and talk about something else, but I found that most of our conversation immediately returned to the missing wallet and my unsuccessful call with my Mother, and the complete mess in which I dunked myself. The same goes for today. I've been studying Hebrew, but my heart really isn't in it, because I had such a feeling of unfulfillment. I just heard that the police stations of Ramla and Lod, as well as the bus station, have not found my wallet, and I'm fairly certain, by now, that it's not under a cushion somewhere in my house. I'm just not myself right now, and hope that it doesn't adversely affect my teaching tomorrow. Or today. I'm about to walk over to Galit's house, and help Tamir. I know that it's adversely affecting my writing -- this is not my usual style. I was going to blog about my group's visit to the Rabin center on Wednesday, but I can't concentrate. I need to settle down, as my Mother would say.
Also, here's some interesting news from the IDF, for those of you interested in Israel's minority populations...
Also, I thought that perhaps this might interest some of you, maybe you Drisha Institute folk...
"כִּי תָצוּר אֶל עִיר יָמִים רַבִּים לְהִלָּחֵם עָלֶיהָ לְתָפְשָׂהּ לֹא תַשְׁחִית אֶת עֵצָהּ לִנְדֹּחַ עָלָיו גַּרְזֶן כִּי מִמֶּנּוּ תֹאכֵל וְאֹתוֹ לֹא תִכְרֹת כִּי הָאָדָם עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה לָבֹא מִפָּנֶיךָ בַּמָּצוֹר"
~JD
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