It is Elul. We are turning the last few pages in our old much-
used calendar.
However, the school year has just begun. The children are
entering new classrooms, meeting new teachers and tackling
new subject matter. It is a bright beginning.
Teachers, parents and students alike wish there was a way to
keep the excitement of the new school year going. But we are
afraid that, sooner or later, this year will become just like
all of the others.
A classroom must have order. It must have guidelines. It must
have a schedule. However, it should not have `routine.' As
soon as routine sets in, that's it, folks, as far as
freshness is concerned. The bright beginning flies right out
the window.
I once watched a brand new right-out-of-seminary teacher
running off photocopies of the chumash sheets she was
planning to pass out to her first class of seven-year-olds.
She placed the master copy in the machine, closed the cover,
selected `1' as the number of copies, and waited expectantly
as her first effort slid into the outbox. Then she held it up
to the window.
Shaking her head in disapproval, she sat down and drew some
flowers, leaves, vines and other designs in the margins and
in the double spaces between paragraphs. Then she placed the
new master into the copying machine, pressed `1' again, and
waited anew to see if she would be satisfied with her
additions.
The copy must have pleased her a great deal because she
triumphantly changed the number of copies to `30,' started
the machine, and brightly asked the secretary to please put
the completed sheets into her cubby hole as soon as they were
finished. When she collected the copies and took them into
the classroom, the girls could sense her pride and
excitement. Each one waited expectantly to receive her
copy.
*
There is an old folk expression, "A new broom sweeps clean."
A new teacher is enthusiastic about teaching.
The secret of success in making our schools an ongoing source
of fresh learning is to create a sense of newness within our
teachers. Many schools are doing just that.
There are mandatory teacher in-service training programs led
by master teachers which focus on bringing new ideas into the
classroom. They describe innovative teaching methods and
demonstrate new teaching tools.
I am fortunate to live right near an excellent gan. I
see the children coming out with their completed projects and
I am amazed at the clever uses the kindergarten teachers find
for such simple materials as construction paper, paint and
crayons, to say nothing of disposables.
It is truly an art to design a project where the basic shape
will be determined by the adult who designs, draws and cuts
the parts, but the finished piece will reflect the
dexteritiy, creativity and input of the child. At 1 p.m.,
each child comes running out of the gan. He brings his
work to his waiting mother and happily presents it as the
masterpiece that it is.
Whether it goes up on a bulletin board, is taped to the door
of the child's room, or finds itself between a magnet and the
refrigerator, that week's work will surely be a source of
pride to the child who made it.
I was at a shiur given by a retired school principal,
an educator of note. She was telling a story about one of her
older daughters who teaches in nursery school. She laughingly
said, "You know, my daughter became a nursery school teacher
many years ago -- before you had to be a professor to teach
in nursery school. Now you need at least a B.A. degree."
Nearly everyone in the audience chuckled. However, I, for
one, feel that elevating nursery school teaching to a more
professional level has been beneficial to our children. I
think today's early childhood teachers are doing an excellent
job.
Perhaps we should be fostering a feeling among our
teachers in general that their efforts are appreciated.
Why not keep a little one-shekel notebook handy and jot down
some of the excellent crafts and ideas that our children
bring home. That way, months from now, when we show up at
parent-teacher conferences, we can tell the teacher some of
the specific things we liked best.
When a child learns something in the lower grades, it is
bound to be new to that child. S/he will come home and share
the new information at the Shabbos table. The trick that we
old, seasoned parents have to learn is to be as excited about
that small tidbit of wisdom from the parsha when Child
Number Six tells it over as we were when we heard it from our
firstborn.
Years ago, a friend of mine gave me a wonderfully useful
housewarming present. It is a thin volume with a short
summary of each weekly Torah reading, followed by a couple of
pages of brief commentaries. It is particularly useful for
mothers of young children who want to familiarize themselves
with the key points in the parsha.
When she presented me with her gift, my friend said, "I have
the same little book. After my husband and older children
leave for shul on Shabbos morning, I settle the baby
down, open my copy and see what's new."
The weekly parsha IS new every year because we are
new. Hopefully, after a year of growth, we are not the same
people who learned those same insights last year. If we keep
that in mind, we CAN find something new and wonderful to
smile about when our younger children tell us a familiar
teaching of Rashi or Ramban.
Getting back to expressing appreciation to our children's
teachers, let me tell you something that happened recently. A
young man I know spoke to an expert in modern teaching
methods. He was sending his first son to cheder and
wanted some advice.
The educator told him the following: "Every now and then,
send your son's rebbe a little gift. Something for Chanuka
and for Purim, of course, but in addition, a little something
here and there. It doesn't have to -- and shouldn't, in fact -
- be expensive. It is just a way of thanking him and showing
that you appreciate what he is doing for your child."
I had to smile. When I was a child, the older women used to
tell us about how they left for school in the morning.
They were dressed nicely, with a carefully ironed, perhaps
starched handerchief pinned to their blouse (this was in the
days before tissues), and they carried their books either in
a home-sewn book bag or held together by a leather strap
dangling from one hand.
The other hand held an apple for the teacher!
Clearly, there is nothing new under the sun!
I am not really asking for anything new in the classroom --
except for an ongoing sense of newness. Let's try to turn all
of our children's schooling into a bright beginning.
