When I was a Dumb Teacher Who Loved My Students and Made Mistakes

When I taught in Beth Rivka, back in the days when it was still on Church Avenue, the windows of the seventh-grade classroom looking out on Erasmus High School, when we heard loud popping sounds, we assumed it was shots fired from within Erasmus, or the basketballs pounding the gym walls. Either or, and we probably weren’t wrong—about the gunshots, I mean.

I landed up in Beth Rivka, because my best friend, Raiza Silber, Miss Schonbrun in the olden days, taught 4^th grade and said, “Mindy, they need a substitute,” so I came pretty much off the airplane where I lived in Eretz Yisroel with my little son and tall husband, and came straight into Beth Rivka, teaching math to some seventh graders. Problem was, I don’t do math. I had no idea how to teach math, so I’m not quite sure what I did instead, but it was definitely not math.

But Mrs. Reicher (Burg in those days), hired me for the next year as a seventh grade language arts teacher and I was excited out of my mind because I loved, loved, loved teaching writing and literature (not grammar—that was in the same category as math, if you really want to know), and I had completely fallen in love with Beth Rivka’s girls. The students were fun, and refreshing, open, honest, and simply full of personality. What exactly was there not to love? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I loved the girls, my subjects, working for Mrs. Reicher, listening to gunshots (or basketballs) in the yard across my window, and the most amazing thing—the Lubavitcher Rebbe!

When I think back and realize that when as a teacher I attended the Lag B’omer parades, and the Rebbe was there telling us how important we teachers are to the school, to the world, giving us dollars, I feel incredibly privileged and awestruck at this privilege.

Okay, so let me share some memories of my days there.

I was a real newbie teacher, and believe it or not, my teacher from high school, and my sister’s best friend, was then going to Bank Street, Columbia University, to become something important or another in education. And to my luck, she used me and my classroom to do all her papers for college. So I was mentored by a genius of a teacher and without going to college, got a full college education as to how to educate my students in teaching reading, writing, grammar, and spelling.

I’m not going to bore you with the details, but suffice to say that my class was what you would generously describe as controlled chaos, with girls lying on the floor with their books or writing folders, pillows, blankets and whatnot, looking for all the world like they were having a sleep over. But there was hard work going on. Girls worked together helping each other edit and revise their pieces, girls became readers for the first time in their lives, they became writers; my classroom became a community of writers.

I will share the bad stuff, too. I had one class—a bunch of brilliant, fabulous girls—who somehow didn’t click with me or with this method of reading and writing that my other classes adored. They wanted me to go back to the traditional way of teaching and I should have listened. I had a miserable year with them, they had a miserable year with me, and nobody learned anything—except I learned that I didn’t know how to listen to my students and find out what they needed, what wasn’t working and why. So if any of you are listening here who used to be in that class—I want to apologize for not hearing you, for not knowing how your lives were turned upside at home and you were struggling just to survive some really tough stuff like divorce and poverty, illness and death, and other really hard stuff that no kid should have to deal with. When you came to school, you needed order, not chaos, even the controlled kind. You needed to be contained and my classroom meant to encourage independence. You were not ready for that.

I also had another rotten experience. I was a fabulous 7^th grade teacher to most of my students, most years. But one year, there was a science teacher short in the 6^th grade. Mrs. Halpert, who is still  there teaching, and I’m sure still a numero uno science teacher was in my carpool every day and she said, “Mindy take that parallel class. I will help you with it.”

Dumb, dumb move. Mrs. Halpert is such a dynamic teacher, so brilliant and wonderful and interesting, so passionate about her subject, that no matter how good I was at Language Arts, the single sixth grade class I taught that year never forgave me for not being Mrs. Halpert. I don’t blame them. I just wasn’t. But, and it’s a big but, the next year when I had that same class again but this time for Language Arts, I made it up to them.

I will never forget how, on the last day of school, 2 delicious students came up to my desk.

“Mrs. Blumenfeld,” they said, “can we give you a kiss?”

Until today, I regret my response. “No,” I said.

Let me tell you, I loved those kids, their whole class. If I would have been the person then that I am now, a hugger, a kisser, a grandmother of 20 adorable grandkids, I would have said, “Of course!” and swept those darling students into a grand big hug and let them each kiss one cheek.

You have no idea how much I miss teaching.

I have taught in many schools, all grades. I say this in all honesty that Beth Rivka was my favorite school of all times to teach in.

Hmm. Let me see. Any other memories?

Yes. I remember that simply yummy student who had lost her mother sometime before seventh grade started. She had a shy smile and a deep heart. She wrote all year long, wrote and wrote and wrote. But she refused to hand in a single piece of writing for me to grade. Her best friend partnered up with her to work with her on revision and editing and do all the stuff my students were supposed to do. Seriously, that kid worked hard on those pieces of writing and finished each one. But I didn’t get to read a single one. She would smile at me sweetly when I asked her, just as sweetly, for her writing.

Her best friend said—just as sweetly and very warmly, “Mrs. Blumenfeld, she can’t give them to you. They are about her mother. They are private.” And the author would stand right near her protective best friend and nod her head in agreement. No chutzpah, just a beautiful friendship and serious writing that were not for my eyes.

I remember loving those two kids. And I didn’t push it. I saw her hard work, even if I never read the work. Silly me, I said, “If I don’t see the work, I can’t give you a hundred on it. I will have to take off points.” She agreed—still sweetly.

I wish I could go back and give her the hundreds she deserved.

There was another not-so-pleasant memory. It was with that seventh-grade class who didn’t like the way I taught. They were full of personality and it came with a little bit of boundary pushing and one of those boundaries was making those prank calls. Some girls did it over and over, driving me nuts all evening. Their behavior in class was out of bounds, and honestly, I was as young and stupid as they were. I wish I had known how to reach them, how to understand them better. But it didn’t happen. Instead things escalated. There was a school trip at the end of the year, to Philadelphia, that I chaperoned. Two girls weren’t allowed to come because of their prank calls and other not-okay behavior. But then when we were supposed to return home, a bus broke down and all the girls begged to stay behind with me on the bus that got stranded.

I didn’t let a single girl from that class stay behind with me.

They were really wonderful kids and I was a really good teacher. I think about that year a lot, and what I could have done better, and how teachers play such a powerful role in kids’ lives and how sometimes, teachers, too, are human—and dumb.

it’s been a hundred years since I left Beth Rivka. So many things have changed in my life. I became a therapist, I married off my children, my youngest child had cancer, I became an author, a columnist, a speaker, a grandmother.

I wonder, too, about my Beth Rivka students. Are they doing well?  Are they happy? Do they forgive me for the stuff I didn’t mean to do as I forgive them for being the kids they were supposed to be? I wonder where they are now, and how their lives turned out. I wonder if they remember me and the good times we had, pillows and blankets on the floor, reading and writing, and having fun.

Because it was fun.

Reach out and say hello. I really miss you, guys.

Originally published in Embrace Magazine for the Chabad community