On Teaching

One of my classes is into my blog. I think about that sometimes when I write. Little brother is watching.

The other day one of my colleagues made my day by telling me that a certain student said that she liked my class. It' s a class that I was hoping I was connecting to correctly and this modicum of positive feedback was priceless.

Another teacher told me what I thought was a critique via one class. But when I went to discuss it she explained that it wasn't meant as criticism. I hope that's true. If you cut a teacher we do bleed.

I have not written much about my Gemorah class. They are a nice group of ninth graders. We did Elul related topics: the basics of teshuva, etc. Also, we did an intro to Gemorah and addressed the question that I obsessed about when I was a high schooler: why do we learn Gemorah? We also discussed the page of Gemorah and I told them how when my first Gemorah teacher told me that Tosafot was on the outside, I looked out the window.

Now we're getting more into nitty gritty. We went through all 39 melachot as presented in the mishnah. And we started the piece which asks where 39 comes from. We will get into the preparation of the mishkan VS the work of the mishkan. And we will do the piece about the 39 times the word melacha appears in the Torah. there are a couple of user friendly Tosafots I hope to do, in addition to a couple of key Rashis. We've mapped out key words as we've been going along. May G-d bless our path.

Chumash: it's time to get into science VS religion a bit and Adam One and Adam Two. I really want the kids to know Chumash and Rashi and am considering bekius assignments, so in class we can work more globally. Any ideas? Please send them along.

College Bowl second cut is tomorrow night. Then the next two nights are Model UN tryouts.

Don't think that my play is not on just because I haven't mentioned it. It's on. Last week an old friend attended with her husband, one of their activities while visiting from the Holy Land. Two weeks ago my parents came with my Aunt and Uncle. They had a good time. And so will you.