Hebrew school and stuff
Sep. 19th, 2004 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasSo, last night, I cut out of the Lefton's End-of-Summer party for like an hour or two to go home and do class prep for this morning. Then I went back to the party and stayed until about midnight. I was in bed by quarter to one or so, and woke up at seven-thirty or so, which has been a reasonable amount of sleep for me recently.
I got to Hebrew school around 8:45 -- class starts at 9:30. And I found that my classroom had been used for childcare during Rosh Hashana services. Which is fine. And that the room hadn't been put back together again afterwards. Which is not fine. I mean, it wasn't a mess or anything -- but my table was gone, my whiteboard markers were gone (and they're MY freakin' markers -- they don't belong to the school), my sign on the wall which says "Kitah Gimmel" and all the kids' names in English and Hebrew was gone, there were piles of toys and games in the corner -- I know my class: toys and games in the corner of the room is a BAD thing to have -- my papers and stuff were all stacked on a shelf in the corner.
I went and did some photocopying of worksheets I'd make up, and came back downstairs, by which time all the other teachers had shown up. It was a Gan day -- the kindergarten class only meets every other week, and only for an hour -- so Tamara, who is the Gan teacher besides being the Gimmel co-teacher, would only be available for the first hour.
That's when Rafi got the phone call that Isaac, the Kitah Bet teacher, was in the hospital with a fever.
So, all of us teachers stood there in the hall for a few seconds with slightly panicked looks on our faces, and then we Came Up With A Plan.
See, the Nitzanim ("flower buds" -- the preschool class) goes from 9:30 to 10:30. And the Gan class -- kindergarten -- goes from 10:30 to 12:00.
So: Tamara took the Gimmel class by herself for the first hour, and I took the Bet class. Then Seth, the Nitzanim teacher, took the Bet class for the second hour.
Okay, one might ask why we didn't just have me stay in Gimmel all day, and have Tamara teach the Bet class for the first half, since she was going to be going over to Gan afterwards, anyway. The answer is because we didn't think of that.
No, the serious answer is because Seth and I are both disturbingly good at improvising. So we were the two teachers who were most likely to be able to handle taking a class that we'd never worked with before, and had no lesson plan for, and had no time to think of anything for, and actually do something useful. Tamara already had a lesson plan worked out for the first hour of Gimmel, so it made sense to have her run her lesson and throw me into Bet to see what would happen.
As it turned out, it went pretty well.
I did the same name game that I'd done the previous week with my class, and it went over well. It was also very useful for me, because I didn't know anyone's names going in. It was ALSO very useful, because a new student showed up, so it was good to get him to know people's names, too.
Then I told the story of Jonah -- the COMPLETE story. Of course the kids knew MOST of the story of Jonah, but there are details that they didn't know. Like, for instance, the whole bit about putting the cattle in sackcloth. Or just how petulant and whiny Jonah gets when Hashem fails to blow up Nineveh.
I told them that I thought there was a lot of funny stuff in the book of Jonah -- like the fact that the ONLY person who acts like a jerk in the entire story is Jonah.
The truth is that the Book of Jonah reads a lot like a satire or a parody of the Prophets. I mean, the ONLY time in the ENTIRE Prophets that someone actually LISTENS to a prophet is Jonah. It's also the only time that a prophet is sent to someone other than the Jews. . .
Anyway, after that, I had a bit more time to kill, so I told the "On One Foot" story of Hillel and Shammai. That took us up to snack time.
After that, I went back to Gimmel and Tamara went to Gan and Seth went to Bet.
Frankly, the stuff for Gimmel went rougher than I would have liked. Partially because the kids were a bit riled up by the change in teachers. At the students' suggestion, we played a couple rounds of Indian Chief, using Hebrew names. Then we did a couple worksheets that I'd made up, and it went eh. Not terribly, but not terribly well, either.
I need to come up with more Hebrew-learning games. Dunno exactly what.
I came home, hung around for a bit, had some soup, then Lis and I went out to Brookline to look at stuff at the Israel Book Shop. Lis was looking for the Artscroll interlinear (a nifty thing where they have the English translation of each word right under the Hebrew word, so you can see what each WORD means, so, if you're reading in translation, you actually don't lose the flow of the Hebrew) machzor (High Holiday prayerbook), and their interlinear benscher (after-meal prayerbook). I was vaguely looking for a good Hebrew word processor. I found one, but didn't feel like spending $150. Lis found the machzor, but hadn't realized that it was a SEPARATE machzor for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur -- the ones we'd always seen before had both Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in the same volume. And they didn't have the benscher.
We also looked at pretty Judaica art stuff at Kolbo, and then Lis was getting hungry and I was getting noshy (I'd had soup, but she hadn't), so we stopped at a vegitarian Vietnamese place and had appetizers and drinks. I had a Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk, Lis had an avacado shake, and we split some dumplings and a deep-fried taro root/bread/fake shrimp thing that was really good.
After we were done eating and shopping (Lis didn't get any books, but did get a copy of the Jewish Advocate with an article about Philip Klass/William Tenn, written by Dan Kimmel), and then we dropped by the hospital to see Isaac. He's got a weird fever that they can't quite nail down what it is, so he's probably going to be in the hospital for another couple days. I told him what we'd done with his class, and that he had a new student. We didn't stay long, because he was tired. But, hey, Bikkur Cholim points, y'know?
And then we came back home.
I got to Hebrew school around 8:45 -- class starts at 9:30. And I found that my classroom had been used for childcare during Rosh Hashana services. Which is fine. And that the room hadn't been put back together again afterwards. Which is not fine. I mean, it wasn't a mess or anything -- but my table was gone, my whiteboard markers were gone (and they're MY freakin' markers -- they don't belong to the school), my sign on the wall which says "Kitah Gimmel" and all the kids' names in English and Hebrew was gone, there were piles of toys and games in the corner -- I know my class: toys and games in the corner of the room is a BAD thing to have -- my papers and stuff were all stacked on a shelf in the corner.
I went and did some photocopying of worksheets I'd make up, and came back downstairs, by which time all the other teachers had shown up. It was a Gan day -- the kindergarten class only meets every other week, and only for an hour -- so Tamara, who is the Gan teacher besides being the Gimmel co-teacher, would only be available for the first hour.
That's when Rafi got the phone call that Isaac, the Kitah Bet teacher, was in the hospital with a fever.
So, all of us teachers stood there in the hall for a few seconds with slightly panicked looks on our faces, and then we Came Up With A Plan.
See, the Nitzanim ("flower buds" -- the preschool class) goes from 9:30 to 10:30. And the Gan class -- kindergarten -- goes from 10:30 to 12:00.
So: Tamara took the Gimmel class by herself for the first hour, and I took the Bet class. Then Seth, the Nitzanim teacher, took the Bet class for the second hour.
Okay, one might ask why we didn't just have me stay in Gimmel all day, and have Tamara teach the Bet class for the first half, since she was going to be going over to Gan afterwards, anyway. The answer is because we didn't think of that.
No, the serious answer is because Seth and I are both disturbingly good at improvising. So we were the two teachers who were most likely to be able to handle taking a class that we'd never worked with before, and had no lesson plan for, and had no time to think of anything for, and actually do something useful. Tamara already had a lesson plan worked out for the first hour of Gimmel, so it made sense to have her run her lesson and throw me into Bet to see what would happen.
As it turned out, it went pretty well.
I did the same name game that I'd done the previous week with my class, and it went over well. It was also very useful for me, because I didn't know anyone's names going in. It was ALSO very useful, because a new student showed up, so it was good to get him to know people's names, too.
Then I told the story of Jonah -- the COMPLETE story. Of course the kids knew MOST of the story of Jonah, but there are details that they didn't know. Like, for instance, the whole bit about putting the cattle in sackcloth. Or just how petulant and whiny Jonah gets when Hashem fails to blow up Nineveh.
I told them that I thought there was a lot of funny stuff in the book of Jonah -- like the fact that the ONLY person who acts like a jerk in the entire story is Jonah.
The truth is that the Book of Jonah reads a lot like a satire or a parody of the Prophets. I mean, the ONLY time in the ENTIRE Prophets that someone actually LISTENS to a prophet is Jonah. It's also the only time that a prophet is sent to someone other than the Jews. . .
Anyway, after that, I had a bit more time to kill, so I told the "On One Foot" story of Hillel and Shammai. That took us up to snack time.
After that, I went back to Gimmel and Tamara went to Gan and Seth went to Bet.
Frankly, the stuff for Gimmel went rougher than I would have liked. Partially because the kids were a bit riled up by the change in teachers. At the students' suggestion, we played a couple rounds of Indian Chief, using Hebrew names. Then we did a couple worksheets that I'd made up, and it went eh. Not terribly, but not terribly well, either.
I need to come up with more Hebrew-learning games. Dunno exactly what.
I came home, hung around for a bit, had some soup, then Lis and I went out to Brookline to look at stuff at the Israel Book Shop. Lis was looking for the Artscroll interlinear (a nifty thing where they have the English translation of each word right under the Hebrew word, so you can see what each WORD means, so, if you're reading in translation, you actually don't lose the flow of the Hebrew) machzor (High Holiday prayerbook), and their interlinear benscher (after-meal prayerbook). I was vaguely looking for a good Hebrew word processor. I found one, but didn't feel like spending $150. Lis found the machzor, but hadn't realized that it was a SEPARATE machzor for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur -- the ones we'd always seen before had both Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in the same volume. And they didn't have the benscher.
We also looked at pretty Judaica art stuff at Kolbo, and then Lis was getting hungry and I was getting noshy (I'd had soup, but she hadn't), so we stopped at a vegitarian Vietnamese place and had appetizers and drinks. I had a Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk, Lis had an avacado shake, and we split some dumplings and a deep-fried taro root/bread/fake shrimp thing that was really good.
After we were done eating and shopping (Lis didn't get any books, but did get a copy of the Jewish Advocate with an article about Philip Klass/William Tenn, written by Dan Kimmel), and then we dropped by the hospital to see Isaac. He's got a weird fever that they can't quite nail down what it is, so he's probably going to be in the hospital for another couple days. I told him what we'd done with his class, and that he had a new student. We didn't stay long, because he was tired. But, hey, Bikkur Cholim points, y'know?
And then we came back home.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-19 09:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-20 11:09 am (UTC)I wish they could do that for you, Xiphias, but, alas, Hebrew School classrooms in synagogues are never given their due respect. Good luck cleaning up after Yom Kippur.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-20 06:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-20 11:22 am (UTC)We just ordered a couple fm Artscroll.
What don't you like about it?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-20 11:38 am (UTC)Hebrew Games
Date: 2004-09-20 11:11 am (UTC)Always glad to help! :-)
--me (No! ME!)
Re: Hebrew Games
Date: 2004-09-20 02:37 pm (UTC)Whatever's easiest for you.