After
having counted the tribes, The Torah lists the Priests= Kohanim and Levites.
They would devote themselves to spirituality and the service of God in the
Tabernacle. The Torah introduces us to the
descendants and children of Moses and Aaron – אלה תולדות אהרן ומשה these are the offspring
of Moses and Aaron ……. And then begins
to list only the sons of Aaron. The
Talmud – Sanhedrin asks why does the Torah list only the sons of Aaron and call
them the offspring – תולדות
of Moses as well. The
Talmud says that if someone teaches someone else's children Torah, it as if he bore
them. Moses taught Aaron's son's Torah
and became their spiritual father. The implication for teachers is that is that
they must treat pupils and students as if they were their own children. The
litmus test is that a student must see in the teacher a caring father and that
the teacher's acceptance, respect, concern and love for the child must be
unconditional and does not depend on what the child does – learn well or behave , but on who he is.
The
question is why ' unconditional teaching
', the title of an article by A. Kohn, is so
important for the teaching of Torah. The
teaching of Torah should focus on the whole child – not only his external behavior
and academics. It should focus on his thoughts, motives, underlying values, his
emotional and spiritual side and informal learning = learning from all people
etc. We want kids to feel self-directed,
internalize their learning, develop a love for learning, give expression to
their personalities, individual thinking, learning and values through communication,
doing good deeds and mitzvoth and teaching others. When kids feel that they are valued
conditionally, and feel more or less loved and accepted depending how they
perform or behave, acceptance is never a sure thing. Carl Rogers explains that
children will be able to accept themselves as fundamentally valuable and
capable, is to the extent which they have been accepted unconditionally by
others. They need to see themselves as basically good people in order to repent
and do Teshuva, be accepting of others and do good to them. Children, whose
parental/teacher love and acceptance was conditional , based on what they do
and not by who they are, have a lower perception of their overall worth, come
to disown parts of them that are not valued , regard themselves as worthy only
when they behave in certain ways and accept themselves and others with strings attached. In extreme
cases they will create a ' false self ' in order to be the person their parents
will love.
When
it comes to academics, acceptance is based on performance. We use competition
to ' rank kids' against each other and try to remedy the situation by giving
each kid a ' chance of being number one '.We motivate kids to learn by using
grades, honor rolls, praise etc. So the
focus is on achievement and the message kids get is only those who do well
count. We focus on helping kids think on how they are learning instead of
focusing on what they are learning so they can connect to and internalize the
learning. Kids, who feel valued irrespective of their achievements, accomplish
quite a lot and develop a healthy self-confidence in themselves and a belief
that it is safe to take risks and try new things. Every child should be able to
find his place in the Beit Hamidrash, connect to the Torah and feel valuable in
the eyes of the teacher.
When
it comes to behavior, acceptance is based on a child being compliant and obedient.
Kids are forced into time-out, detentions and suspensions or even corporal
punishment or seduced by rewards in the
hope that they will be taught a lesson, to behave better and be more compliant.
Kids experience these consequences and '
doing to ' approaches rather differently - that acceptance is conditional, teachers
are unfair, and mistake was being caught and become alienated from the teacher
and learning in general. Instead of helping kids do Teshuva, and reflect on the
consequences of their actions and feel sorry for others, they now feel sorry
for themselves. When we focus on the whole child and not just on the behavior,
we take into account feelings, motives, values, underlying problems, lagging
skills etc. We can then echo the CPS,
collaborative problem solving moto that 'children do well if they can and not
children do well if they want to ' and try and deal with the underlying
problems that are giving fuel to the
child's behavior and solve the problem – working with the child in a
collaborative way.
Marilyn Watson in her book
"Learning to Trust" explains that a teacher can make it clear to
students that certain actions are unacceptable while still providing a deep
kind of reassurance that she still cares about them and is not going to punish
or desert them even if they do something very bad. This posture allows their
best motives to surface and give them space and support them in the process of
reflecting and autonomously engaging in the moral act of restitution - Teshuva.
If we want students to trust that we care for them, then we need to display our
affection without demanding that they behave or perform in certain ways in
return. It is not that we don't want or expect certain behaviors – we do, but
our concern and affection does not depend on it. '
A relationship depends also on being
interested in hearing their opinions and perspectives of how things could be
done differently and countless gestures that let them know we are glad to see
them. The Chazon Ish is quoted as saying – what kids need more than love is
respect. For kids, how much the teacher cares is far more important than how
much he knows.
Kohn asks teachers... Imagine that your
students are invited to respond to a questionnaire several years after leaving
school. They are asked to indicate whether they agree or disagree – how strongly
– with statements such as : " Even when I was not proud of how I acted ,
even when I didn't do the homework, even when I got low test scores or didn't
seem interested in what was being taught , I knew that – insert your name here –
still cared about me." How would
you like your students to answer that sort of question? How do you think they
will answer it?
With
Shavuot approaching, we reflect on ' receiving the Torah ' and passing it on to
future generations. We should remind ourselves that unconditional love,
acceptance and respect will help us focus on the whole child and without judgment
help them be more focused on what they are doing and learning and on not on '
how well ' they are doing, so that they can connect to the Torah and
internalize its teachings..
No comments:
Post a Comment