Noticing and Appreciating

Next week, all our middle school students head off on their annual Tiyul Week, and I am so excited to join the eighth-grade trip to Washington, DC. As we plan the trip this year, we’ve increasingly felt the need to emphasize civil service during this visit. Civil Servants’ work touches every element of our itinerary, from our visit to the National Portrait Gallery, to our tour of the Capitol, to our metro rides, to our tens of thousands of steps on the National Mall grass. It’s altogether possible that our student tourists (and many adult tourists as well) could enjoy a rich week of adventure in our Nation’s Capitol without noticing the lived experience of DC residents at this moment, so many of whom have lost their jobs as civil servants or are concerned about the well being of their businesses in the private sector that heavily depend on the purchasing power of civil servants. How can we allow this to happen when one of our overarching educational goals is for students to notice and appreciate all the critical and invisible elements of the world they inhabit, whether it is the essential contributions of strangers, the feelings of friends, or their own spiritual lives?

If you’ve spent time in a Beit Rabban classroom, you know that our students are taught and practice skills that engender these dispositions. We use tools like “notice and wonder” and “compliments and appreciations” to become people who see and value the ostensibly invisible. For example, you might see a pair of students learning in chevrutah and marking up the margins of a text with noticings and wonderings as they read it. A class on a field trip might pause at a particular piece of art to share noticings and wonderings. Likewise, we compliment and appreciate speakers at the end of their presentations; parents compliment their children at their culminations of study; and teachers compliment and appreciate each other every Friday morning on our staff WhatsApp.

In this vein, I would like to share some observations and appreciations that I collected just yesterday while walking around our building with a colleague from another Jewish Day school who came to observe our literacy program.

I brought our visitor to the second floor, and our COO, Nicole, greeted us with the proud announcement that our audit was complete! She shared her gratitude for her partner, our treasured Adit, in this annual, heavy lift, remarking on Adit’s relentless attention to detail and how she checks each number line by line. I noticed that Nicole and Adit put in hours upon hours of invisible work, to the point that I barely realized they had been working on it. I wondered how they did this while juggling their many other responsibilities for the school. I appreciated how committed our professional and lay leaders are, and how they do what is needed without fanfare. I promptly posted a picture of Nicole on our community Mazal Tov board, congratulating her on completing the audit. Multiple adults stopped by throughout the day to ask what an audit was.

We walked down the hall to observe a first-grade literacy period. The teacher Emily had a group on the floor reading a chapter book together, our learning specialist took another group out of the classroom, one student worked directly with a Department of Education service provider; other students worked independently reading through their books and breaking down the sequence of events using graphic organizers; another student sat diligently answering reflection questions after reading her book twice- once with a chevrutah and once on her own; and yet another student took a break in the quiet corner while waiting for her headache to pass. A passerby might simply notice a calm and functioning classroom. Someone who pauses to look closely would notice a perfectly conducted symphony at peak performance that reflects months of practice: a gaggle of 19 six-year-olds whose natural state is akin to a Brooklyn roller derby rink rather than the NY Philharmonic. I wondered how much curriculum planning, skills teaching, and classroom management systems it took to achieve this level of differentiated learning. I appreciated Emily and her co-teacher, Miri, for their brilliant conducting skills.

After class, we headed over to our learning specialist, Yael, for an overview of the Science of Reading methodology that guides our literacy instruction. Yael joyfully welcomed our guests and shared a substantive and easy-to-follow overview, including student work samples and assessment data. I noticed how smoothly Yael translated their expertise into a concise introduction to a very complicated topic, and it reminded me of how the teacher we just observed also translated her many hours of learning into accessible and fun lessons. I wondered just how many hours of professional development our entire literacy team has invested in this topic over the past number of years. I appreciated our principal, Ingrid, for leading us on this trajectory toward the most cutting-edge literacy instruction. I appreciated the team’s willingness to iterate. I most appreciated the documented outcomes it is having for student learning.

From there, we went up to the fifth floor to observe other classes. We ran into a very giddy Lisa, who is our director of Judaic Studies and Hebrew. It was hard not to notice that Lisa was holding a pile of chart paper, each with a Jewish text glued on and marked up with a ton of student comments starting with the words “I notice…” and “I wonder…” Lisa had just come from observing a middle school teacher with whom she is prototyping a new Israel curriculum. The unit they are currently working on is about the centrality of Zion in Jewish texts. I wondered how much skill and disposition learning students had to accumulate to engage in this assignment: Hebrew reading skills, textual analysis skills, and a stance of curiosity. I appreciated that the student responses reflected a thick connection to the larger questions, and I appreciated their roles as members of our community and as stewards of the Jewish future. I appreciate Lisa for all the work she has done in designing these units; I appreciate our partner organizations like the Shalom Hartman Institute and the Jewish Education Project for the professional development they’ve provided that is informing this curriculum; and I appreciate the teachers’ eagerness to pilot these new units of study.

Finally, we passed a student the serious task of choosing a new book from our hallway library. I asked him what he was looking for, and he said a really well-written book with a teenage super villain, preferably similar to the book he just returned, which was written by his classmate’s dad. I asked him to explain our unusual library structure to my guest, and he extolled the virtues of a student-run library system. I noticed how comfortable this student seemed in welcoming our guest, as if he were welcoming a visitor into his home. I appreciated how much access our centrally located and unconventional library gives students. I appreciated the many volunteers who set it up, including parents like Stacey and Ava, and alumni like Serena, Natan, and Leah. I appreciate the family that anonymously paid for the library.

When we are at our best as educators, we also internalize the teaching and modeling we do for the benefit of our students. We have personal growth. I noticed that this happened for me this week, and I appreciate my students for the impetus.