Episode 3 – Hello Class A! - Rabbi Nechemiah Segal

00:01 Speaker 1 Can you hear me?

00:01 Speaker 2 Yes.

00:02 Speaker 1 L’chaim, l’chaim. Wishing you success, Rabbi. Where? L’chaim, really.

00:04 Speaker 2 Here, come.

00:05 Speaker 1 L’chaim.

00:05 Speaker 2 There’s really only a little, though.

00:06 Speaker 1 L’chaim, l’chaim.

00:07 Speaker 2 Something is really—

00:07 Speaker 1 What, why are you holding the bigger one?

00:09 Speaker 2 We needed—needed a lot.

00:10 Speaker 1 I’m a little—

00:23 Speaker 2 Hello, welcome to the Half Hour podcast. I’m really happy about the guest we have with us now, Rabbi Nechemia Segal. Rabbi Segal, we’d be glad if you’d introduce yourself.

00:34 Speaker 1 Okay. I’m the mashpia for the third-year class at Yeshiva Ketana Tomchei Temimim in Or Yehuda. Alongside that, I teach a daily Gemara class to the first-year students in the yeshiva, and I also manage to be a teacher in the eighth grade at the Talmud Torah in Elad.

01:00 Speaker 2 Wow. So first of all, if we’re going to talk about the transition from Talmud Torah to yeshiva, I can’t think of anyone better suited to it than you. I’m very glad to have this opportunity. Let’s put this on the table too: we’re colleagues, we work together in the yeshiva, and that’s a great privilege for me. I get to see what happens day to day, as they say—not just the theories and the talk, but what happens in practice. I’ve also had the privilege of being in your eighth-grade classroom in Elad. So, first of all, what happens in that transition for a student—a child who’s been in Talmud Torah—when he moves on and becomes a teenager in yeshiva? I’m sure there are many implications, but what are the main things that happen in that process? What should we, as teachers, pay attention to and prepare for so we can do the job properly?

01:57 Speaker 1 I think we can point to two things that are most important. There’s a great deal we could talk about, but these are the two main things. For a student in Talmud Torah, even in eighth grade, his time in class is made up either of what you might call “the teacher stands and talks”—the teacher talks and he listens—or of a worksheet he has to fill out. That’s generally how things work most of the time. There’s the teacher talking, and there’s the worksheet. What that means for the boy is that someone is always making sure he has something to do and checking that he really is busy. When the teacher is talking, he wants everyone to listen; the student can’t interrupt. And when the teacher isn’t talking, there’s a worksheet: you have to do it, fill it out, and you don’t go out for recess until you’ve finished it. So he moves from lesson to lesson and day to day with someone always making sure he has something to do—something tangible to do, meaning he can show that he’s actually doing something. And when he gets to yeshiva, suddenly that falls apart. There’s a class; then, “Go into the zal and review it now.” Review what? Where’s the worksheet? There isn’t one. “Here, review the lesson.” He reviews it. You can ask students who go to review after class: at first, they finish reviewing pretty quickly. As far as he’s concerned, after fifteen minutes he’s finished the material. That’s it. But he has to sit in the zal now; there’s a mashgiach here, and he can’t leave. He sits in front of the Gemara and doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do.

03:32 Speaker 2 Right.

03:33 Speaker 1 In other words, that’s one of the enormous differences between cheder and yeshiva, and it’s connected to the maturity now expected of him. What do you mean? You’re a yeshiva bochur now. You sit in the zal with the Gemara, a sefer you know so well, and you move forward with it. Learn more, review, maybe open another sefer. It has to come from you now, from your own initiative—not from someone telling you what to do. That’s one of the most fundamental differences. I’m not talking about when there’s a general exam and you spend the whole day reviewing; that comes later. But right away, on the first day of yeshiva, his Nigleh class ends and he goes in to review. Within fifteen or twenty minutes, he finds himself in a situation he never encountered in eighth grade. That’s the first thing.

04:25 Speaker 2 There’s no review time at all in eighth grade?

04:26 Speaker 1 There is review time in eighth grade—I do it—but usually it’s brief, or it’s right before an exam. And during review time in my class, I won’t give them a minute to talk.

04:37 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

04:37 Speaker 1 Nothing. In my opinion, they’re not yet at an age where you can start doing that. There’s forty minutes or half an hour of review, and I’m standing there. I set up the chavrusas, and right now they just learn. Soon there’ll be a break and they’ll go out to play soccer. Right now, they just learn. That’s the first difference. The second difference I want to present is much better known; everyone talks about it. It’s the dormitory. There are many aspects to the dormitory, but I’m talking about just one: you’re here, and that’s it. Class ends, you have a break, and you go to your room. In your room you meet your friends—the same friends you learn with. You don’t have what you have at home: there’s no father or mother or sisters, no refrigerator, no computer. That’s it; you’re simply here all the time. And there’s a process as that reality sinks in for the child. Suddenly he realizes, “I’m only here. I sleep here, I eat here, and I learn here too. My whole life is inside the yeshiva.” Of course, that’s the point of yeshiva, even if it weren’t Tomchei Temimim, and certainly when it is Tomchei Temimim: to detach, spiritually as well, from material things and from the childhood routines he had at home. But I think those are the two enormous differences, and everything else follows from them. It all starts with those two things.

06:11 Speaker 2 The dormitory in particular interests me. I mean, a dormitory is something you can’t really address anywhere else. It takes time: you come to yeshiva and move in. There isn’t much a teacher can do in eighth grade to prepare students for the dormitory, right? Because it’s such a concrete reality. What are we going to do—run a weeklong exercise in eighth grade where the students don’t go home and stay in the Talmud Torah on mattresses?

06:33 Speaker 1 Right, so I—

06:34 Speaker 2 Set themselves up there.

06:35 Speaker 1 Of course, putting out mattresses and all that would only remind them of a sleepover. It has nothing whatsoever to do with yeshiva. It reminds me of the students who come for a Shabbos in yeshiva as though they’re coming to Shabbos camp: “What are we doing tonight?”

06:49 Speaker 2 What’s the program?

06:50 Speaker 1 And then the whole year becomes camp! But there is something that can be done. I’ve actually been doing it since my first year, when I realized this was probably the issue. Our school day ends at three-thirty. I imagine there are places where it ends at four-thirty or five. There may be two or three chadarim in the country that try to go until seven, which is very special, but in most places, classes end by five at the latest. A child gets home at five or six, and that’s his own time. I spoke with the students about the afternoons, and I also structured their exam review so that they would have to learn at home too. In a sense, I made them learn in the afternoon, for this reason: when a child gets home in the afternoon and, on his own initiative, finds a chavrusa, goes into a shul and starts learning, there’s no teacher overseeing him, nobody standing over him. He simply sits and learns the material, or whatever it may be. In that moment, whether it’s in [unclear][?] or in Shemesh, something brings him into yeshiva life. This is what yeshiva looks like: you go into the zal, pick up a sefer and start learning. That’s what it looks like. Nobody told you to; there’s no worksheet, nothing. You simply sit and learn. There’s no break—this isn’t break time; you go in and you’re in the zal. At first, this is indeed connected to exams. I do it through exam review, but very quickly I stop tying it to exams and encourage it either with prizes or by telling them I’ve heard that people have seen them learning. There are very easy ways to encourage a student, two or three times a week—not necessarily every day, but two or three times a week—

08:52 Speaker 1 to find himself sitting and learning after school hours, even when there’s no exam coming up.

08:59 Speaker 3 But that really connects more to the learning side of things, doesn’t it? Less to the dormitory—to sleeping there, to the social dynamic, which is different from the dynamic at home, with the refrigerator, as you said.

09:08 Speaker 1 Yes.

09:08 Speaker 3 To the matter of—

09:10 Speaker 1 Right, it’s more about—it’s simply the—

09:12 Speaker 3 But the extra time—

09:13 Speaker 1 The free time.

09:13 Speaker 3 Exactly, free time—that’s it.

09:15 Speaker 1 Free time. A dormitory, as I said, has several aspects. The first is that I’m here even in my free time; I’m here even before I go to sleep. When a child leaves home, he can say, “I was already in cheder today. I already learned, I already did what I had to do.” And suddenly he leaves his free time and goes to learn. That’s what yeshiva looks like. You see boys sitting and learning during breaks in yeshiva—during the Likkutei Sichos study period, for example. No one makes them do it. That’s the idea of yeshiva. So, to some extent, you can begin introducing that in eighth grade through afternoon learning.

09:51 Speaker 3 Actually, I’ve seen this where I live, in Kfar Chabad. At Beis Menachem, if you go by during those hours between Mincha and Maariv, you see boys from the various schools and cheders in Kfar Chabad sitting and learning. So apparently this idea has reached here too.

10:08 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes. It exists everywhere. But we need to—how do I put it? It’s one thing for it to exist,

10:14 Speaker 3 and another to emphasize it.

10:15 Speaker 1 And we need to understand that this is how to make the transition go as it should: the child will already know something of yeshiva life before entering yeshiva.

10:26 Speaker 3 Going back to the first point, I now work with boys of that age, in their first year when they arrive at yeshiva. You mentioned learning in yeshivos, how suddenly there are reviews of the material, which is very different from what happens in cheder. What can an eighth-grade teacher or educator do so that a student—a child becoming a teenager and entering yeshiva—can fit into the new yeshiva framework as easily and naturally as possible? Right now I’m focusing mainly on the learning aspect.

11:03 Speaker 1 Okay, so here, of course, I don’t think we should cut back on worksheets in eighth grade. This is the time for a child to be given questions. After a lesson, he needs to learn how to break down the material—or, to put it another way, how to put it into writing—and how to answer questions he hadn’t thought of. There are all kinds of ways to get the mind working, and obviously we shouldn’t abandon that. But there’s a very strong emphasis that eighth grade needs, and I try to be careful about it: a student who comes to class must spend part of every day actually learning. Anyone familiar with eighth grade knows there are lots of ideas from the principal or other coordinators in cheder: the boys can arrange the Purim program, organize things for Chanukah, set up classrooms, and supervise other classes when teachers are absent. They’re mature thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, and you can involve them in many things. You can also take them on outings, have nighttime campfires, come up with all kinds of creative activities, and introduce them to more books and ideas. All of that is fine. But one thing must be clear: an eighth grader cannot come to class and go through the day without having to use his mind and learn. I mean covering material—a substantial amount of learning, day after day. It doesn’t matter what kind of day it is, even if it’s a special day[?] and we’re preparing for something. That’s all fine; you can prepare. But you cannot give up the daily portion of Gemara. The way I put it is: I teach Gemara from ten-thirty to one, for example. Any farbrengen that needs to happen, birthday

12:59 Speaker 1 celebration, idea, or special day[?]—all of that comes after one. We don’t touch that part of the day, the substantial part, so to speak. That’s his food; he has to eat it. If you want to give him other things afterward, gezunterheit. But that time needs to be for Gemara. He should feel that every day he learned a few lines, understood a point, learned something. And of course, if he missed a day of cheder, he missed something. He missed material, and that’s how it needs to be. Think about good, excellent students who come to cheder, or miss a day, and see that the class hasn’t moved ahead; or they attend for a day and make no progress, or don’t learn, or learn something they could almost have done on their own. They learn a Mishnah, a simple Mishnah, and that’s all they learned that day. Without meaning to, we’re teaching them to take learning lightly, as though they don’t really have to learn. Sometimes you sit here and don’t learn, and that isn’t right. He needs to know that we came here to work. Of course, everything should be done in a good spirit and in the right way, but there has to be work here. There has to be effort. The boy needs to feel the satisfaction, as we’d say today, of facing an intellectual challenge and getting through it. There’s an interesting Rashi, an interesting line of reasoning—something. And if the Gemara is easier, then perhaps sometimes you can learn commentaries too. Whatever it takes so that not a day goes by in cheder without something interesting to learn.

14:35 Speaker 4 So you mean covering the material, getting through a certain amount, because you spoke about the quantitative side. The point isn’t just the quantity, but that every day a student should feel—

14:45 Speaker 1 Yes, that they learned, that they covered material.

14:47 Speaker 4 That they covered material.

14:47 Speaker 1 Right, exactly.

14:48 Speaker 4 That affects his connection to Gemara. Later, in yeshiva, it shows in whether a student can enjoy learning and connect with it there too, when there’s more time spent learning and the learning is more independent.

15:05 Speaker 1 Something happens in eighth grade: he comes to understand that Gemara isn’t something you just go through. It isn’t a Mishnah or a set of laws and customs. Gemara is something you have to understand; you have to understand what’s going on. That prepares him, subconsciously or even consciously, so that when he’s told yeshiva means Gemara, and much more of it, he arrives, as they say, with both hands and feet—ready for it. He knows what it’s about. It isn’t a case of arriving and discovering that they learn something unfamiliar here. No. The emphasis on Gemara, and on covering a substantial amount of it in cheder, makes him understand that this is serious. It asks something of him.

15:51 Speaker 4 And apparently something is lacking in this area. I’m not sure that everyone—teachers everywhere, each in their own place—are doing this work as faithfully as they should. But from where I stand now, seeing the students who come into their first year of yeshiva, this really is one of the major difficulties. Suddenly there’s much more material to learn, and they need to show that independence. So these things are very important; they pave the way for an easier transition. Now, yeshiva life has other aspects as well: the world of niggunim in yeshivos, the chassidishkeit of yeshiva, and its jargon—the language of yeshiva. What can an eighth-grade educator contribute in that area?

16:39 Speaker 5 Sometimes, in the first year—and you work with the first year—you can see that some students arriving from eighth grade haven’t really participated in a farbrengen until now. They haven’t participated in a farbrengen. What do I mean? Not long ago we saw eighth-grade classes coming from all over the country for Shabbos in yeshiva. You see them sitting there on Shabbos afternoon while there’s a farbrengen going on. They sit and eat something. I might be speaking, and in the middle they get up and go outside. In the middle of a farbrengen! Someone said to me, “What do you mean, ‘in the middle of a farbrengen’? They’re at a farbrengen every Shabbos in their shul. They sit with their father, eat a little, there’s a niggun, someone speaks, someone shouts, and they leave in the middle or at the end, or...” What is a farbrengen to them? It’s some sort of gathering where you eat something and someone says something[?].

17:31 Speaker 4 Herring and a cracker.

17:32 Speaker 5 The idea of a farbrengen is that you sit together and sing niggunim, seriously, sometimes late into the night. Well, you can’t really go late into the night in eighth grade. You can hold farbrengens in people’s homes—I sometimes do—but I’m talking about in the classroom. You can create a certain seriousness, of course with a good atmosphere, that helps the students begin to understand what a farbrengen looks like. The time for niggunim needs to be very serious. Everyone sings, and that means you don’t talk during the niggunim. The farbrengens can be short—half an hour, forty minutes—that’s no problem. During a niggun, you don’t talk. While the teacher is speaking, you can eat. That’s one thing to insist on. Another thing: at farbrengens, people start bringing Bisli and Bamba. Now the boys show up with Bisli and Bamba and chips, and they don’t understand what this farbrengen is about. It’s nice, of course, but I think you can gently start moving away from that and toward crackers and hummus and things like that—more like food than candy. That also makes the farbrengen a little more serious. Again, the farbrengens needn’t be long. Put an emphasis on the niggunim. In my class, we also learn a niggun once a week, sometimes even a little Yiddish niggun, to bring in some Yiddish. You don’t want a student to arrive at yeshiva and suddenly discover seder niggunim: everyone sits and sings, and that’s it—just sings. How will a boy coming from eighth grade, who has never sat through a serious niggun, handle sitting for forty minutes and doing nothing but singing? He won’t know what to do with it. When a farbrengen is serious, it prepares them for yeshiva in a very special way. That’s one of the things I do.

19:39 Speaker 4 And what about this: ultimately, an eighth-grade teacher doesn’t create the student from scratch. The student has gone through a whole system—sixth grade, fifth grade, fourth grade, and so on. What can a Talmud Torah do as a whole? Actually, I think the point you raised about niggunim is relevant beyond eighth grade. It can start in the lower grades. But generally, what can a Talmud Torah do to prepare its students for yeshiva? Because the transition really is drastic; it’s very different. Maybe elements of yeshiva life can begin earlier. Would you be glad if a student came from sixth or seventh grade with a certain outlook already in place, or does preparation for yeshiva begin in eighth grade? What about before then?

20:28 Speaker 5 First of all, when it comes to Gemara, there’s no question that there needs to be a gradual progression. In schools I know, they start as early as fourth grade, and each grade advances the students in Gemara in a particular way, so that by the time a student reaches eighth grade, he has acquired the Aramaic and understands how Gemara discussions unfold, and so on. Then in eighth grade, you build on everything established until then. That’s clear. As for farbrengens and things like that, of course there are farbrengens and niggunim in fourth grade, even in first grade, but they’re different. A farbrengen in fourth, fifth, sixth, or even seventh grade, I’d say, is about giving them the sense that a farbrengen is fun. It’s like having special treats at home on Shabbos for little children, so they associate Shabbos with something enjoyable. So I don’t think sixth- or seventh-graders need to start bringing hummus and crackers to a farbrengen. They can still have the snacks, and that’s good. They’ll get used to farbrengens being enjoyable, something nice, something beyond the child’s ordinary routine. It’s a special day, and he enjoys it. But in eighth grade, you can start something you couldn’t have started earlier. Holding serious farbrengens in seventh grade would be a bit like force-feeding. The timing wouldn’t be right, in my opinion. It’s nice for a sixth-grader to start saying Rambam, but he can’t necessarily absorb it in that way.

22:17 Speaker 4 I remember when I was a student in yeshiva ketana. I’d arrived in first year after Talmud Torah, and one of the most noticeable changes was everything to do with rules of behavior and discipline. In Talmud Torah, if I didn’t behave properly in class, there were various consequences, certain punishments, and there was “sending you to the principal.” Fine, I think that happens in yeshivas too in some cases. But the whole system, the whole approach to behavior and discipline, was a certain way. Then I arrived at yeshiva, and I remember the moment I suddenly understood that, when it came to discipline, everyone was somewhat on his own. There wasn’t that thing of, “Okay, you misbehaved; fill out this worksheet for me.” Or, “You’re staying after hours.” What does “after hours” mean? I live here. That whole idea no longer existed. Maybe that’s for better and for worse. On the other hand, you also deal with a lot of problems yourself. There’s much less involvement in what happens socially. The mashpi’im try to help and offer advice, but you’re largely on your own. So there are two points here: the rules of behavior, and the fact that you’re on your own—your independence increases. Is that something that also—

23:39 Speaker 5 Yes, there is something to that. I’ll tell you even more: some children come from Talmud Torah having learned to get a little attention by disrupting things. Then they receive some punishment, then it’s hard for them or they feel bad, and then the punishment is waived—or it isn’t—and the cycle repeats. That’s how they’ve operated over time. It’s another way, perhaps not the only way, of getting attention: breaking the rules, seeing how the system responds, and confronting it. It gives them a sense that they matter, that they count, that someone is occupied with them. And of course, there’s no place for that in yeshiva. I once told someone, “In yeshiva, until you do something dramatic, they might not even notice, and they might not warn you beforehand about the dramatic thing.” So a boy might think something is allowed for two or three weeks, and then suddenly they catch him—but by then they’ve caught him doing something really unacceptable, and they expel him. In yeshiva, punishments are often very dramatic: expulsion or a very large fine. Some yeshivas impose very large fines when a boy does something. You might ask, why not respond proportionately? If he does this, take two shekels; if he does that, take seven. There’s no time to deal with that in yeshiva. They’re there to learn. That’s how things are today in yeshivas. I don’t know whether some yeshiva will decide to introduce a graduated scale of punishments and so on. It doesn’t seem to be much of a priority.

25:10 Speaker 6 That’s a question in its own right.

25:11 Speaker 5 In class—

25:12 Speaker 6 That’s a separate subject. Is it right or not? I don’t know.

25:14 Speaker 5 I think it is right, because as a person gets older, the system of punishments diminishes. That’s how it works. There are fewer punishments for small things. You need to understand for yourself what’s expected of you and what’s going on, and generally not do anything foolish.

25:33 Speaker 6 Many of us remember a disproportionate punishment from some short-tempered mashgiach in yeshiva.

25:37 Speaker 5 Right, right.

25:38 Speaker 6 And for some of us, that’s even a somewhat painful subject.

25:41 Speaker 5 Right, and that’s why I think that in eighth grade there’s a way to begin with some kind of approach that helps the student understand that we’re moving on from the stage of copying out chapter one of Pirkei Avos and staying in during recess, and all those things. We need to shed some of that, simply by giving it less attention. I think that when you teach eighth grade, you need to respond less to disruptions in class. Even if there are disruptions—and there are, and there will be, right? Not everyone is a perfect tzaddik—give them less attention. What the students need to see, hear, and feel from you is: “Don’t interrupt me now; I’m in the middle of Tosafos,” or “I’m not available right now to deal with disruptions, because I’m in the middle of Tosafos.” I may deal with the disruption afterward, or with someone who’s bothering another student, but he’ll know that will happen in a little while, because we’re in the middle of something and you can’t stop in the middle. This isn’t specifically about Gemara. It could also be Likkutei Sichos, if that’s what you’re learning, or Chassidus, or halachah. The learning can hold my interest so completely that there’s simply no room for an interruption; you can’t interrupt. Some people will tell you that you can already do this in fifth grade, fourth grade, or—maybe. In eighth grade, you have to do it. As the teacher, I have to prepare the material so that I can teach it with all my strength, in a way that gives disruptions less of a place in my mind.

27:35 Speaker 6 You live it. You live the material.

27:36 Speaker 5 Someone came late? Just sit down; I’ll note it and deal with it afterward. Try to make disruptions, behavior, class rules, and all those things take up less space during the lesson and throughout the day. The children coming into eighth grade look for the classroom decorations. They don’t understand: there are no classroom decorations? Who’s on duty? Where’s the class log? Where’s the— And suddenly they see that here, we simply open the Gemara and start learning. That’s all.

28:08 Speaker 6 Wow. Could you say that the point you’re raising now is really relevant to discipline in general—the educator’s own presence, that quality of leadership that comes through in him, through which he establishes discipline in the classroom? That’s a broader point, isn’t it?

28:26 Speaker 5 Uh—

28:27 Speaker 6 No, in eighth grade it’s most important, because it’s different from classic punishment. Classic punishment means giving a worksheet, keeping someone after class, I don’t know, all sorts of things.

28:34 Speaker 5 I can say something about that. With a young child—we know from Tanya what the difference is with a young child: his emotions are stronger. So when you’re dealing with someone whose emotions are stronger, you say, wait, maybe he isn’t ready to put this aside for the moment; I have to address it now. For him it may be his whole world, because he really is a young child. But with a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old, you can already expect that even if something happened, it can wait. If there’s something here to understand, something intellectual—not even necessarily Torah, but anything involving the mind—it can absolutely be more dominant and stronger than an emotional or social issue. I also want to educate him toward that, because he’s already at an age where he can handle it. The idea of mo’ach shalit al halev, the mind ruling the heart, is a very broad concept, and it begins with things like this. Disruptions and lateness are more technical matters. They’re important on one level, but a lower one, and we’ll deal with them; they can wait. By contrast, putting your whole mind and all your energy into the Gemara right now is the most important thing there is. So there’s room to say that doing this in younger grades is a bit—some people will come and say that isn’t right, that you need to stop the lesson. Someone once told me, “You need to stop the lesson and spend fifteen minutes talking about Ahavas Yisroel.” In eighth grade, perhaps I’d do that at the next farbrengen, or I’d find the time. I’m not going to stop Tosafos now; I’m not going to stop the Gemara. Not

30:19 Speaker 5 because it isn’t important, but because the child needs to know that the Gemara can draw him in and make him forget other things. He has to know that. He also has to see it. If he sees it in the educator and in the rest of the class, he’ll be able to get drawn into it himself.

30:37 Speaker 6 One part—now I’m thinking about this transition from Talmud Torah to yeshivah—one significant part of the transition is the parents, too.

30:44 Speaker 5 That really is interesting. Again, I teach both eighth grade and first- and third-year yeshivah classes. In eighth grade, you’re in touch with parents. There was a time when I would say, why do I need a parent-teacher meeting? The children who are doing fine are doing fine. All right, there’s the point that a father comes to a parent-teacher meeting to show his child that he cares. That’s true, but what do you have to tell him at the meeting? Everything’s fine. And with the children who aren’t doing fine, I’m in touch with their parents that very day. A child gets a forty on a test—am I going to wait for the parent-teacher meeting? I speak to his father that day, and we see what to do about the next test. And if a child disrupts the class a bit, again, you’re in touch with his father all the time. Then comes yeshivah, and suddenly the parents have gone to sleep. It’s not that you meet the parents at school—I don’t meet them either—but you have messages or phone calls. Suddenly, with yeshivah, it’s: I sent my son off to yeshivah, to Tomchei Temimim, there with the Rebbe, and everything will be fine. And that’s of course true and not true. There really are students who immerse themselves in the world of Torah and everything is fine with them, and so on. But there are also students who still need that attention and that contact. I need to know. Suddenly, after a few months, I hear something. When they come out of elementary school, I don’t start eighth grade before I get information about every student: what his situation is, what things are like at home, what difficulties he has. But in yeshivah, suddenly, after half a year of seeing that a boy had some kind of problem, I called his father, and he said, “Yes, he has some kind of problem with—”

32:22 Speaker 5 I said, “But you didn’t tell me he has a problem? I’m his teacher. If I’d known, we would have gained another three or four months of learning.” He said, “Yes, you have to call.” Someone once told me—I heard it, perhaps from one of the most veteran people in the yeshivos in Israel, Rabbi Yosel Butman from Lod, the head mashgiach in Yehud and the mashpia for the third-year class there—that the parents who call benefit. Those parents who call and ask questions benefit. Because ultimately there’s something else here: a teacher has the whole class, a diverse class, and he has to manage it and teach the lesson, and so on. In the end, when the teacher—or the rosh mesivta or mashpia—gets a call from a parent who just wants to know what’s happening, it immediately draws the maggid shiur’s or mashpia’s attention to that student. “Wait, maybe I should pay more attention to him.” Give the mashpia or maggid shiur a few compliments, and then tell him, “Listen, this was hard for him; that was hard for him.” That will naturally prompt the mashpia or maggid shiur to do something. Parents simply need to do that. There’s a way. Well, isn’t that really the educator’s job, in a sense? No, I’m not saying it’s the educator’s job. I’m saying there’s room for the educator to approach the parents and encourage this. Yes. You need to—I’ll tell you, I can’t really speak about myself, because since I teach eighth grade, I naturally sort of keep following my eighth graders. Each time I ask myself: should I do this, shouldn’t I do this, with all the parents? Should I do it in yeshivah gedolah—

34:05 Speaker 5 We need to do this. Parents send their children to a yeshiva gedolah, and suddenly discover that for a month or two, the boy hasn’t learned a word. Today, even yeshivos gedolos have begun sending report cards. They didn’t used to, but they’ve come to understand that there needs to be follow-up. It’s not, G-d forbid, about keeping too tight a grip on him. It’s simply follow-up: consistently checking that the boy is learning and engaged, that nothing is bothering him, that he isn’t struggling or going through some frustration. Things can be resolved so easily. Suddenly you find out that a boy has a problem with a particular food. If someone says something in time, it can be sorted out in a moment, and the boy is relieved of that distress. If he has a problem in the dormitory and speaks up about it, they move him to another room. When a father talks with his son, explains things to him, and is open with him, he can then pick up the phone and talk to the staff. Of course they’ll do something about it. The whole problem is that this communication isn’t happening. So, in my opinion, the mashpia or maggid shiur should simply encourage it. Once, someone called me and we spoke. I said to him, “My friend,” and he said, “May Hashem help him really succeed with the…” I told him, “You should know, if parents in Chabad were like you—if they simply called and talked—we could solve a very large percentage of the problems of students dropping out today. Instead, people let the situation deteriorate, fester and wither, and then say, ‘Oh, where were we?’ Start from the beginning. Staying in touch is one of the most important things.” And that’s apart from the chapter of— I want to tell you that even today, with my third-year class, I’m in touch with some of the parents, and it creates a wonderful atmosphere. Parents want to know what’s happening with their child, and it isn’t as

35:53 Speaker 5 simple as you think. The boy tells his parents one thing, while something else is happening. Once there’s some coordination between the father and the mashpia or maggid shiur, they can guide the boy back to where he needs to be. That’s, of course, in addition to saying his chapter of Tehillim and davening for him. Yes, of course. We need to do that—without davening, nothing will work. Tehillim too, Tehillim for this as well. Rabbi Segal, it’s been a pleasure. We’ve certainly learned a great deal, and I’m sure these words will be helpful to teachers, to eighth-grade classes in particular, and to parents as well. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Wishing you much success.