One of the things I have had to learn how to do since I started teaching in the synagogue school is how to improvise. You never know what mood the kids will be in after a long day at public school, or what changes will come up in the outside world, or in our own worlds, and really, there has been a lot of change in the Jewish world over the past six years. Each year, there’s also the reality that a different group of kids will have different interests and different abilities and limitations, and I have to adapt my plans to fit what works best for them.
It has turned out that, this year, the one thing all of my students seem to love is performing; and while some of them like to sing, or dance, or tell jokes, they all like to act. I discovered this mostly by accident one Sunday morning, when one of my most energetic and curious students looked at the day’s quote from Leviticus, and dropped her head onto her desk and asked, “Why are there so many words in this book? What happened to all of the stories?”
And she was absolutely right. Other than an interlude wherein two of Aaron’s priestly sons are killed for, um, inappropriate practices in front of God (which I did not share with my students, for obvious reasons), most of Leviticus is made up of a list of laws: fascinating and complex laws, divisive and bizarre laws, laws that only applied in the past and laws that can still serve us well today. And all of that can definitely lead to interesting discussions and many stories shared from their own lives, but it’s true, there aren’t many good stories in the text itself. So I, literally, tossed my lesson plan aside and asked her and her classmates which stories they remembered learning the year before, when they studied the book of Exodus, or the year before that, from Genesis. It became clear that though they remembered a lot of details, they tended to assign them to the wrong stories and often had no idea of the order of events (was it Moses who put all of the animals in the ark? And then he split the sea and ate an apple, right?). Instead of correcting them, I thought it would be more fun to have them act out the stories, one scene at a time, from the beginning.
By the time the bell rang for the end of class, we were halfway across the sea of reeds (with Moses) and each student had played at least three roles (God, Isaac, and the dove, or Noah and God and Leah, for example). And it was fantastic! And exhausting. We had to drag ourselves through the rest of the activities of the morning. But the following week, they begged to do more of Genesis or Exodus, which was, as you can imagine, unusual. I did my best to add more acting into my lesson plans after that, though I had to argue for the value of singing, dancing, drawing, and writing, as well.
And then, as a gift to the synagogue school from a generous congregant, we had a visit from a Jewish improv group, called The Bible Players (https://www.thebibleplayers.com/). They came for our last school day before Passover and worked with every possible age group. First they worked with the teachers, so we could learn how to lead some of the improvisations ourselves and adapt them for different holidays and lessons (they also gave us a packet full of every activity they’d done with us, and plenty more that we didn’t have time to try), and then they worked directly with the kids – getting them to play different characters, and mirror each other, and laugh and imagine and be brave and play. By the end of their time with The Bible Players, my otherwise sarcastic, eye-rolling students were glossy-eyed with joy and asking when they would be able to do it all again. How about tomorrow? Could we come back to synagogue school tomorrow and do it again?!
And, of course, part of me was sitting back and saying, hey, what about me? Am I not fun? Didn’t I come up with exciting, enlightening, and innovative activities all year long? But a larger part of me was already looking through the packet of activities and planning how to add them into my lesson plans. They had taught us an especially effective clapping game to get the kids to quiet down that I intended to practice right away.
The reality is, my next class of students may not love acting in the same way, and not every activity will work out, nor will I be able to match the level of enthusiasm and buy-in of the Bible Players, but they taught me something I’ve been struggling to embrace on my own: not only are we always improvising, but as teachers, we are at our best when we are improvising. In fact, if we know 100% what we’re going to do next, in class or in life, we are going to be bored, or bore everyone else. Learning needs to be exciting, and engaging, and interactive in order to work.
I wish I could say that I am always ready to try something new, and always eager and open to new challenges, but I am really not. I move towards change reluctantly, and with as much side-eye as any of my students. I was exhausted the day the Bible Players came to teach us, and annoyed, and shy, and wishing I could just go home and take a nap. It wasn’t until I saw how much my students loved what they were doing that I started to open up and embrace the possibilities. Though, of course, when I tried the really effective clapping game, after the Passover break, it did not work at all, and a couple of the girls made sure to tell me that, “that was so two weeks ago.”
To be honest, I am really ready for summer break. I am exhausted in every way. I have a lot of students this year, and they are all challenging and fascinating and full of energy and full of piss and vinegar, and they take pretty much all of my energy in every class. My one week off for Passover did not even begin to remedy the bone-deep fatigue that has set in, and yet, I’m still revising lesson plans to finish out the school year, and I’m still excited to try new things and see how they go over, and I’m still looking for new skills to learn so I can give my next batch of students more of what they need. It’s intoxicating to always be learning, and growing; and being in the classroom is like a whirlwind that I get caught up in every time, whether I mean to or not, and whether my body can sustain the effort or not.
So, I will gratefully take my summer to recover and recharge, and then I will try it all over again next year, with the next class, improvising every step of the way, and hoping to get things right at least as often as I get them wrong.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 