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February is Jewish Disabilities Awareness Month.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every school and institution believed that every child deserved a place in a Jewish school? As a child, I was fortunate to attend a day school that believed in inclusion. Students who were blind, deaf, confined to wheelchairs or who had Down’s syndrome called my school home just as I did. The students with disabilities were not kept to themselves and then paraded around to make the other students feel good about themselves. They were integral parts of each class and part of school life and learning like any other student. Having students withRead More →

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I was avoiding work by looking at my facebook feed when I saw a link to another parenting article. I clicked, I read, and I sighed. I felt sad as both a teacher and parent. There is a new parenting paradigm out there meant to address helicopter parenting. It is called “no rescue parenting.” The writer of the original blog post that coined the phrase was featured on a segment of the Today Show and received a lot of support. At its core, no rescue parenting seems to make sense. If a kid forgets something, rather than rushing in to save them from consequences orRead More →

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If I write about IT will I seem pathetic? Do I write about IT and try to seem wise?  Do I avoid writing about IT and try to seem super-together and expert-like?  Or do I just quit blogging???? This is what has been running through my mind ever since I agreed to write a blog post this week. Because more than any other topic, I have been wanting to write about my Terrible, Horrible, No Good/Very Bad Day. Yeah, I know, blogs on education websites are meant to be inspirational, educational and/or motivational. Hopefully, authentic will pass muster and will help out my fellow teachersRead More →

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Part 1: Biographies wanted Last week, one of the greatest Torah sages of the last few generations, Rav Ovadiah Yosef, died. As my husband described him, Rav Ovadia zt”l was a cross between Albert Einsten and Martin Luther King Jr, whose genius was unmatched and who elevated the lives of an entire ethnic group in Israel. I wanted my third graders to have a taste of Rav Ovadia zt”l’s greatness so that they could be inspired to work hard and  to appreciate the greatness & uniqueness of our Torah giants. For the last two year, I have been presenting a Torah personality to my classRead More →

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This year, like most teachers, parents and students, I was lucky enough to have TWO first days of school. At least that was what it felt like. My first, first day was Thursday before Rosh Hashana. We had a total of eight school days interspersed over the course of 3 weeks with frequent breaks for secular holidays, Jewish holidays, and erev holidays. This Monday was my second, first day. Come Friday (if I make it Please G-d), I will have taught my first full week of classes this year. So, although school began over a month ago, I figure I can write about some thingsRead More →

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Every other Wednesday, I post ideas about how to improve the learning going on in the classroom. There are so many buzzwords and great ideas floating around about what could make education better: blended learning, 1 to 1 education, media labs. It would take 30 hours a day to get schools to be perfect and for teachers to prepare the needed lessons to implement these ideas. Yet, even if all these innovations were implemented, I’m not sure these ideas would improve the learning drastically without addressing a more fundamental issue. No matter how much research and effort we put into improving education  there is stillRead More →

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The Common Core I don’t know about you, but my school has been living and breathing the common core over the last few weeks. Although as a private school, we are exempt from the 3-8th grade testing requirement, my school administered the tests anyway to help provide benchmarks for the General Studies program. So we lived through the state exams. Our students did really well, and I got to feel good that I’m  not the only one who has trouble making assessments that capture the vibrancy of  the curriculum. An important lesson. But, even more important, I learned that there are some great techniques andRead More →

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  Have you ever found yourself with the following dilemma? You are an OK teacher, but sometimes the kids drift off in your class. Or you explain a concept for five minutes and the class looks back at you with a blank look as if you are speaking Chinese. Or, you thought the kids were with you in class, but they bombed the test. These kinds of days are demoralizing. It’s not fun to feel like its been a FAIL. So, what are your options? You can go to your principal, but you know she is overworked and stressed. There is a big board meetingRead More →

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All success begins with some failure . . . I have written about my fun few years in the web industry during the dot-com boom. I had a grand time and enjoyed feeling like my stock options were worth something before the market crashed. Then came 9/11, and I decided to devote myself to doing something meaningful like teaching our holy Torah to the next generation. Honestly, I didn’t have such a grand time for the first few years at all. Kids and classes do not come with instruction manuals. I was never quite sure what I was supposed to be doing and how toRead More →

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Last time: I introduced some of the top tips I learned working as an information architect in Silicon Alley. My top 3 tips had to do with what to teach.   Tip #1 from the Web: Who is your audience? Tip #2 from the Web: Less is More Tip #3 from the Web: Categorize These tips are still not enough to ensure that students will get what we want from a lesson. Teachers need to also worry about how their presentations look. I wasn’t hired to be graphic designer, why worry so much about how to present information? Have you ever spent hours preparing aRead More →

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I have had such a great experience with my Megillas Esther reading program this year that it merited an immediate blog post. This year, I have been spending daily class time having the students read aloud using the DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) model explained here  where they read to a friend and the friend checks them for errors and times them to improve their hebrew reading fluency. The class average is around 50 words a minute which is quite good.  I have used the read for speed worksheets on the parsha and made my own for tefillos so that  students develop sight words that they will useRead More →

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Featured Blog: Chinuch ENERGY! Do you remember when you learned how to use the internet? I don’t. Why not? If we can figure out the answer, we can create lessons that our students won’t remember having to learn as well. We don’t remember how we learned to use the internet because companies designed websites so the process would be painless.   Here is a blog post that has screenshots with comparisons of old and current websites. Take a look at a list of the most popular websites in 1998. The old websites that were harder to use disappeared or were changed to what we know today. In 1998,Read More →

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Cross-posted from YU 2.0 It is a great priviledge to be a guest blogger on YU 2.0. It is a great community, and I look forward to the conversations that these guest blogs will bring. Innovation The theme on YU 2.0 Wednesdays is Innovation. When I think of innovation, I think of my grandmother who told me to reinvent myself every decade. She herself had learned to drive in her late 60s, volunteered on a kibbutz in her 70s, and became a hebrew tutor in her 80s. Innovating meant that her life was always fresh and fun and responsive to her needs and to theRead More →

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The Problem – we are all ignorant How many times have you read a Jewish periodical that bemoans how little our students know  about the fundamentals of our faith? These articles will extol the virtues of kiruv programs that teach these ideals to our students in a workshop or two. They quote students who were astounded. “How come I never learned this before?,” the students ask. This problem has been on my mind for quite some time. When I started to teach 3rd grade, I decided to try teaching the basics of our faith on a 9 year old level. I began devoting 5-10 minutesRead More →

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This year, Baruch HaShem, I’ve been super busy teaching and learning with my class – but not updating the blog so I’d like to invite all my blog readers into my class. I am very fortunate to have a wonderful co teacher who makes the classroom so inviting. Much of the homey atmosphere is from her hard work Since it is December, I unfortunately don’t have the welcoming door decor that greeted the students for the first few months View from the front of the room   Side of the room Word Wall – This year yellow is שרשים, orange is Level 1 words andRead More →