There are the priceless lessons that some of them have taught me without fanfare or noise just simply by glimpsing a crack of a moment where the tough teenage veneer slips aside

T

hey told me I’d learn on the job. And here I thought I would be teaching. The first conundrum of the year.

But as time went on I saw that the British government was onto something when they modified the standard “teaching” aspect of education to “teaching and learning.”

Although the “teaching and learning” as graded by Her Majesty’s Inspectors from the Board of Education refers to the learning the students are doing as they’re being taught I don’t believe they’re the only ones learning as each day progresses.

My students teach me to think to go back to the very basic fundamentals I’d taken as a given challenging my lessons at the core. “But why do we even have to learn algebra in the first place?!”

(I tell them it’s to exercise a part of the brain they’ll need for problem-solving in future life. Which part of the brain exactly they’ll have to ask the biology teacher — when they finish debating why they even have to learn science in the first place.)

They teach me to plan for every eventuality but not to assume anything will ever work according to plan. In fact never to assume anything to think twice before accusing judging commenting. And that I’ll be held accountable for every word I say some day. (But you told us eight months ago that you wouldn’t deduct points for that quiz…)

And then of course there are the priceless lessons that some of them have taught me without fanfare or noise just simply by glimpsing a crack of a moment where the tough teenage veneer slips aside to reveal the greatness that the world will yet see.

Tamar sat next to Ahuva throughout my classes all year. Ahuva of the sweet smiles and learning disabilities who never went anywhere without her aide to help her take notes answer questions and struggle through the lessons as her class moved smoothly through the day.

Tamar was bright and sociable with a tendency toward the noisy side. The seating plan was deliberate: If she was next to Ahuva there’d be no room for disturbance from Tamar’s end. And so they sat Tamar flying through her work sometimes slightly impatient and careless while beside her Ahuva scraped her way through to a pass with endless diligence patience and effort.