Chanukah vacation has passed, Purim is far away, and the midyear slump is upon us. This is the time to get into the solid work of life – keeping to a schedule, teaching content, doing homework. All our lofty aspirations from the beginning of the year are taking shape now in the day-to-day reality that is parenting and teaching.
How do we make sure that we keep going in the right direction toward achieving what we hoped for at the beginning of the year? We have all experienced looking back at a decision that turned out poorly and saying, “What was I thinking?” While this column won’t prevent that totally, it may minimize its likelihood. The key to getting to our desired destination when planning a task or activity with our children and students is to ask the question, why?
That “why” will be different for each family or classroom.
Dr. David Pelcovitz once described it as a family bumper sticker. If you ask your kids to create a bumper sticker for your family or classroom, what would they put on it? That bumper sticker is the “why” of what you are doing. The beauty of being a parent or teacher is that your bumper sticker is unique to you, based on your values and needs and your children’s abilities and interests. What you put down will be different than what your neighbors write.
Each family will have a few bumper stickers – values that drive what they include in their daily schedule. I may want my children to devote themselves to a life of Torah, to feel connected to family, and have good middos. Those are lofty goals. I try to put those goals into practice every day through my choices.
Every day, I reinforce bedtime because it helps with my long-term values, the ones on my bumper stickers. Bedtimes are not just there so I can get a break. I set up bedtime routines or classroom norms because there is a goal I am hoping the children will achieve.
Sometimes, my bumper stickers will conflict with each other. It’s Friday night and my whole family is getting together. Which bumper sticker do I put first – staying connected to family or being consistent with bedtime? How do I decide, when I am swayed by my emotions or tempted to do what is easiest?
A good friend taught me a technique, which I also learned in a graduate class on decision making. It works in all areas of life. Her husband was in active military, which meant they moved around a lot. They were able to buy a house in each locale with the help of a spreadsheet. They listed all their priorities for a new home and gave each one a score based on its importance. For instance, proximity to a shul was a 5, move-in condition was a 3, and a jacuzzi was a 1. When comparing houses, they gave each house a score. Once they totaled the scores, they could easily see which house was better for them. Since they were ranking the priorities, the decision reflected what they genuinely wanted. It ensured that a fleeting moment of impulse wasn’t driving their decision.
This works in parenting and in the classroom. If, this month, staying connected to family is a 5, but teaching consistency is a 3, we go to the Friday night event. If my kids were just sick, or I am setting up a schedule, then that will become a higher priority.
Reminding ourselves of our goals and their priorities lets us parent and teach with chochma, intelligence. Each child is different. Some children need more leeway, while others need more boundaries to get to the same destination. Keeping our goals at the forefront of our minds ensures that we make choices based on what will work, not based on what is convenient.
Sometimes we feel torn because our long-term goals contradict our short-term goals. I need to get to work in 15 minutes and I want to teach my child to dress herself. Long-term, independence is important, but I need to prioritize my short-term urgencies (keeping my job). I can have my daughter practice tying her shoes at night or wake up early the next day to allow for it. Having my goals clear in my mind lets me problem-solve and recognize when I am compromising in the moment so I can plan better for the next day.
At other times, the long-term goal is more important than the short-term one. As a teacher, I could mark up a demoralized student’s paper with a lot of corrections, or I can ignore glaring errors and focus on the positives because I have a long-term goal I care about more. As a parent, I may want my child to get good grades, but I’m going to sacrifice his grades so he can learn resiliency and self-advocacy skills through seeking help from the teacher independently.
We also can’t achieve our goals in a vacuum. We need to clue our students and children in on our plans. Imagine: You are given five darts and a cork board with no lines on it. Your goal is to hit the target, but you are only told where the target is after you start throwing the darts. That’s what teachers tend to do every day. We start teaching and only later tell our students what they need to do to be successful. Practically, if our students or children don’t know what we are trying to achieve with them, they won’t know what to pay attention to, know when they get there, or self-correct when they make mistakes.
Setting goals at home has a bit more flexibility than in school. At home, we can have broad outlines for our parenting, and not every moment needs a plan. That would be a tad too intense for anybody. In school, we can’t afford not to plan. In his book, Visible Learning, John Hattie describes his research demonstrating that having learning goals has a large effect on student achievement – meaning students can do a lot more when we and they know what they are supposed to be doing. Every lesson needs to have a purpose, and our students need to know what that purpose is so that they can judge whether they are moving closer to the goal.
Having a learning goal is important whether you are teaching a unit on the Civil War or perek gimmel of Shoftim. What are your objectives for the unit? What are the objectives for each assignment? What is my goal for today’s lesson? What is my primary goal, and are there any secondary goals? When you define those, there is a sense of a mission in a classroom. You can explain to parents and students why you are making the choices you are. When a child struggles or needs enrichment, you will know when you can be flexible and how to change. It will be clear what you can add to spice up the unit and make it more relevant. Of course, your students can make a diorama of a Civil War battle, but if your goal is that they connect personally to the concept of overcoming struggle, you will ask them, instead, to write a poem from the perspective of a soldier.
If we remember that our goal for our preschool students is to develop fine motor skills and creativity, the students will create the parsha project, not the morahs, even if another teacher posts her projects on Pinterest. If we want middle school students to learn to work with others, we will assign group projects, even though it’s quieter and easier to have them work alone.
Dr. Weisbord once told me an inspiring story about a teacher of hers in Yavne Seminary in Cleveland. The students were complaining about the meforshim they were learning in seminary. With no mitzva of Talmud Torah for women, why did they need to know all this if they would only be moros in second grade? The teacher explained her rationale: A second-grade morah who understands the concepts in a deeper way teaches differently and gives over the learning with more meaning and feeling even to second graders.
This seminary teacher could explain clearly why they were working hard. Through her clear answer, the young women were motivated to keep putting in the effort. They learned how vital it was to have depth and understanding of Yiddishkeit and to transmit that to the next generation from the earliest ages. The answer was not “to get into seminary” or because “that is what is done.”
What happens when a teacher doesn’t have such clarity of purpose? She may tell the girls that, really, it is more important to know how to make lokshen kugel while quizzing them on a Rabbeinu Bechaye about the details of the Menorah in the Mishkan. Without goals, she can’t figure out what to teach and loses the opportunity to help her students appreciate how meaningful Torah is, give depth to their Yiddishkeit, or prepare her students to be teachers of the next generation. So much cynicism and discontent can be avoided simply by having a clear awareness of why her students are there and the ability to communicate that to them.
Hopefully, way back in Elul and Tishrei, we started thinking about our big goals – our bumper stickers – based on who we and our children truly are. If we haven’t, it’s never too late to start. Now, as we are busy learning and doing, we need to keep those goals front and center, review them, and make sure our children and students know about them, too. When we encounter challenges, we can use out goals as a steady guide to making choices. We can let our children know what they will be able to do because of all the demanding work we are asking of them, so they see that they are moving somewhere purposefully. By keeping our goals in mind every day, our days will not just be busy, they will be productive, and we will know that when we look back at the year, we will be proud of what we have accomplished.
With thanks to Shaindl Stein, Bia Klein, Rami Rosenzweig, Ilana Milevsky, Chaya Singer, and Keren Perles for contributing ideas and examples for this article.
