Another Week Of Service In The South

This year I am working two days a week in the elementary school, helping to teach English to the fifth and sixth grades and Hebrew to the second grade. I also work two days a week in the junior high school, helping with English in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades and with Hebrew in the seventh grade.

I learn a lot from the students. On Sunday, I worked with a group of three sixth graders. Somehow we started talking about how to read an analog clock or watch. It transpired that none of the three knew how to do it. I thought it would be a good idea to teach them this skill in English, but it was a complete failure. One of the students told me there was no need to learn how to read an analog watch because it was irrelevant and a thing of the past. Unfortunately, his friends seemed to agree with him, so we didn’t proceed.

I had a similar experience the previous week, when eighth graders from the junior high told me they didn’t need to learn English because, with Google Translate and AI, they can get their message across, and learning English is too hard.

It is hard for me to convince the students that it is crucial to know English. When they look at our Knesset and the government, and when they look at the new head of the Israeli Security Agency and the prospective head of the Mossad, they see leaders who do not know English either. Many of today’s new leaders, who rose from Orthodox institutions, do not know English. Their rabbis obviously did not consider it essential to their studies.

And to return to reading an analog watch: last night, the battery of my wristwatch died. It was a real problem, because when I sit with students and want to plan ahead, I always glance at my watch. I never take out my phone to check the time, and I don’t want my junior high students to do that either. Phones are another difficult problem in the upper grades. During breaks, all the students are busy with their phones, and many use them during class as well, although it is not allowed.

It was a challenging day, sitting with students and not knowing the time. When I finished work, I drove to Ofakim to have the battery in my watch replaced. The first question the man in the store asked was why I didn’t simply check the time on my phone. I didn’t want to explain that, for me, it was about setting an example.