7th May 2008, 04:33 pm
Tuesday was National Teacher Day. I hope the children at the nursery and the religious school appreciate their teachers every day, not just on such special occasions. I am sure they honor them and acknowledge the contributions they make in their lives.
As you might have noticed I try to introduce a book or two from the library in every blog entry. The item I found this time was written by a teacher, Vivian Gussin Paley. White Teacher is a
wonderful, useful book–short, warm, and to the point. Using entertaining, well-chosen incidents from her own teaching experience, Vivian Paley examines a question that concerns teachers on all levels: How do I use my own behavior as a teacher to help my students learn to deal constructively with racial and social differences? It would be hard for anyone to read this book without growing a little and smiling a lot.
Sounds worthwhile reading not just to honor teachers on the day dedicated to them, but also for self-improvement.
6th May 2008, 09:25 am
Yesterday I wrote about the Jewish American Heritage Month. However I forgot to credit the source I learned about it. It was the Jewish Women’s Archive, a great resource on, well, Jewish Women. They just launched a Facebook application in honor of the Jewish American Heritage Month. If you are a Facebook member and add this application it will display a relevant event related to Jewish American Women and then will let you explore other dates, or just view random stuff for browsing. I posted a link to it on the library’s group on Facebook for easier reference. Here is yesterday’s entry, as an example:
May 5, 1900
Birth of Nacha Rivkin, founder of the first U.S. girls’ yeshiva
Born in Poland on May 5, 1900, Nacha Rivkin immigrated to the United States in 1929, settling with her husband and two children in Brooklyn, New York. Since there was no Jewish girls’ school, the Rivkins sent their eight-year-old daughter to public school and taught her Hebrew and Jewish subjects at home. But it was not long before Rivkin sought a better solution. Within a year, Rivkin had worked with Rabbi M.G. Volk and two other teachers to open the Shulamith School for Girls in Borough Park, Brooklyn. It was the first girls’ yeshiva in the United States. Rivkin taught kindergarten and first grade and supervised curriculum development. (Read more)
5th May 2008, 09:04 am
Many of us were not aware that is Jewish American Heritage Month. Let me quote the opening paragraph of the official site to give some context how this recent development came about:
On April 20, 2006, President George W. Bush proclaimed that May would be Jewish American Heritage Month. The announcement was the crowning achievement in an effort by the Jewish Museum of Florida and South Florida Jewish community leaders that resulted in resolutions introduced by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) urging the president to proclaim a month that would recognize the more than 350-year history of Jewish contributions to American culture. The resolutions passed unanimously, first in the House of Representatives in December 2005 and later in the Senate in February 2006.
Here is Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s 5-minute address in the house from last year:
An important resource about this event is the supporting coalition’s website. This year the theme is the American Jewish Experience. Here is a very short list of books I recommend on the topic. They all show very different aspect of the theme. The library has many more on many sides of the issue.
4th May 2008, 12:10 pm
I wanted to create a “library open” sign that could be placed in the courtyard, so there would be a more eye-catching sign when/if the library is open. I have been thinking of fabricating a sandwich-board or a sign similar to the gift-shop’s, made out of an old and sturdy picture frame. Looks like I thought about it too long. A few weeks ago, when I went yard-sale-hopping with my wife we found a pegboard at a school’s rummage sale. It seemed ideal for what the purpose, so we bough it right away. It is slightly larger, than what I planned. But that is an opportunity to use the available surface for posting drawings, pictures, notices, copies of book cover…. What would you put on it?
