Episode 4 - Personal Excellence - Rabbi Yonasan Ish Bait

00:13 Speaker 1 Hello, hello, and greetings, dear listeners. Hello, Rabbi Yonatan, Rabbi Yonatan Ish Beit. How are you?

00:20 Speaker 2 Hello, baruch Hashem, baruch Hashem. Happy to be here.

00:24 Speaker 1 Wow. First of all, we know each other from the training program for shluchim in education. Rabbi Ish Beit is a lecturer there, so to me, you’re my lecturer from the course. A much-loved lecturer, I have to say.

00:36 Speaker 2 That’s wonderful to hear.

00:36 Speaker 1 And it really was just recently. We’re not talking about some distant past. We studied together very recently and enjoyed it immensely. I’m speaking for myself, and I’m sure all my friends would say the same. So thank you very much.

00:50 Speaker 2 My pleasure, truly.

00:51 Speaker 1 But for anyone listening who doesn’t know you yet, Rabbi Yonatan, please introduce yourself.

00:59 Speaker 2 Okay. I’ve been a teacher for about fifteen years, a shliach in education, and I do it with all my heart. Over the past year, I’ve been taking something I’d gathered over quite a few years. Originally, I gathered it for myself: tools, experience, all kinds of things I’d written down. And I’ve been trying to pass them on to teachers in various ways. The network’s program for new teachers is one of them, and I also do it through teacher programs. I work with the Ministry of Education’s Gefen program.

01:32 Speaker 1 Wait, I’m curious: which grades did you mainly teach? I mean, for those—

01:37 Speaker 2 Which ages?

01:38 Speaker 1 Which ages, exactly? Sorry.

01:39 Speaker 2 I think I’ve taught a range of ages. Actually, for most of those years I was the second-grade teacher at the Chabad Talmud Torah in Holon—about nine years in a row. That was the last position I held continuously. Before that, I moved around, like many new teachers. I also taught seventh and eighth grade, and the ages in between.

02:02 Speaker 1 Wow. So today you’re bringing together all the experience you’ve gained over those years and turning it into courses, lectures, and mentoring programs.

02:10 Speaker 2 Yes. Honestly, this is something I’d felt strongly about for years. And baruch Hashem, with my mashpia’s guidance, it’s happening. I really felt I had something to offer and shouldn’t keep it to myself.

02:20 Speaker 1 Amazing.

02:20 Speaker 2 There are many teachers whose path I can make shorter. These are things it took me years to discover and refine, and I only talk about things I’ve tried and that worked for me. And I have to say, they’re simple things. I don’t believe in complicated approaches. For some teachers, these things are obvious; they already do them on their own. But there are things you learn over time, and the more I can shorten the path for a teacher and a student, the more that’s the real reward and the real goal.

02:50 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s truly drawing water and giving others to drink—after drawing on all that experience yourself.

02:55 Speaker 2 Drawing water and giving others to drink, and still drawing—

02:57 Speaker 1 And still drawing.

02:58 Speaker 2 Still learning from everyone. Yes, we’re all learning all the time.

03:01 Speaker 1 Wow. Actually, I remember some of the assignments from when we studied together. You designed assignments that really gave us room to do something, to create something that led to new ideas. I have examples in mind; I’m not—

03:15 Speaker 2 Between us, that’s the right way to learn. I mean, putting things into practice, with each person bringing their own style.

03:23 Speaker 1 Amazing. But today—you started mentioning this earlier—we’re going to talk about one of the important projects among all the wonderful work you do. It’s a distinctive idea, and it isn’t just theoretical. There’s the theory and an understanding of what’s behind it, but also a great deal of practical guidance and tools for teachers throughout the country and around the world—for everyone listening to us, really. So we’d love to hear the main points of the program.

03:53 Speaker 2 Actually, I’d like to introduce the subject first, and then get into the details.

03:57 Speaker 1 Of course.

03:57 Speaker 2 What I want to focus on today is this: What can a classroom teacher—an actual homeroom teacher, or even a subject teacher teaching a whole class—do when they encounter a student who stands out because they’ve fallen behind, sometimes by a lot and sometimes by less, and they want to help? The teacher recognizes that the student needs help and asks, “How can I help this student when I have a whole class and a set curriculum, and this student is sometimes very far behind? What do I do?” I’ve dealt with these situations myself. We all do; I think there are gaps in every class. And if there’s time, I’d also like to touch on the students who are ahead, not only those who struggle and are behind. Those students sometimes get bored, and there’s more you can bring out of them. You can make use of their free time and abilities to cover more than the class material. But I’d start with the students who struggle.

04:59 Speaker 3 Wow. So, in other words—

05:00 Speaker 2 The ones with gaps.

05:00 Speaker 3 We’re talking about those students, and this is very common. I won’t call it a problem; let’s call it a challenge.

05:08 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

05:08 Speaker 3 Teachers come into a classroom and find a portion of the students—in recent years, you could even say a significant portion—who either struggle compared with the average, or the opposite: baruch Hashem, they have strong abilities and find themselves “bored” during the—

05:28 Speaker 2 And sometimes they disrupt the class.

05:29 Speaker 3 Yes, as a result of—

05:31 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

05:31 Speaker 3 So, both ends of the spectrum. Wow, this really speaks to me. I’m interested and curious to hear more. So what—

05:39 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

05:39 Speaker 3 What solution do you propose?

05:41 Speaker 2 I’d like to tell you where it began—how I came to this subject. Just to give the full picture, the things I’m talking about are things I actually do. For ten years now, I’ve been running a particular program in more or less the same form. It has developed and improved over the years, but its basic structure is much the same. This past year, I also had the privilege of leading a pilot beyond the classes I taught myself. I worked with a state religious school in the north that was looking for this kind of program. Through incredible hashgachah pratis—and how we found each other is another story—I worked there with two grade levels and the whole staff, a large team from several parallel classes, and we tried to put the program into practice. For me, it was an amazing experience to share it and see how it worked for other people. And baruch Hashem, just recently we had a wrap-up Zoom meeting with all the teachers. I asked everyone to tell stories: how it went, what was difficult, and what worked well. Some of what they shared was simply heartwarming. So what I’m saying is backed up by real experience in the classroom, and I’ll try to draw out some concrete things you can do—specific, practical steps. So how did it all begin? I had a student; I think this happened right at the start of my time as a homeroom teacher. I realized very quickly that, as they say, this was something I was meant to work on. It was one of the major challenges that year. Already in the first recess, he slapped another student or got into a fight. In class, he disrupted the lesson, didn’t cooperate, didn’t study, and wouldn’t work in any workbook. He was simply very challenging. I dug a little deeper to understand what, who—

07:27 Speaker 2 … It seems to me that, as far as the staff is concerned, he’s a student who has either been diagnosed with attention and concentration difficulties, or hasn’t been diagnosed but that’s what they think. And his parents have a lot of complaints about the staff: that they didn’t do things the parents felt they should have done, and didn’t try hard enough before sending them on to various outside professionals. In short, it was a bit of a tangle. So I took him on and tried to think about what to do. Now, this lovely student was getting specialist support, both within the Talmud Torah and privately outside it, but even after receiving help for a while, he still had major gaps. I tried to understand what was going on. And really, his story is the story of many children. From my perspective, those support hours, even when they’re good, often aren’t enough. First of all, there simply aren’t enough of them. He gets, say, two hours a week, but closing the gap takes much more than that. Sometimes I ask an educator, “With this program, with what this child is getting from us, how long will it take to bring him up to the level of the class? How long until he catches up?” And he tells me, “Hand on heart, it won’t really close the gap, but it’s what we can provide.” But what we can provide isn’t enough of an answer. We have to look at the child and what he’s actually getting. He’s the central figure here; he’s the one we care about.

08:51 Speaker 4 You could say, then, that the support mainly addresses the attention the child needs. After all, in class he isn’t achieving much, and he isn’t experiencing success. So the one-on-one time gives him some of the attention he needs and helps him make a little progress, but not enough progress to close the gap with the class.

09:11 Speaker 2 No, I mean, the progress is focused on learning. Let’s say we’re dealing with learning, apart from any emotional support a child might receive, which is wonderful. But even on the emotional side, as long as we haven’t solved the problem itself, those things are like bandages. We need to help him. His main problem is that he’s behind, he knows it, and he feels different and inferior. That’s the main thing. If we solve that, emotional support has its place, but if we don’t, we haven’t accomplished anything. And I think that even when we’re talking about extra academic help, even with specialist teachers, it still isn’t always enough. So what do we do in a case like that? That was the situation here. It isn’t always the problem: if the gap is small and can be closed, excellent. But often that isn’t the case. The extra help is excellent, and I’m not dismissing it, but it isn’t enough. I looked for a way to help him, and gradually—of course, after consulting the people who taught him and people with more expertise than I have—I pinpointed exactly what his difficulty was. He had a classic difficulty with reading, for example. And even when I say “a difficulty with reading,” you have to understand exactly what aspect of reading is holding him back. We’re talking about a child in a higher grade. What exactly was the difficulty? Once we identified it, I contacted a publisher of remedial-teaching workbooks. Working closely with everyone who taught him, I found a workbook for him that was particularly suited to independent work in class. I told him, “Listen, in certain subjects you’ll stay with us, with some adjustments,” so as not to separate him from the class. “But in some subjects, where we think it would be better for you to work on something else—reading, in this case—you’ll

10:52 Speaker 2 work through your own workbook, progressing through it while the class does its work, okay? And I’ll let you know when it’s time to join the class and when it isn’t.” There were subjects where we could bring him into the lesson, and others where it was better not to start on that material, but to let him make progress in his own work. And that student, boruch Hashem, made tremendous progress. I have to tell you the end of the story before I get into the details of how and what we did, because that’s our goal. Many years later, I had the privilege of getting a truly heartwarming message from him. I don’t know exactly how many years had passed, but a lot—more than seven or eight years since I’d taught him. I’d already forgotten about the whole story. One day a relative came up to me and said, “You know, someone mentioned you.” He teaches somewhere, in a Chabad yeshiva, a regular yeshiva, and he told me, “Listen, I met a bochur who said he’d had one teacher who was the best teacher he’d ever had. That’s how he remembers it. He said your name.” Then I remembered the whole process we’d gone through, and I thought, wow, how wonderful! How wonderful for him that he feels someone was there for him. And here he is, learning in a yeshiva—I think a yeshiva gedolah, a regular Chabad yeshiva. That isn’t something to take for granted. Children like these can very easily end up on the streets.

12:03 Speaker 4 Wow, amazing. But what did you do? I was trying to understand that as you told the story.

12:06 Speaker 2 Right, so…

12:07 Speaker 4 What was the key? I mean, I’m amazed. It’s always moving to hear about successes, especially major successes like the ones in this story. So my big question—and I’m sure our listeners are asking the same thing—is: What did Rabbi Yonatan Ish Beit do to make something like this happen?

12:23 Speaker 2 Well, I’ll gladly try to explain what I think is the right thing to do. First of all, as I said—and perhaps I’ll make this more precise so it’s practical—I recommend not giving up on the hours the child spends in class. The obvious question a teacher immediately asks is, “But how can I teach a whole class this Gemara or this subject, and teach him too, when he’s at a completely different level?” So the first thing is to identify his problem. If we break it down into stages, identify the problem first. Really, my main message is to make use of the time he’s in class for his benefit, okay? Don’t give up on all those hours he spends in class. That’s most of his time.

13:04 Speaker 4 Yes.

13:04 Speaker 2 And that’s a resource we mustn’t give up on.

13:06 Speaker 4 In other words, don’t say, “Okay, he isn’t succeeding in class, so we’ll give up on that and let him—”

13:09 Speaker 2 And wait for the one-on-one hours.

13:10 Speaker 4 The one-on-one hours.

13:11 Speaker 2 For the support hours, for help in the afternoon. No.

13:14 Speaker 4 Making use of resources.

13:15 Speaker 2 Making use of this resource in particular.

13:17 Speaker 4 The classroom in particular.

13:19 Speaker 2 Yes. That’s the main message I’d like anyone listening to take away from this, and then to think about how to do it: How can I use all those hours he spends in class for his benefit?

13:28 Speaker 4 First, decide. Decide that I’m going to make use of

13:30 Speaker 2 Yes.

13:30 Speaker 4 the hours

13:30 Speaker 2 Yes.

13:30 Speaker 4 the child spends in class.

13:31 Speaker 2 So here, first of all, if the teacher has the knowledge to pinpoint exactly what the problem is, excellent. If not, seek advice—either from the people already working with the child, who may have more expertise in the area where he needs help, or from someone outside—and identify where his main difficulties lie. There may be several. Look at the main subjects, the basic skills, especially language; it could also be math. Sometimes a child is experiencing failure in math, and we want to help him succeed. What matters to me isn’t only that he knows how to solve math problems and so on; the emotional side matters to me too. I would also look at behavioral or social issues if he has difficulties there. Look at the child as a whole, identify the specific areas where he needs help, and then try to build a personal plan for him. As I said, you can use workbooks. I strongly recommend workbooks designed for independent work. Some workbooks are suitable for that and some aren’t, okay? Some require more active involvement from the teacher, while others, once the child understands the idea, have plenty of practice and repeated exercises built around a particular skill. Some workbooks even have little activities that let the student check for himself whether he got the answer right. So look for workbooks suited to independent work that address his precise need. I want to emphasize something here: there are many books that develop reading and reading comprehension by combining lots of skills. That isn’t what we want in this case.

15:08 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

15:09 Speaker 2 We want workbooks that focus on a particular subskill. There are many of these in remedial education. For example, to make it clearer: if I’ve identified that a child has a problem with reading fluency, but he has already learned the correct vowel markings, the consonants and vowels, and just needs more practice, there are workbooks that encourage work on fluency in interesting ways. Not just “Read aloud to an adult so they can hear you,” which is also worthwhile, but activities that really develop fluency. There are workbooks that work on accuracy, and even within accuracy there are subtopics. So it’s a matter of finding something that really fits and building him a path of individual progress in the classroom, with guidance and encouragement, and doing as much as possible to help him move forward.

15:54 Speaker 4 So, if I’m summing this up for myself—

15:56 Speaker 2 …

15:56 Speaker 4 Yes, mainly the points you’re raising here. In other words, the first step is to identify the difficulty, and in the second step you’re suggesting the use of learning aids. In this case, you gave the example of workbooks that zero in on the particular point where I noticed—

16:13 Speaker 2 Right.

16:13 Speaker 4 —that there’s a difficulty.

16:14 Speaker 2 Right, right.

16:15 Speaker 4 But there’s a challenge in actually finding those workbooks. I don’t know—I mean, I’m sure there are collections of resources, but...

16:20 Speaker 2 Yes, here I’d say—

16:21 Speaker 4 And knowing how to match the workbook to the child’s particular need.

16:25 Speaker 2 Here I’d suggest that anyone who doesn’t have that knowledge readily available simply shouldn’t wait. Reach out to professionals who can help you narrow it down. After all, we’re talking about a particular child with a particular difficulty.

16:34 Speaker 4 Yes.

16:35 Speaker 2 So get help if you need it.

16:36 Speaker 4 Yes, but a workbook won’t always provide the answer either. There are many children whose challenge also involves their sense of capability—whether they feel capable at all. In other words, there’s something more emotional going on, and if I give him a workbook, he still won’t be in a place where he wants to use it during the lesson.

16:54 Speaker 2 That’s actually a good question, and the answer is surprising. You wouldn’t believe what happens when you identify a child’s real difficulty and give him a workbook suited to where he is—what you might call “I am with him in distress.” Very often the difficulty you mentioned, the lack of motivation, comes from giving him the regular workbook. “Come on, we’ll make it easier for you. We’ll help you. Make an effort; just do part of it.” But that’s not where he is. He’s at a different level. And when he feels that it doesn’t fit, he starts throwing up a smokescreen: behavior problems, disruptions, “I didn’t understand,” “I don’t feel like it,” and so on. That’s all beside the point. What do I mean? When a child gets exactly the help he needs—and I’ve seen this with many children—he’s happy. You could say that the main engine of a child’s motivation is simply his desire to succeed. Every one of us has an enormous desire to succeed. You just have to give him the right response. Of course, you can also use certificates. We do that: certificates, prizes, praise from his peers, telling the class about the progress he’s made, with his permission, praising him—all of that. And you should do it. But that isn’t a substitute, and it isn’t the main engine; it’s external. The main engine of motivation is the child himself. He wants to succeed if you give him precisely what he needs. It’s surprising—I remember so many stories of mothers suddenly coming in and saying, “I don’t know what you did with him, but instead of eating dinner, he sits down to study. Until now, he hated his homework. He didn’t want to go near his books. Suddenly, instead of dinner, he wants to work. In the evening he just keeps working. ‘I’m not going to sleep.’ He’s working in the workbook you gave him. What happened?” Or a child tells you he gets up early in the morning—really early—so he can

18:34 Speaker 2 work in the workbook or on his own learning plan. It doesn’t have to be a workbook; it could be something else. So that’s the main source of motivation. That said, something that, in my experience, can get in the way a little—and we need to pay attention to it—is creating a good classroom atmosphere that makes room for differences, including children who struggle. We want a child who has difficulty reading not to be embarrassed to read aloud in class, mistakes and all, and for no one to laugh at him.

19:07 Speaker 4 That’s what I was about to ask, too: how does the class respond to something like that? They see a child with an adapted workbook while the teacher is explaining a passage of Gemara, or any other subject, and they see him off on his own, doing his own work. There’s an effect here, too. I don’t know—based on your experience, couldn’t that effect be negative? That he—

19:26 Speaker 2 It could be negative, it could be negative, and it’s important to address it properly. So that’s an excellent point. First, you can try to prevent the problem. And if it does happen, you absolutely have to stop the lesson. When someone makes an insulting comment or something like that—it will happen at some point. If you can prevent it, that’s best. But if it happens, stop everything and have a discussion. And I say these things sincerely: if you believe in them, that comes across to the students, too. Every one of us has difficulties. Every one of us. Nobody is perfect. Each of us has areas where we’re strong and things we’re weak at. There is no one in the class who is somehow different in that respect. No one. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the only One who is perfect. We need to respect each person where he is, and the expectation is that each person will progress from his starting point to a much better place. That’s it. That’s what we measure and what we encourage. That’s where we want to be. This principle has to be very, very clear in the classroom. When you talk about it, the students understand. They’re not foolish. When they see that the teacher really means it and truly believes it, they go along with it. We need to reach a point where it isn’t embarrassing to acknowledge a difficulty, where a student can say, “Yes, I’m using a lower-level workbook in a certain area because I need help here and I want to improve. So what? So what? It’s fine.” Also, his plan could include—and this is another point I hadn’t really intended to get into, but since I’ve brought it up—areas where he’s strong. If he’s good at something, then within his plan

20:59 Speaker 2 you can add something that encourages him and highlights that strength.

21:06 Speaker 5 So that he experiences success in—

21:07 Speaker 2 Yes. One more thing—so that was my first point. To sum up what I’ve said so far, it’s important to create an atmosphere that makes room for progress, acknowledges weaknesses without embarrassment, and lets students work happily and comfortably from where they are, without having to hide it. That said—and here I’d bring in the outstanding students as well—I want to share an insight that sank in over the years. I think it’s amazing. Many years ago, while studying for my degree, I took statistics. For anyone interested, statistics is the field of collecting data and drawing conclusions from it, mainly for research. I remember our lecturer saying, “Listen, one day I went into a zoo and saw a crocodile, and I asked myself—and I’m asking you, too—is the crocodile greener or longer?” A strange question. From there, he went into the question of how you can compare two different dimensions, color and length, and arrived at a mathematical concept called a standard score. We obviously won’t get into what a standard score is, but the idea behind it can be applied to education, and it’s amazing. It turns out that when I want to compare two different things, I can do it properly, fairly. How? I simply have to work in two stages. The first stage is to compare each thing against its own measure, to give each one a score relative to others like it. For example, I can check how green the crocodile is compared with the average greenness of crocodiles—compared with their average color—and give it a score relative to the average in that area. And I can do the same with its length. Then, after I’ve compared each one against its own measure, I can compare

23:04 Speaker 2 Take that beyond the classroom into different subjects. Even if someone doesn’t quite understand what we’re talking about right now, I’ll explain how it works in education, and I think things will become clearer. In a classroom, there’s a process of comparison. A student who struggles feels inferior. A student who does well in his studies, who gets a 95 or 100, feels superior. Now, I always like to ask the students: Say we have a student who got 60 on a test, worked hard and studied, and reached 80. And we have another student who got 90, worked hard and improved, and reached 95. Who do you think deserves more recognition? Tell me, what do you think?

23:45 Speaker 5 The one who worked hard.

23:46 Speaker 2 Okay.

23:46 Speaker 5 I mean, I don’t know if that would be the students’ answer, but presumably, the one who worked hard.

23:53 Speaker 2 That’s what they say, yes. Students readily understand that the one who went up to 80, even though his grade is lower than the one who got 95, deserves more recognition from us, because relative to where he started—

24:02 Speaker 5 They recognize that.

24:03 Speaker 2 —he made more progress; he put in more effort. And the same applies in the classroom. How does this work in practice? In the program I teach, we created four stages, okay? A sort of four-stage plan. Any student in the class who wants to join is welcome. Whether he’s a strong student or one who struggles, everyone is welcome. But for each one, within his own stages—

24:32 Speaker 5 By the way, what do you call the program?

24:34 Speaker 2 The Personal Excellence Project.

24:35 Speaker 5 The Personal Excellence Project. So, everyone listening, that’s its name: the Personal Excellence Project.

24:40 Speaker 2 But each person has his own project. I mean, do with that what you will.

24:43 Speaker 5 Each person has his own version of excellence.

24:44 Speaker 2 Right, right, right. So we took a kind of ladder diagram and suggested that each child choose goals for himself—yearly goals—and then divide them into four stages on the ladder. But the goals are very individual, tailored to each child. One child chose a certain number of chapters of Tanya to memorize, and then we divided them among the stages. Another chose a certain number of reading exercises, reading charts and booklets. Another chose the Rebbe’s sichos and a workbook that I found for him, that we found together. Each child chose what he needed and wanted to make progress in. Some combined two or three areas, and so on. We divided it into stages, into amounts to complete—something very clear. Now, if we go back to the first issue, social comparison and encouraging a student who struggles, what happens here? A particular student completes two stages of the project. He receives a certificate and is recognized in the class as someone who has completed two stages. He’s already at stage two, stage three.

25:47 Speaker 5 What does each stage consist of? I didn’t understand.

25:49 Speaker 2 Specific goals. Say, a certain number of—

25:51 Speaker 5 By four stages, do you mean different goals—four goals—or is it within—

25:54 Speaker 2 It’s essentially a yearly goal—

25:56 Speaker 5 Uh-huh.

25:56 Speaker 2 Or a goal for the whole project, but we divide it up. Say he wants to learn five chapters of Tanya. So for the first goal, the first stage on the ladder, we give him half a chapter, to get him started easily. At the second stage it’s a whole chapter, and at the third stage it’s two chapters, and so on. Now, a student who has made progress in reading, say, and completed two stages of his personal program is ranked high in the class when we talk about where everyone stands in the project. A student who has put in only a little effort, even if he’s studying things beyond the class level, is still at stage one. Come on, get moving. Suddenly, the first student finds himself part of that same conversation, alongside the children he used to feel so far behind. He was embarrassed to talk about learning in front of them; suddenly he talks about learning, about where he stands. He feels like an equal among equals. It’s the fairest comparison there is. Not that I’m trying to create comparisons, but they already exist. And this gives the children so much joy and satisfaction. Suddenly they feel like equals among equals. It’s tremendous.

27:05 Speaker 5 In other words, you’re drawing on the social competition that exists anyway, as you say—

27:09 Speaker 2 Yes, without even setting it up. The truth is—

27:10 Speaker 5 Social—

27:11 Speaker 2 I don’t want to encourage competition. I don’t like competitions.

27:13 Speaker 5 Yes, but it happens—

27:14 Speaker 2 But each child can also evaluate himself relative to where he started, okay? I see it as encouragement—really as encouragement. It doesn’t have to be competition.

27:23 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm. And now, back to the first point we discussed. Suppose an educational shliach wants to take this Personal Excellence Project we’re discussing and implement it with students who face the challenge we talked about. You also mentioned that it’s relevant to outstanding students, with abilities above—

27:48 Speaker 2 Right, right.

27:48 Speaker 5 —the class average, who also need a more personalized approach. So, back to the starting point: the advice is to identify— Actually, you say it. I want to hear it from you again.

28:00 Speaker 2 Wonderful. I’ll lay out the steps and also give a summary. With so many points and so much discussion—

28:06 Speaker 5 Yes, that’s important.

28:06 Speaker 2 We are teachers here, after all, so—

28:08 Speaker 5 Yes.

28:09 Speaker 2 There’ll be a summary.

28:09 Speaker 5 We’re teachers, and we want the [unclear], too.

28:13 Speaker 2 So here goes. First, identify the exact problem. Don’t provide general remedial help; identify the exact problem. Then find a separate solution that’s a perfect fit for the child’s difficulty, and build him a path for progress that brings all the different elements together. Don’t give up the lessons he’s already receiving or the professional help, but add the time he has in class and strongly encourage him to use it. Don’t give up. Don’t have children sitting in class like potted plants. A child isn’t a potted plant. He has time; Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave him time in our classroom, and it is our duty—a real duty, as well as a privilege—to use every moment he has in class for his benefit.

28:55 Speaker 5 That’s a major insight. To identify those moments in class that seem to be going to waste.

29:01 Speaker 2 Right, right.

29:02 Speaker 5 They’re not being used. Identify those moments and make the most of them for the child, using the tools you spoke about.

29:09 Speaker 2 I have to say, too, that this approach is good for the child; there’s no question about that. But I want to offer the teacher something as well. It changes the teacher’s life, too. Suddenly, that child stops disrupting the class during that time. He stops being frustrated, along with everything that comes with it. Suddenly he lights up when he comes to class, and the whole picture looks different. You can work with children who have very, very significant difficulties. In the end, the teacher will be working with them one way or another, so it’s worth choosing this way. Parents—I'm saying this to motivate teachers—parents simply don’t know how to thank you. “At last, someone noticed our child. Someone stepped up and really helped him the way he needed.” But I do have to emphasize two points that I’ve tried to bring into the podcast. One is to make use of the child’s time. Pay attention to that, as we’ve said. And the second is to create a classroom atmosphere that allows this to happen. Don’t focus only on the child; make sure his surroundings are accepting and supportive, that the other children respect him, so that he feels comfortable making progress.

30:21 Speaker 5 A comfortable climate.

30:23 Speaker 2 A very comfortable climate. An encouraging climate.

30:25 Speaker 5 That’s the official term for it.

30:27 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

30:28 Speaker 5 Let me go back for a moment. That point you made about the student seeing his teacher approach him with a program tailored personally to him, saying, “Listen, I got this booklet especially for you. It will address what you need.” Perhaps he even explains how he sees it, what his plan is.

30:46 Speaker 2 Actually, I have one more little insight to contribute here. The Rebbe teaches us not to give things away for free. That’s surprising. Today the attitude is, give away as much as you can—go for it. And this also answers another question that came up earlier: Why would the child even want it? So I say, don’t give these plans away for free. Don’t give them away for free. Call the child over and—what I usually suggest is, if there’s some kind of classroom currency, or even achievement vouchers, something like that, offer to let him buy the plan. It’s as if we’re saying, “We’re here to help you, but you also need to invest something of your own.” You could even set up a particular behavior challenge.

31:26 Speaker 5 But what if, in the end, he doesn’t buy it?

31:28 Speaker 2 So that’s the thing.

31:29 Speaker 5 Tell him he has to.

31:30 Speaker 2 No, no, no, absolutely not. It’s surprising how much children, when they see a real plan, when they see in front of them—

31:34 Speaker 5 Then they’ll want it.

31:35 Speaker 2 —a real teacher who genuinely wants to help them, they’ll pay for it. I have to tell you, I was sitting with a group of teachers at a school where I provide guidance, and we were working through the plan. At a certain point we got to how much the children would pay for it. I insisted that the children pay, but I was going back and forth with the teachers about the price of the plan. Okay, so after quite a while of working out exactly how many school vouchers it should cost—there was some sort of school program, and I wanted them to use those—someone asked me, “Wait, wait, hold on. Who’s paying whom? Are we paying the student to learn, or is he paying us? I’m hearing something strange from you.” I said, “The student buys the plan from you.” Suddenly everyone burst out laughing. And, not to my surprise, a week or two later one of the teachers emailed me and said, “Listen, I have a student who, until now, hadn’t collected these vouchers at all. I had to make a special behavior challenge for him just to get him interested in them. He was so discouraged about himself that he didn’t collect the classroom vouchers, the cards I usually handed out. But when he heard about the plan, he lit up and said, ‘I want to start. I don’t have any cards, so give it to me for free.’ I told him, ‘No. This is the price. Start working.’” And he started earning more and more. She set a price for him—there were two options, and she chose the higher one—and she told me he changed his whole behavior to earn more and more cards so he could buy the plan. Of course, he bought it and really put it into practice.

33:08 Speaker 6 In other words, you’re seeing the results on the ground. Amazing.

33:13 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

33:13 Speaker 6 I keep coming back to this point, because I feel it’s a common mistake, one I’ve made many times too. A lot of shluchim think that when you want to motivate a child, you tell him, “Come on, start learning.” So there’s a tendency to think that a farbrengen will do the job, or an evening barbecue, or even just a one-on-one talk where you take him aside and say, “Listen, you need to improve.” Maybe you bring in, “The Rebbe wants you to improve,” or something like that. But often we don’t notice that, wait, you need all of it. You need the farbrengen and the personal conversation, but simply coming to the child with a structured plan is already so much. He sees, “Wait, my teacher, my educator, cares about me so much that he’s brought me a booklet. He’s explaining how it will help me. He’s brought me a structured plan.” And that brings us to the last point you mentioned: he’s willing to pay for it. He says—

34:11 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

34:12 Speaker 6 It really touches him. It’s a wonderful thing that we need to pay attention to. We need to pay attention to it: that I come with a good plan and I come—

34:18 Speaker 2 It isn’t enough to tell him what goal we want him to reach. You have to give him a way to get there. He’s struggling.

34:22 Speaker 6 And that path itself is a lot. That’s already maybe even ninety percent. The farbrengen is the ten percent, the smile is—I don’t know.

34:27 Speaker 2 Right.

34:28 Speaker 6 But it’s a lot. It’s a high percentage of what leads the child to decide, “Here, I’m making a change.”

34:32 Speaker 2 Right.

34:33 Speaker 6 “And now I’m improving.” The very fact that you show him, “I care about you, and I’m doing—”

34:35 Speaker 2 He also needs to feel that this plan—

34:37 Speaker 6 —is tailored to him, that it’s good for him.

34:38 Speaker 2 That it can actually lead him to success. It doesn’t have to be complete success, but it’s going to help him succeed. If he feels it’s only a small gesture, like we said at the beginning—the system can give him those two hours a week, but he feels that’s not it. He’s still very disconnected from the class. He doesn’t cooperate, he disrupts, he says, “I don’t feel like it. Now I do. That’s it.” Yes, yes, absolutely.

34:59 Speaker 6 Amazing.

34:59 Speaker 2 So one of the truly moving stories—it’s hard to say “one of,” you know, because every child is a whole world. Every student’s success really warms your heart. But one of the most moving things I can remember happened with a student two years ago. By the way, I want to say that I’m telling this story with his permission and his parents’ permission. I won’t give names or details that would identify him, but they even told me that sharing the story is a kind of shlichus, to help other children with a problem—not even necessarily the same problem, because what I’m about to tell you is an unusual case. But to help other children wherever they are—that’s exactly the point. They felt it was a shlichus. They told me, “Tell the story so that someone else will be persuaded to do the things you do.” So I’m really telling it on their behalf. A student came to me—a lovely, intelligent, communicative child, really full of potential. But there was one thing: he didn’t speak a single word in class. Selective mutism, for those who know what that is. For anyone who doesn’t, selective mutism means that at home he might speak fluently, but in a particular setting—in this case, the educational setting—not a word comes out of his mouth. Nothing. As though he can’t speak. He uses hand gestures. In his case, he wasn’t even shy.

36:12 Speaker 6 What about socially, when he was with other children?

36:15 Speaker 2 In lessons, socially, anywhere. From the moment he entered the gate of the educational institution, whether it was preschool or Talmud Torah, not a word came out of his mouth.

36:23 Speaker 6 But that can happen at a family event too. In other words, it’s not only... It can happen at any social event.

36:27 Speaker 2 Well, selective mutism varies from one child or person to another. It’s a kind of difficulty that stems from anxiety in particular settings. We won’t get into why it happens specifically in certain settings, but in some settings there’s no speech at all, while in others he may speak fluently. In other words, he has no difficulty speaking, no problem with his vocal cords, and not even necessarily a problem with his general self-confidence. The fact is that he speaks elsewhere. Yes, it’s a recognized problem, and sometimes it’s not simple to treat. It really calls for professional intervention and all that. Now, they told me about this student, “Listen, he hasn’t spoken for three years.” I met him in second grade, which means that in kindergarten, first grade, and the beginning of second grade, he hadn’t opened his mouth at all. Now, this was a child from a good home, with supportive parents and everything, and not someone who had been through any significant trauma that we knew of. And of course, he was being supported by highly qualified professionals. There was no neglect here or anything like that. I think at first the problem had even been present at home, and that part was resolved. But at school, which was the bigger challenge because it involved being around other people, it hadn’t worked. Despite all the intervention, and despite his receiving all the treatment and professional help, it hadn’t helped. Now, in my class, this project was for first and second grade. At a certain point, around right after Chanukah, we’d start the project, and every student...

37:56 Speaker 6 Again, by “the project,” we mean the personal excellence project.

37:58 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes, yes. Every student—

38:00 Speaker 6 The one we were talking about.

38:01 Speaker 2 Yes. We sit down and try to find, together with the student, what goals he can set for himself for the year. It isn’t mandatory, right? It’s optional. But little by little, everyone joins of their own free will.

38:09 Speaker 6 So you sat down with him?

38:10 Speaker 2 Yes. With each of the students, I look together with him for the areas where he can, where he wants to set himself goals for the year and so on.

38:18 Speaker 6 Yes, but with that student who didn’t speak, you sat with him and he…

38:21 Speaker 2 We—he wrote.

38:22 Speaker 6 Oh.

38:22 Speaker 2 He could communicate. That’s the amazing thing—

38:24 Speaker 6 Oh, so he did write, and he made signs.

38:25 Speaker 2 He answered your questions. It was unbelievable. He answered with hand signals. He was extremely communicative, just not verbally.

38:31 Speaker 6 Did he laugh, for instance?

38:33 Speaker 2 Laugh, not exactly. I couldn’t get even one smile out of him.

38:36 Speaker 6 Oh, wow.

38:36 Speaker 2 Throughout that whole period, he was in emotional distress.

38:39 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

38:40 Speaker 2 He didn’t laugh, but he functioned. He learned, answered questions on tests, got 100. In other words, he was with you, but also not with you. Clearly he was suffering. Suffering terribly. So I sat with him, and by then we’d known each other for some time and could have an open conversation. I said, “Listen”—let’s call him Eliyahu—“Dear Eliyahu, I think it’s clear to both of us, and you’re an intelligent child, that your main goal right now is to succeed in speaking.” Now, I happen to have a background in psychology. I’d studied it, and I knew he could do it. It was a difficult path—if only we adults would take on challenges like that in our own areas—but he could do it. It depended on him. I suggested he make speaking in public his ultimate goal for the year. We jokingly called it “chattering like an eighty-year-old lady who swallowed a radio.” That was this child’s ultimate goal. That’s what we wrote in his plan, and we broke it down into very practical steps, a kind of behavior shaping that started with the smallest things. We worked it all out together in writing; he didn’t say a word to me. At first. At first he didn’t say a word to me. Little by little, as he progressed, the ice broke. We set really small goals. I think at first it was—

40:00 Speaker 6 To say good morning.

40:01 Speaker 2 I think the first goal was simply to speak to me outside the Talmud Torah. Okay? To one adult, outside the Talmud Torah, with his parents there supporting him. And that’s how we went, step by step, in tiny increments, but all within a plan we’d written in advance, more or less, with adjustments, of course.

40:21 Speaker 6 Did it have dates, by the way? I mean, did it say—

40:23 Speaker 2 No, it had stages, not dates, because this project is built around telling the child—

40:28 Speaker 6 Oh.

40:28 Speaker 2 “Progress as fast as you can. We’re not holding you back. As far as I’m concerned, you can do the whole thing in one day.” Okay? That’s one of the principles here, too.

40:34 Speaker 6 But you approached him and said, “Here, let’s do the first step.”

40:37 Speaker 2 Yes, of course.

40:37 Speaker 6 “Let’s do the second step.”

40:39 Speaker 2 And actively pushed him to move forward.

40:40 Speaker 6 Oh.

40:41 Speaker 2 Encouraged him, enticed him with prizes. “Get to this point; the prize is already waiting. Come on, let’s go.” And with a lot of support from his classmates, a lot of work, and close contact with his parents—there was a lot involved. But I’ll jump straight to the end rather than go through it all. Today he speaks fluently. Within three months he was speaking with everyone in the educational settings, and we achieved far more than we’d expected.

41:09 Speaker 6 Wow.

41:09 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you something funny I did. Every year our Talmud Torah holds a big end-of-year celebration in a hall, with several hundred people—five hundred in the audience. Each teacher gets ten minutes to present his class in some way: a play, a song, a video. Every year I choose a video. We make something with the class and film it all. With young children, second graders, it’s easier than bringing them onstage and asking them to speak. That year I broke my own rule and said, “We’re going onstage and we’re going to speak. We’ll choose a few students from my class to tell everyone about things we’ve done in class.” The whole point was to challenge him to be one of the speakers. And to my delight, he took up the challenge. It was out in the open, not something I did behind his back. I told him, “Come on, you have an opportunity to break through your limits completely, to break through the wall of galus. That’s what will bring Moshiach.” And he agreed to go onstage as one of the class representatives, stand with a microphone, and speak in front of everyone.

42:08 Speaker 6 Wow.

42:08 Speaker 2 And… yes, I really remember that as a high point—

42:12 Speaker 6 Amazing.

42:13 Speaker 2 …amazing. He was standing in front of five hundred people—it’s on video—and speaking fluently. No one in the audience who didn’t know him had any idea what he’d been through. Wow.

42:21 Speaker 6 My friends, this isn’t theory. It isn’t something written in some book. These are things that happen every day.

42:27 Speaker 2 But I have to say in the same breath that I give him the credit. I mean, with the plan, the message I’m trying to convey is—

42:32 Speaker 6 Yes.

42:32 Speaker 2 …that when you build a plan, all you’re doing is providing the framework. The work is the child’s; the achievements are the child’s. It’s very individual. He went through an amazing process. I take my hat off to him. I hope I’ll make the progress I need to make in my own areas the way he raced ahead through such difficult things. And he did it. The plan gave him a framework. After all, our role is to give the child a framework—

42:55 Speaker 6 There you have it, the message for shluchim in education. What’s the message?

42:58 Speaker 2 We need to build a plan for the child, a kind of foundation for success. He’ll run with it if we just give him the foundation, the tools, and the path. That’s our job.

43:10 Speaker 6 To pave the road for him.

43:11 Speaker 2 Exactly.

43:12 Speaker 6 Rabbi Yonatan Ish-Bayit. Wow, we’ve had an hour here—a half hour plus, plus, plus—of pure enjoyment, and we’ve learned so much. Thank you very much.

43:24 Speaker 2 What a pleasure. I just want to say: friends, do it. Do it, do it, do it. And if you want to make a Jew happy, send me a message somehow to tell me you did it. It would give me so much nachas.

43:35 Speaker 6 Do it, and with Hashem’s help, you’ll succeed. Thank you very much.

43:38 Speaker 2 You’re very welcome. It was truly a pleasure.