As I spent time at Retorno, I got hooked on the people, the realness. On the process going on around me and, soon, inside me,

I f you’ve ever volunteered anywhere you’ll understand exactly what I mean when I say that either you become a part of it or you don’t.

I did.

It started out as a simple barter between me and Rabbi Eitan Eckstein the director of Retorno a Jewish rehab center not far from my home. Every week I’d teach two hours of basketball and in return I’d go on a weekly trail ride. Three hours of my time each week. So simple.

But that very first week I knew I belonged there. By the second I was utterly completely hooked. Hooked on horses hooked on the calm they exude the rocking motion that’s part lullaby and part challenge. Hooked on the intense green of newly sprouting wheat the sweet smell of hay the flutter of birds’ wings as they lift off from the pond the tickle of gentle wind on my face.

As I started to spend more time at Retorno I got hooked on the people on the realness. On the process I saw going on around me and very soon inside me.

Basketball and horseback riding aside I spend a good part of my day freelance writing. When Rabbi Eckstein asked me to edit his book I thought my schedule is flexible I’m always game for another interesting project without a fixed time commitment and since the book was about horseback riding and the 12 steps — two topics which I was tasting and relating to — I easily agreed.

The book and the many fascinating discussions it led to was just the beginning. Every time a project came up in Retorno for which I had some skill I volunteered. I designed brochures I edited videos I spoke to non-Israelis who wanted to find out about enrolling in Retorno’s residential program.

Then I found a more “settled” niche: teaching English for the bagrut (matriculation) exams to the youth in Retorno’s high school. Despite many years’ teaching experience this too was taken on in a volunteer capacity since Israel doesn’t recognize my New York State teacher’s license without additional coursework.

I’ve taught nearly every grade and many a subject but my specialty has always been English. Regardless of the material my basic rule of thumb for teaching is: Take stock of where the students are advance them to the next level.

I was handed a roster. One class of three one class of five. This was going to be a piece of cake.

On my first day teaching I discovered that the cake was actually lemon custard — sticky and tart and sweet — and I was trying to cut neat even slices with a butter knife.

The three 12th-graders I sat down with were nowhere near a 12th-grade reading level. They knew the basics but were light- years away from reading and dissecting the lengthy passages in that deceptively thin practice-exam booklet. After 45 nail-biting minutes I left feeling perplexed and incompetent.

I tiptoed into the principal’s office and humbly asked how I was meant to help kids practice skills they'd never acquired. Gila’s eyes widened a bit. “Didn’t you speak to Bilha?” she asked. No I hadn’t. We’d played phone tag but I hadn’t actually reached her.

Gila smiled. “Call Bilha then come to me if you need any help.”

Bilha explained that the goal with these kids was not to advance their knowledge; it was to advance them in life. By the time a kid lands in Retorno, he’s probably lost a good few years’ worth of education — if he ever managed in a classroom at all. For him, passing the bagrut exams is not a measure of how much material he knows; it’s a tool to gain readmittance into society; it’s a symbol of achievement to breed additional achievement.

I could not, in a few short months, impart the entire curriculum for grades nine through 12. Instead, I would provide them with strategies on how to pass this test, utilizing whatever prior knowledge they had to achieve maximum correct answers. I should teach them to look for “question words” and corresponding answer cues, familiarize them with the days of the week and months of the year, remind them to identify capital letters to find proper nouns, and use number words to answer “how many” and “how much.”

Bilha’s method was an affront to everything I ever learned in teaching school. There was no building of strong foundations, no sticking with one skill set before graduating to the next. Teaching in order to pass a test seemed… wrong. I felt like they were cheating, and I was holding the crib notes. However, being the new kid on the block, I did as I was told.

Happily, the methods she gave me seemed to be working. My biggest challenge was Yair.

Yair is the kind of kid teachers call “a leader,” meaning he always thinks he knows better and tends to pull other kids after him in whatever mischief he is perpetrating — all for a good cause, and all with a wide, confident smile. Yair’s English was superior to the others. However, his patience was not. In fact, his English was so good he’d insist on providing answers before hearing the entire question, and if his answers weren’t correct, he’d proceed to inform me why his answers were better than the ones printed in the teacher’s edition.

Thankfully, Yair was willing to improve his vocabulary while the other two students spent more time on practice tests. As we neared exam day, we all grew hopeful.

Exam day was nerve wracking. I wasn’t allowed in the classroom; a proctor administered the test while I was made to wait outside, davening for their success.

Yair finished first. His voice was full of bravado, but his eyes were filled with concern. He went outside, dragging his feet on the floor. The other two finished at the same time; their expectations were lower, their worry less evident.

The following week, I started with a new class of students in advance of the next semester’s exams. I enjoyed seeing my former students around campus; they never passed me by without giving me a wide smile. One day, all three boys came rushing up to me. Amid a flurry of excitement, they told me that the results were in — and they’d all passed. All three of them. Their faces could not contain their smiles, and my heart could not contain my joy. We congratulated one another until they had to run into their next class.

Yair hung back. “Do you want to know my grade?” he asked.

“Sure,” I answered.

For once, Yair’s smile was not wide. His head was slightly down, one side of his mouth curving upward in what one might almost think was humility. “I got a hundred,” he said. “A hundred.”

Two months later, at 18, Yair graduated Retorno and moved back home. He landed a job as an auto mechanic and shortly thereafter enlisted in a program to complete all of his bagrut exams. His goal is to become a computer engineer.

My new rule of thumb: Expect the unexpected, accept the unconventional, and respect the methods of people half your age with one-third your classroom experience, who know just what these kids need.

to be continued...

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 538)