There are dozens and dozens of ways of celebrating Chanukah in our day schools. Here's a list of 45+ teacher-generated activities, courtesy of the Lookstein Centre for Jewish Education...
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I can't help but compare the suicide of Rigoberto Ruelas, the Los Angeles teacher who committed suicide to the rash of recent student suicides connected to cyber-bullying. To quote the New York Times, "When The Los Angeles Times released a database of “value-added analysis” of every teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District in August, Mr. Ruelas was rated “less effective than average.” Colleagues said he became noticeably depressed, and family members have guessed that the rating contributed to his death."
People are people. I guess it really doesn't matter if you are a teacher or a student. When something negative about you gets out there online, you can't get it back. I remember the days of being evaluated by my boss for my performance; in private and behind closed doors, and that was stressful enough - but to have that form of evaluation published online, for the world to see? I can only imagine how excruciating that can be. There's lots to be learned about this story, and I want to prepare a unit on this from a What does the following question and answer... Q. Why does the loudness of a sound wave decrease as the wave travels away from its source? A. The energy in the sound's vibration dies down, until it is no longer audible. ... have to do with this man in the video? And what does it have anything to do with Torah? Answer: Ze'ev Macklin, currently living in Nachlaot, Jerusalem, is one of the best drummers out there, and an amazing and holy Jew to boot. When I was in my late teens, one afternoon at my dad's house in Montreal, Ze'ev says the most amazing to me, which even today blows me away:
"Sound waves dissipate over time and distance, but never fully disappear. But the energy still remains, even at some infinitesimally small level. What that means is that the sound of Hashem giving the Ten Commandments all those years ago at Har Sinai IS STILL IN THE WORLD TODAY. We just don't have the sensitivity to hear it." Pretty amazing, eh? This has nothing to do with Jewish Education. Or Yiddishkeit. Or Big Ideas. However, in keeping with the Jewish tradition of hakarat ha'tov (recognition of good), I feel that I have to say that I am very much looking forward to the premiere of The Walking Dead on AMC on Sunday (Move over Mad Men!). There is an excellent review of the new show in the New York Times, and there is just something about zombies that just makes me love this genre of horror - ever since 28 Days Later and the remake of Dawn of the Dead (the DVD has an extra feature, called Anatomy of a Headshot, which is just about the coolest thing you can watch!), I've been hooked.
In any event, Good Shabbos to all. In keeping with my work on Character Education, how in the world are we supposed to model anything resembling positive behaviour when our politicians and media personalities can't even muster the most basic civility towards one another? HOW in the world Joy Behar gets to keep her job is beyond me - her prost rant is quite something, regardless of how brutish Sharron Angle's politics may be... Story after the jump.
I'm currently working on a service learning project for a grade 7 class. Service learning is defined as a form of project based learning in which academic goals are accomplished through community service. If you're going to teach about chesed, you have to do chesed. In Jewish talk, Service Learning is Avraham Avinu personified. Be a doer. Talk is cheap. For teachers considering such projects, I came across a great site on service learning called www.goodcharacter.com.
I swear; has Benjamin Franklin ever had a bad inspirational quote? The latest off of my Twitter feed, from TeachHub.com: Quote of the Day: "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -- Benjamin Franklin
The magic is in how we choose to involve students in their learning. I suppose this can be re-quoted in academic teacher-speak to say: "Tell me (didactically) and I forget. Teach me (teacher-centered) and I remember. Involve me (student-directed) and I learn." "What is Tanach?" is a standard question that I often ask middle school students in the Jewish Day Schools in which I teach. It's a barometer of sorts that lets me know how deep their Jewish learning has been. The thrill comes in helping them understand just how deep the deep end of Jewish learning and experiences really is. TaNakH - Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim (Bible, Prophets and Writings) - that's just the beginning of our amazing story... just ask Mark Twain.
Is there an app out there that tracks the amount of non-class prep time there actually is in a teachers first full year? This is insane...
I asked my grade 6 and 7 classes to take a stab at re-ordering the morning brachot according to what they considered to be the most important things to thank God for to the least important. Naturally, the students took to this assignment like fish to water, and they re-ordered in earnest, with the proviso that they had to provide reasons for their ordering. Without fail, the majority of the class had "for having not made me a slave" in their top two most important things to thank God for. I probed a bit further, taking them on a broad-strokes discussion of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and accompanying triangular diagram, and asked them where freedom belongs on the hierarchy (it doesn't really, although it is related to the pinnacle of self-actualization.) To illustrate how important freedom is as a principle, I whipped open the projector, and threw YouTube up on the white board. And what did I show them? You guessed it - a pre-whack job Mel Gibson, in full Scottish soccer fan regalia, as Sir William Wallace... with his tearjerker of a rally-the-troops rallying cry on freedom. Sheer brilliance on my part. And this is what I love about Jewish Education - the sheer creativity you are allowed in the pursuit of your Jewish educational objectives. There is no way this standard class on morning brachot ever has this impact without Gibson's war paint shooting "fireballs from his arse." |