Spot On

Someone told me that he's into blogs and gets greedy in regard to them, meaning that if he likes the blog he'll check anxiously and often. If there's anyone out there that feels that way about this blog why not let me know? You might just make my day.

Recently, a kid came into my room and said that Rabbi X wanted to borrow a pencil. I gave her a pencil for her teacher. A few minutes later she came back and said in her giggly and disarming way, "Rabbi X said to tell you that by pencil he meant chalk." I sent her back and told her to tell her him that when I said yes I meant no. (At the very start of the period I myself sent a student on a mission for chalk.

When I was in ninth grade I was asked by my teacher to bring a note into another teacher's classroom. It was the Rebbe of the shiur one level up. It was early in high school and there were still openings in some of the cool clicks. I wanted to look cool when I walked into that room. So I strutted and tilted side to side in what I thought was a cool way. And then I gave him the note. He took it and then shook side to side in a very exaggerated way, mocking me. It generated a big laugh from my grade mates. Is it only me for whom such slights still sting?

When I was in eleventh grade, Rabbi Chaim Margolis asked a kid to get him chalk. Just after the student left the room he opened the desk drawer and found a piece of chalk. Within all of a few seconds he picked it up, stared at it, and then put it back inside and closed the drawer. I absorbed that he didn't want the student to feel that they went for nothing. A minute later when the kid came back with chalk Rabbi Margolis thanked him profusely. And that stayed with me.

When I was in ninth grade my Earth Science teacher (yes I spent a year studying Earth Science and took a regents on it) made an announcement on the first day of school, as a plane was flying over head. He said deliberately and dramatically, "This is a major rule; when a plane flies overhead, I STOP." About a week later a plane flew overhead and I watched as he kept talking inaudibly. Planes flew over many times after that and he never stopped talking when they did. The next year I noticed that whenever a plane flew by Rav Chaim Margolis paused till it passed. There was never a speech but there was always consistent behavior.

A few years ago Rabbi Fischel Schachter spoke in the Carlebach Shul and I was there. He spoke about the power of positive and negative words. He recounted that when he was a bochur he was driving a choshuv Torah VaDaas lay leader. He missed a key turn off and the guy tried to correct the error, but in a second it was long gone. As they continued on the highway the choshuv man muttered under his breath, "Shlemazel." And today, as a truly choshuv Rebbe in Torah VeDaas, He sees that man on occasion, and the memory re-emerges every time.

Rabbi Fischel Schachter, in that same talk, shared that when he needs to say words of admonishment or criticism to a student he always sandwiches it between two positives. I find that remarkable.

In the embryonic stages of my teaching career I did a model lesson at an off the radar, tri-state area day school. After I finished, the principal spent some time with me. I was a bit put off by his saying that he expected my demeanor and style in the classroom to be weaker than it was. (Something I've negotiated my whole life is that certain people experience me as timid in a one on one context and then feel the need to tell me how surprised they were when they see me teach, recite poetry, lecture, lead a Seder, do stand up, do improv, act in an off Broadway show, etc.)

His parting message to me was that Jewish education has been known to take nice people and eat them up and spit them out. After the interview I told an acquaintance who taught in that school what the principal had said to me. His facial reaction indicated that the words struck him. When I asked, he said, "that's what people say about him."

In thos same eary days, I interviewed in a school where the principal required that I sit in on four different classes and then tell him (with no prompting) what I saw in each class. (I recall that on that day, I bought a stuffed animal for a young woman I was dating at the time and named the plush little character after the principal that I had spent the morning with. The girl said that wasn't right so the name was changed.)

When I got my first full time job, the principal required that I take a range of summer courses through Torah U'Mesoarah in Brooklyn, the mandatory centerpiece being courses taught by him. One decent class was taught by the man who had made me sit in the four different classrooms. He told us to notice the common comment before the news breaks for a commercial; "stay with us." I guess the point was to sprinkle our patter with lines like that.

That same man was asked "what's wrong with a teacher saying 'I don't know'?" He said, "Nothing's wrong with saying it now and then. But if you find yourself saying it all the time it means that you're not sufficiently prepared. I think that his answer was spot on.

Some people write about running out of things to say on their blogs . I can sit and free associate for hours. It's just a matter of time.