Tonight I was having sushi with a friend and we were talking about leaving the city.
My friend thinks that eventually the only secular people left in the city will be the ones too poor to be able to afford to leave. The state public school system in Jerusalem is getting smaller all the time.. this is a fact that I know from working in the public school sector.
“I’m pro a three-state solution,” I said.
“What, a state for hareidim?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “You can quote me on that.”
For Shabbat lunch I joined a group of people eating on Gan Soccer. One lady is a voice teacher.
I admitted to her that I think that I need a creative outlet. She said that was very important. She asked me what I do that is creative.
“I write,” I told her. “Well, I have a blog, but I mostly use it to complain. That’s not creative really.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. Then I told her about this party I went to Thursday night where one girl told the crowd that she first started writing songs in college, and found that at one point she couldn’t think of anything to write about. “If I’m not in love, and I’m not depressed, I haven’t just broken up with anyone and I like school and am not having an existential crisis, what do I have to write about?” So she decided to challenge herself to write a song about being happy.
The voice performer/teacher agreed. She said that often students come to her having difficulties with their performance, and they want to work on changing certain aspects of their voice. Usually they need to work on changing certain aspects of their life as well, and everything happens at once. She finds that her students often start new relationships, decide to start new adventures in life, move, and do all sorts of things in their personal life at the same time that they overcome whatever challenge it is to their voice.
I thought that was really cool.
I have a small group of 10th graders whom I teach. Nice kids. I never dread going into the class. I’ve talked to a bunch of the kids personally. Stayed with them after school. Encouraged them to do their work. Blah blah.
Nothing bad ever really happens. They are good kids.
I came into class and five of them decided to sit with their backs toward me. And drum on the table like they were in a band.
I didn’t panic. They were only five kids, after all.
“Ok, I can’t start class until everyone is facing me.”
No one really moved.
“Ok, let’s face me or I’m going to have to give you a writing assignment.” One of the best kids in the class (but also the laziest) faced me.
Then they started complaining that they were tired, they wanted a break, could we play a game? Sure, I said, let’s work this hour and then the next hour we will play a game.
We played a very nice game and they worked for both hours, doing whatever I told them to. The deal was they listened to me and they didn’t have to write.
It wasn’t until I got home that night that I realized that the class had started with almost a coup against me, and I had handled it well and even ended up having a good time with the kids in the end. I had even forgotten by the end of the lesson with them how it had started.
What do you know.
Today I quit one of my many jobs. I had started to work for a start-up, filing papers so that the company could be sold.
The boss worked from his home, and occasionally had me file stuff related to his divorce as well.
He then wanted me to transcribe phone calls between he and his ex-wife in order to take her to court for custody of the kids. First I played stupid and said that I didn’t know what was relevant and that I couldn’t understand the tapes in Hebrew.
Then I told him that I shouldn’t be working on things related to his personal life. “Oh, but I don’t ask to you do it much,” he said.
Today he told me to listen to all of the tapes and transcribe them. I reiterated my previous statement about working on his personal life.
“If you don’t want to do it, it’s fine. I’ll get someone else.”
“Get someone else. And make sure that the next person that you hire understands that the work has to do with your personal life,” I told him.
“It’s not personal,” he said. (!!!!)
jtownponderings 