I've been teaching for decades, of course I know best
Chaya: Why are you ignoring our hard-won advice?
My first day as a teacher was strangely reminiscent of my first day as a student: a quiver of excitement, a shiver of fear, the sweet-strong scent of countless brand-new supplies. A faculty meeting that stretched on forever and yet was far too short, fellow teachers, a maze of hallways between classrooms, two lists of names that meant nothing — and everything.
“We have a nice crowd this year,” someone said to me, approvingly. I glanced up. It was my colleague Mrs. Applebaum, the other seventh-grade mechaneches. She taught Chumash and Yahadus to both seventh-grade classes; I’d be responsible for Navi and Halachah, so I assumed we’d be seeing a lot of each other.
“Call me Chaya,” she told me in a motherly way when we first met. I smiled a bit doubtfully. She was clearly my mother’s age, if not my grandmother’s. I couldn’t really imagine being on first-name terms with her. Just a year post-seminary, I was a lot closer in age to our students than to many of the other staff members. I wondered if that would make things easier or harder.
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