The Scribbler

I’ve just found out that one of the Year 7 girls I’ve been teaching for almost a month is actually a boy. I hasten to add that I didn’t carry a physical check to establish this fact, the clarification came out through a conversation I was having with other teachers. They had also mistaken him for a her (one teacher had even referred to him as a “she” when talking to the other students and he was not in the slightest bit amused) I think he/she needs to cut his/her very long hair if he/she wants to avoid being seriously emotionally screwed up by all the teasing he/she will endure as the other kids also start wondering what gender he/she is. I expect him/her to look very different in a short while. Then again, maybe not…

What an honour! If you read the comment from my last post, you will see that it has been posted by Yaakov Kirschen, creator and illustrator of the superb Dry Bones cartoon strip which I wrote about a short while back. In deference to Mr Kirschen’s request, I have added his wonderful new blog to my list (in the left hand column). This site truly spoils us (i.e. the fans) by providing new and old cartoons five days a week as well as giving a background to each strip. If you wish to visit his own website, please click here . Thank you Mr Dry Bones!

For the first time in almost a decade, I am now in possession of my very own car. This evening, the deal went through and I can’t begin to describe how easier my life has just become. I will no longer be enslaved to the bus timetable. My school is but a 10 minute drive from my house, yet the bus incredibly adds 50 minutes to the journey time.  The pressure of getting out of the house earlier than I needed to, to catch the bus that often either came early or didn’t come at all was really start to grind me down. I also had the “pleasure” of having to sit next to the students I would be teaching later on in the day. At 8.00 a.m. I really didn’t feel like coming into contact with some of them! It also meant that I came home from school far later than I should have. Anyway, I now have a car. It’s no great shakes but it will get me from a to b and that’s all I need it for. Suddenly, both school and home life have become a touch less stressful.

Over the last two days, I have found myself in the interesting position of covering lessons for other teachers. Yesterday, I had to give a Drama Lesson, which wasn’t too bad as the kids were pretty much able to work out what to do for themselves. Today’s experience though was very different. Cover work should consist of me entering a classroom carrying some worksheets prepared by the absent teacher. I then give these out to the kids and spend the rest of the time managing behaviour and ensuring that they are getting on with the tasks therein. However, the teacher I was covering today had different ideas. He decided that anyone who took his lesson would actually teach his subject. So I found myself teaching a maths lesson, despite the fact that if I said I was poor at maths, I’d be seriously exaggerating. I positively stink at maths. I found myself standing in front of a class having to teach Pythagoras’s Theorum, despite the fact that I haven’t looked at it since the mid 1980’s…and onl...

As someone who spends his life in the classroom, I can’t begin to imagine what was going through the minds of these “people” and why they could even contemplate doing what they did. “September 27, 2005 The London Times Gunmen dressed as police kill five Shia teachers in classroom From Anthony Loyd in Baghdad GUNMEN in police uniforms shot dead five Shia teachers at a primary school south of Baghdad yesterday. The killers waited until pupils and teachers were leaving the school in Meulha, a village near the town of Iskandariyah, at the end of the day and seized them from a minibus. The five male teachers and minibus driver were then taken to a classroom, lined up against the wall and shot. “These men were terrorists in uniform,” an Iraqi police spokesman said. Iskandariyah, 30 miles from the Iraqi capital, is a predominantly Sunni town in an area that has become known as the triangle of death because of the sectarian killings there. Violence between the three principal Iraqi communities...

Well, most of the family seems to be on the mend. Tali, though at home today, will be back in school tomorrow and I’m definitely over it. Unfortunately, Dana isn’t quite there yet. Hopefully, I’ll have some better news tomorrow night.

There’s a vicious little stomach bug making its way through the lengths and breadths of our household. Shira was the first to bring this unwelcome (and uninvited) visitor into the family. I came down with it yesterday and now poor Dana and Tali are stricken. All we need are Dassi and Michal to get it and then we can finally return to being a fully functional (and healthy) nuclear entity.

To my surprise, the Jewish Chronicle decided to print my letter. I guess I should have a little a little more faith in my letter writing abilities. For the record, I performed a little computer jiggery pokery for this site, to shorten my name to my initials. This was done to protect the innocent (me!) The title (which I don't like at all) was the newspaper's. I feel that it totally de-means what I was trying to get across.

If you’d walked into any of my lessons in the last two days, you might be excused for wondering if you’d wondered in the middle of a war zone. The final straw for me was my last lesson on Tuesday with the Year 8’s who were obnoxious from the moment they darkened the hall in front of my room. This lesson was the stuff of teaching nightmares, to the extent that I had almost half the class staying after school for half an hour. I subsequently decided to re-enter Zero Tolerance mode and I’ve been an absolute shit to all my classes since then. To my delight, I seem to have got them actually learning something (whilst simultaneously getting rid of the students who were pissing me off with their atrocious behaviour). Today, one of my Year 9 classes refused to settle down, to the extent that I told them what a stubborn sonofabitch I was (I hasten to add that I didn’t use those exact terms) and whether they liked it or not, I wasn’t going to let them go to lunch until I had taught my lesson. Th...

Simon Wiesenthal, who passed away at the age of 96, may not have been the easiest person to like, but without a doubt, he must be the easiest person to respect. How could one not be in total awe of someone whose life after coming out of Mauthausan Concentration Camp weighing a paltry 100 lbs, was singly dedicated to one aim and one aim only – capturing Nazis? This incredible individual felt the need to avenge the deaths of six million of our brothers, not by lowering himself to the unimaginable standards of the perpetrators, but by bringing them to justice – and thereby providing a testimony for time immemorial of what really happened to the Jews and others in the years between 1933 and 1945. I think the term Nazi Hunter belittles what Simon Wiesenthal’s real role was. He was rather the ultimate “Pursuer of Justice” and the one person who can claim to have done more than anyone else to avenge the deaths of one third of our brethren. He was responsible for the capture over a thousand Na...

The photographs below demonstrate why the Jewish people are still around after five thousand years. A volunteer went into a flooded Synagogue in New Orleans and rescued the Torah Scrolls from the rising waters. Despite everything that happens to us, we always do what we can to save our most important possession – The Torah. We believe that this is our most treasured gift from G-d and nothing - neither fire nor water will ever separate us. The ancient rabbis said that rather it being a case of the Jews maintaining the (laws of) the Torah, it is in fact the Torah that maintains (and ensures the survival of) the Jews.

My friends and colleagues, heads and representatives of the UN member states, I arrived here from Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people for over 3,000 years, and the undivided and eternal capital of the State of Israel. At the outset, I would like to express the profound feelings of empathy of the people of Israel for the American nation, and our sincere condolences to the families who lost their loved ones. I wish to encourage my friend, President George Bush, and the American people, in their determined efforts to assist the victims of the hurricane and rebuild the ruins after the destruction. The State of Israel, which the United States stood beside at times of trial, is ready to extend any assistance at its disposal in this immense humanitarian mission. Ladies and Gentlemen, I stand before you at the gate of nations as a Jew and as a citizen of the democratic, free and sovereign State of Israel, a proud representative of an ancient people, whose numbers are few, but whose con...

  Scott took his blind date to the carnival. "What would you like to do first, Mary?" asked Scott. "I want to get weighed," she said. They ambled over to the weight guesser. He guessed 120 pounds. She got on the scale, it read 117 and she won a prize.   Next the couple went on the Ferris wheel. When the ride was over, Scott again asked Mary what she would like to do. "I want to get weighed," she said. Back to the weight guesser they went. Since they had been there before, he guessed her correct weight, and Scott lost his dollar. The couple walked around the carnival and again he asked where to go next. "I want to get weighed," she responded. By this time, Scott figured she was really weird and took her home early, dropping her off with a handshake.   Her roommate, Laura, asked her about the blind date, "How'd it go?"Mary responded, "Oh, Waura, it was wousy."

The weekly Jewish Chronicle newspaper wrote an editorial criticizing Sharon for handing the Synagogues over to the Palestinians, in the knowledge that they would behave as they eventually did. It continued by saying that the ministers in his cabinet chose not to go ahead with the destruction due to a popular feeling against this action. They said that Sharon should have taken a “more considered, responsible decision”. I was incensed and have written this letter, although I doubt it will be published: “Dear Sir,   I was most disheartened to read your editorial regarding Sharon's decision to leave the Gaza Synagogues intact.   You write that 'the ministers from his party preferred to ride the tiger of populism, rather than take a more considered, responsible position' regarding the destruction of the buildings. I would rather infer that Mr Sharon realised (or was made to realise) that if Jews started destroying their own places of worship, regardless of whether or not they co...

It was a decision that none of us should ever have to face. Israel had left Gaza and emptied the Synagogues of all religious artefacts but for whatever reasons, chose to not to dismantle and re-situate the buildings inside the Green Line. What to do next? Ariel Sharon initially wanted to destroy them, to avoid the inevitable desecration by the Palestinians. A cursory glance at history told him that some Arabs do not respect our places of worship. A case in point was the destruction and desecration of numerous Synagogues in Jerusalem between 1948 and ’67 by the Jordanian Army. They had even taken gravestones from the Mount of Olives and turned them into a walkway. Destruction seemed to be the only option. Fortunately, Mr Sharon listened to the arguments put forward by the members of the international Jewish community who stated quite rightly that “if the Jews destroy their own Synagogues (in Gaza), how can they complain when anti-Semites in other countries go about doing the same thing?...

This is the way I see it: Teaching is made up of a series of codes that need to be unlocked to ensure survival in the classroom. The first of these is learning the kids’ names and I think I’ve nearly cracked that one. I don’t know every child’s name, but I feel confident that I can match at least 20% of names to faces in each class. This one should be in the bag by half term (he says naively) Code #2 however is proving to be far trickier. In short, I need to get the seating sorted out. This will be achieved by trial and error – working out whom should be sitting next to whom, or not for that matter; where to seat the disruptive or weaker kids and finally, which places in the classroom are danger zones – i.e. the parts of the room where mischief will be more prevalent (such as corners or areas that extend beyond my eye-line) and where I should instead sit the kids whom I can trust to get on with their work independently. I have discovered that putting together a successful seating plan...

My good friend Rachael (you are my friend aren’t you Rachael?) asked me to clarify how the schooling system works in the UK. So here goes: Kids start nursery between the ages of 3 and 4. They then go into Reception, Year 1 and so on. The classes I teach constitute these ages: Year 7………..11-12 Year 8………..12-13 Year 9………..13-14 Year 10………14-15 Year 11………15-16 Year 12………16-17 Year 13………17-18 The cut-off date is 31st August. Shira, who is born on this date will therefore be the youngest in her class. Had she waited about eight hours to pop out, she could have been the oldest! Rachael, I hope this clears things up!

Are you alone? Are you reading this carefully? I have a confession to make (shhhhhhhhhhhhhh  don’t tell anyone) In my last post, I ever so slightly exaggerated the amount of time I have to wait until I get to see my next holiday. I mischievously wrote that I won’t be getting a break for another three months. This is, in fact, a downright lie because in just over a month, I’m going with Dassi and my parents to the US for a whole week. Let me let myself (slightly) off the hook by telling you that it seems as though the holiday is three months away (you’re not convinced are you? I can feel it from your cold stare). Another tough day at school didn’t help and I was observed once again - I think I gave a totally crap lesson.  The kids in Year 9 were pretty unruly and I could clearly see that dreaded “blank look” covering their little faces as I tried to explain the concept of using a formula in Excel, to carry out a straightforward calculation - the glazed, pained and fra...

The air in my room has definitely turned quite chilly in the last few days. I don’t feel last week’s warm breeze, the one wafting through the air, over the computer tops towards the front of the room. The Autumn chill is making itself comfortable as is the realisation that it’s three months till the next major holiday. School’s back in session and it’s going to be a long, hard slog. Classes that I held sway over so confidently last week are starting the inevitable rebellion, leaving me feeling both frustrated and exhausted. Yesterday, the headmaster came up to help me sort out my Year 8’s (a horrendous class by anybody’s standard). Today, my Year 9’s tested my patience, to the extent that I ended up telling one annoying student that I would be making his life ‘a misery’ (in other words, I’m turning into one of our hated teachers of old). Two rotten classes on consecutive days and Thursday hasn’t even arrived yet. On the positive side, I did give a good lesson to Year 10, so I shouldn...

I found this quite moving.

There follows some striking similarities between the Gaza disengagement and Hurricane Katrina. You decide if these are mere coincidences. - Close to 10,000 Jews were expelled from their homes in the Gaza Strip and parts of northern Samaria. Katrina's death toll is now expected to reach at least 10,000. - America 's population ratio to Israel is about 50:1. Ten thousand Jews who lost their Gaza homes is the equivalent of about 500,000 Americans who are now reported to be displaced as result of Katrina. - Gaza's Jewish communities were located in Israel 's southern coastal region; America 's southern coastal region now lies in ruins. - The U.S. government called on Louisiana residents to evacuate their homes ahead of the storm. The Israeli government, backed by statements from U.S. officials, demanded Gaza residents evacuate their homes. - Katrina, written in Hebrew, has a numerical equivalent of 374, according to a biblical numbering system upheld by all traditional ...

Have you ever seen the Hitchcock’s Marnie ? It’s not one of his better known movies, but I think it is, without a doubt, one of his most fascinating studies. Marnie (played by Tippi Hedren) is a thief who goes bonkers whenever she sees the colour red . I won’t give away any spoilers but keep this idea in mind, as you try to decipher why I have a similar crazed reaction whenever one (or more) of my kids scream/s too near to my ears. I’m NOT saying that the screaming gets me into the kind of frenzy that would make me do something stupid, but it really winds me up – in a way that I get very nervous and edgy, a feeling that can last for up to half an hour after the event. I can’t understand why this should be the case. What trigger could it be from my childhood? Thinking about it, I did grow up an only child and so am unused to very loud noises, but why should screaming act as a trigger to make me feel so very uncomfortable? Any Freud’s out there, I’d be fascinated to hear your explanatio...

Four years on and is the world a safer place? Whatever the factors that led to the bombing of the WTC, one thing and one thing only matters – innocent men and women were butchered. Children lost their fathers and mothers and the NYFD became an instant legend. I lost two distant relatives on that horrific day – one in the WTC and the other on the plane that crashed into the field. The heroics exhibited by people like you and me is truly astonishing, whether it be the passengers who tried to overcome the terrorists or the firemen who went into the blazing towers, never to come out alive. I could write reams about how I feel about the attack, but sometimes, silence is all that is necessary to convey one’s feelings. G-d bless America and the freedom it stands for and may He give solace to the many thousands of people who will be crying bitterly over the next few days, remembering this excruciatingly painful reminder of the evil that exists in some people minds. Let us pray that the next th...

Any teacher worth his or her salt will tell you that our work is never really done. Whilst sitting here and blogging I really should be doing something teacher related. The fact that it’s nearly 11 pm on a Saturday night is no obstacle to that either. I’ve spent the last week dedicating virtually every moment of the days (and parts of the nights) to doing “teacher things” and I’m raring to go into the new week and it’s for this reason that I’ve decided to deliberately pull myself back and cut off from the job. Yes, I have lessons to plan and yes, I should be doing them now but there’s always tomorrow and in all honesty, I do need the time off to refocus my energy and take a break from it all. Burn-out in this profession is probably more common than in many others. Dana warned me about the “trap” that many teachers fall into, by letting the teaching take over your life and I don’t want to let that happen. I enjoy what I’m doing too much to risk losing it. I say this now, a week into ter...

It’s Friday and I’ve made it to the end of the week. To be fair, the kids haven’t been particularly difficult (in the main) although I have had to clamp down on some rowdier elements. Today, I taught a Year 10 class who thought they could do what they wanted in my classroom. I soon put them right and told them in no uncertain terms that they “don’t want to get on the wrong side of me” and that I strongly advise them not to “mess me about”. You could have heard a pin drop after I’d finished my rant. It’s moments like that which remind me how satisfying it can be to teach. Needless to say, the rest of the lesson went by extremely smoothly, discipline-wise.

Today, I received my QTS certificate. As of August 1st 2005, I am a qualified teacher. I can testify to this because I’ve spent this week busting my arse teaching.

To get the full effect, this message should be read out loud. You will understand what 'tenjewberrymuds' means by the end of the conversation. This has been nominated for the best email of 2005. The following is a telephone exchange between a hotel guest and room-service at a hotel in Asia, which was recorded and published in the FarEast Economic Review: Room Service (RS): "Morrin. Roon sirbees." Guest (G): "Sorry, I thought I dialed room-service." RS: "Rye..Roon sirbees..morrin! Jewish to oddor sunteen??" G: "Uh..yes..I'd like some bacon and eggs." RS: "Ow July den?" G: "What??" RS: "Ow July den?...pryed, boyud, poochd?" G: "Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry, scrambled please." RS: "Ow July dee baykem? Crease?" G: "Crisp will be fine." RS: "Hokay. An Sahn toes?" G: "What?" RS: "An toes. July Sahn toes?" G: "I don't think so."...

Last night’s Sheva Brachot dinner was wonderful. There we were, the gang from ten years ago, sitting and laughing the night away. Dana said she couldn’t believe that nearly all of us were now married parents – it felt as though we’d never changed or aged. One of the husbands and I provided the music. I got my supadupa Yamaha synthesizer down from the attic, reminded myself how it worked and got some good grooves going whilst my friend dazzled all present with his amazing guitar licks. We made our way through rock ‘n’ roll standards (Johnny B Goode, Blue Suede Shoes), R’n’B, pop (a very fetching Eternal Flame ) and Jewish melodies. I also had the chance to play his electric guitar, the first time I’ve picked one up in probably a decade. Man I sounded good! The downside is that my sleep average didn’t get any higher. Thank G-d I’m home tonight and if I make it past 9.30 awake, I will astound myself as to any stamina that I thought would have evaporated about two days ago. Saying that, my...

I read that Law Enforcement Agencies will be forcing people to abandon their homes, whether or not they want to leave. Now, why does that sound familiar?

To say that I'm exhausted is an understatement. I've had an average of four hours sleep for the last three night and if that's not bad enough, I've got another Sheva Brachot to ago to this evening. If I make to the dessert, it will be a bloody miracle. I've also been asked to provide background music. What the unfortunate host does not realise is that I will be playing heavy metal, if only to stay awake. My colleagues in school think that I'm a party animal. They couldn't be more wrong.

It's over. I've made it through the first day. The first three lessons went frighteningly well. Period 3 and I had the Year 7 kids in the palm of my hand. I was proud, arrogant and totally unprepared for what happened after lunch, with Year 10 in Period 4. I was teaching another Year 10 class. I repeated the lesson from period 1 and saw that one of the kids had her head on the desk. I chose to ignore this. Then, another one went down...and another. Damn, they were dropping like flies. So I made the mistake of asking the first if she was feeling alright and did she want to see the nurse? "I'm bored" came the cutting reply and then I heard the monotonous, droning, monosyllabic sound that I'd heard many times before. I was in a boring lesson, except this time, I was the bore. I changed tack and got onto the kinasthetic bit. These kids didn't want to hear any more of me - they wanted to do something. Activity underway and not a head on the desk. I have learned...

I’ve got school starting tomorrow and I’m not ready. Dana’s best friend is getting married this afternoon and she’s Maid Of Honour, so I’ve got all four kids at home. We have the dinner tonight and, if things aren’t complicated enough, tomorrow night, we are hosting a Sheva Brachot meal for the married couple - with 20 guests turning up at 7.30...

This review is more than a year late and here's the reason why: I have always been a fan of comic book movies (and to a lesser degree, the comic books themselves). I remember being taken by my parents to see the first Superman movie, at a showing in the West End. The cinema was huge, but the screen seemed bigger! I remember the titles shooting out of the screen. To a 9 year old kid, it's pretty incredible. Fast forward to 2002. Dana and I went to see the first Spider-Man movie and came out pretty underwhelmed. Toby McGuire's acting was more wooden than usual, in fact, it was probably non-descript. The special effects, or whatever they were, made me wonder at times whether I was watching a 32 bit video game on a very large VDU and the story was at best, perfunctory. All in all, a major major disappointment. I therefore didn't rush out to see Spider-Man 2. I'd been screwed once, why waste more money on this overblown, paper thin franchise? I could not have been more ...

Before you read the following, I’d like you to keep one statistic in mind: The number of American Servicemen who were captured, tortured or killed, trying to free this person's country from Saddam’s clutches, all but fourteen years ago. ______________________________________________________________ Senior Kuwaiti Official: "Katrina is a Wind of Torment and Evil from Allah Sent to This American Empire" To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD97705 In reaction to Hurricane Katrina and the destruction in its wake, a high-ranking Kuwaiti official, Muhammad Yousef Al-Mlaifi, who is director of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Endowment's research center, published an article titled "The Terrorist Katrina is One of the Soldiers of Allah, But Not an Adherent of Al-Qaeda."(1) The article appeared August 31, 2005 in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa. The following are excerpts from his article: "The Terrorist Katrina ...

I found this very funny.

It’s official – I’m walking up the bloody wall. I went into school today for the first “official” day back. As Monday looms, when the kids come in, I am getting more and more anxious. Thank G-d, my Head of Department has offered to write up the first lesson plans for Years 7-10, which means that I only have to work on Year 13’s lesson(s) over the weekend. We were treated to a lot of first day speeches which, though meant to inspire us, only made me feel more apprehensive. They say that a teacher who smiles before Christmas is very foolish and I’m really starting to believe it. Saying that, my greatest ally is Dana, the teacher par excellence . She’s giving me all kinds of ideas to put into my lessons. We have been told that “Monday is crucial” and that if we get it wrong, we’re basically screwed for the rest of the year. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t care. I’ll be glad when I get through next week. You’ll all be thinking about me won’t you. I’m quite looking forward to...