Mommy Morah

Texting has destroyed my ability to write!!! Suddenly, I find myself ending sentences in multiple exclamation marks. The shorter the sentence, the better. Ugh. I tried writing an article for a local magazine, but I kept on restarting. I just couldn't get the words to flow. I used to be able to churn out an article or post with ease. Write a few paragraphs on a given subject in passable English? Sure, just give me twenty minutes. And here I am... choppy sentences and all. What happened to me? Recently, I even caught myself thinking in text. The thoughts scrolled in, bit by bit, with a  brief interlude to type the words, as though they were coming across a whatsapp chat. Now this has got to stop! There was a little bit of myself, the author in me, that had just started emerging, but since I joined the ranks of smart-phone owners... gone... So here I am, forcing myself to write out a thought in more than the top sentence. I'm not particularly pleased with the piece, ...

My happiness bubbles Sometimes the silliest things make us happy. The school I work in takes report cards very seriously. Let me make that really clear: The school I work in takes report cards very seriously. I had never seen anything like it before, and it hit me like a ton of bricks on a clear day the first time I had to write them. When I was in school, I got an "A+" ( most of the time... ) and a little footnote "1" for "pleasure to have in class" and "23" for "too talkative". That was it. Clean and simple. Probobly took a grand total of thirty minutes for a teacher to fill in the appropriate letters and numbers. Oh yes, there was an option to add an additional comment on the back, but there was never more than a scentance or two between my 20-odd teachers. Anyways, the report cards I have to write are from a different planet entirely. Here's a sample... Yah. Intense. The part that didn't make it onto the s...

When I first started teaching, I modelled my style after a favourite High School teacher of mine. Like me, she was young, with-it and taught Jewish History. Thing is, she didn't quite have the best classroom management techniques. She prepared short lessons, designed to fill only 1/2 to 3/4 of the allotted time. Then we'd gather 'round her desk and chat. Sometimes she didn't prepare at all. None of us minded. We felt very close to Ms. Young - we were her first students ever, we celebrated her engagement, wedding and the birth of her first child throughout the four years she taught us. But I was never scared of her. Not the slightest.   My head told me that I ought to be modelling after my Math teacher instead. Mrs. Math was scary! We did our homework nightly (though it meant schlepping home a textbook and notebook), studied hard for our weekly tests and were silent as the grave in the classroom. There was a stretch when I tutored a fun-loving classmate for a few mo...

"Lollies," my son fondly stated, "we can only eat one. It's not healthy." I could almost hear a deep sigh. Such trauma for a three year old. He wasn't finished. Daniel had prepared an entire thesis on the subject that he was preparing to expound on the topic, right there, in the back seat of the car. "Some foods are yummy, but they are not healthy." Yes, my son, such is life... "We can only eat them on Shabbos. Like lollies and cookies." "Daniel," I asked him, "What about strawberries? Are strawberries a treat?" "Yah." a little wag of the finger accompanied the next injunction. "But only one." "Why?" "It's not healthy." The laughter bubbled up inside of me, but I squeezed down the lid to maintain a straight face. "Sweetie, strawberries are yummy AND healthy." Oh. "What about watermelon?" "Yes, honey, watermelon is healthy....

The girls simply sparkled that night! They wore white caftans speckled with a shimmery gold design that glittered and sparkled in the reflection of the disco lighting above. Though I only taught a sprinkling of them, my heart sang, dance and cheered them on. An entire grade put on the most beautiful production, with their topics of learning interwoven between sparkly scenes of drama, music and dance. Truly an event to make a teacher's heart sing with nachas. It was endearing to watch the girls as they bit their nails, threatened to throw up/faint and just plain freaked out in the wings. "I feel like we haven't rehearsed enough!" Shainy* confided as she waited for her cue. Their sweet nervousness over a short-lived performance cast my mind back to my first days of teaching. I was never prepared enough. There was always one more source to look up and one more worksheet to write. Ah, the sparkly confidence that piggie-backs on four years experience... Lessons that I ...

It could take a good two, three hours to prepare a solid 45-minute lesson. What about when you up the ante? After researching, writing the lesson, preparing worksheets and a follow up quiz, I decided that my Jewish History lesson on the life of Shlomo ibn Gabirol needed some more pizazz. It was late enough, trust me, but the perfectionist in my soul must've had a good dose of coffee because there I was, enhancing the lesson. I gave my eyes a vigorous rub, and clocked in another hour or two to create the slideshow, animation, or interactive activity that would really help my students take home the learning in a very real, long-term way. (Amen!) If you are lucky, you teach two parallel classes and can use the same lesson twice. And then it's over. All the materials get filed away neatly (I wish!) into a binder or digital folder and hibernate for another year. What's the point? I spend all this time in resource creation, and it gets used once. ...

The children dawned before the sun that fateful day. I rubbed my bleary eyes and schlepped my aching muscles out of bed. No point in two of us being zombies, I figured. I shut the door behind me, leaving DH in his nice, comfy bed. I gathered up the children, and together we dined and played for nearly two hours. By 7:15, I realized that I was squinting at the clock through bleary eyes. I held on until 7:30, then gratefully headed back to bed, "your turn!" Mmmm.... At a quarter to nine, DH came in to tell me that he was on his way to shul. "Don't worry, I'm getting up." The little ones came in a few times, tried to cajole me out of bed. I sent them off for a banana, Lego, crackers, anything really, and rolled over. At one point, he asked me to open a bottle of long-life milk, and I told him they could unpack the box into the shelf. At 9:38 (!) I heard some strange noises. "Is she ok?" I asked the big brother. No response. Yikes! I rushed out...