In Which Fluency in English Finally Pays Off

Having recently emerged from another fairly severe bout of Jewish holidays, encompassing this time two separate remembrance days (one Holocaust-specific, the other more general, always a week apart), Israel's independence day, and most recently, Lag Ba'Omer (a day of Kabbalistic celebration, in honor of the life of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai), I am choosing to spend this current moment blogging with my laptop on my knees, some strawberry-jasmine tea, and a particularly succulent brownie. It is most definitely a well-earned respite... and hopefully your approach to reading this post will be as relaxing and satisfying as my approach to writing it.

Being a member of multiple music-related projects, I was of course pressed into service during several of the aforementioned holidays, having performed in services on both Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah) and Remembrance Day (Yom HaZikaron). While it was perhaps not as financially worthwhile for me to do so as it was for the Israeli artists who were asked to perform all over Israel on Independence Day, Yom Ha'Atzma'ut (each artist having traveled to a ready location, performed for half an hour, and moved on, about 6 or 7 times over the course of the night, making at the very least about $200,000 dollars), both events were, for me, very powerful experiences. Having grown up in the states, my visits were almost always limited to summertime and winter breaks, so this is actually one of the first times I have gotten to experience any of these days while in Israel. I'm very glad I've gotten to be a part of that.

One of the more significant Jewish holidays that recently passed, of course, was Passover -- but that one, unlike the others, I did not take part in here, because while Israel was beginning to shut down for the holiday, I took the opportunity to fly home for a visit. That was a great decision. I got to be home for the Passover Seder, which was glorious, but also to see my family and all my friends, most of whom I had not seen since before I left in August. I even had a voice lesson with Caroline, something I had not done since last June, and apart from all the nostalgia and crying on both sides, it was very successful and so much fun. :)

Upon my return to Israel after Passover, I had a day and a half to recover from my flight before my presence was once again requested at a Dominanta event -- this time as a participant in the Holon Festival, in an homage to Shlishiat Gesher HaYarkon, a popular and influential musical trio from Israel's Zionist past. Dominanta was given the honor of performing alongside some of Israel's top artists, both nostalgic figures from Israel's history and rising new musicians in mainstream media. The featured soloist of the evening was Israel Gurion, a spritely and energetic man in his 70s, who has been actively performing for the better part of forty -- even fifty? -- years. The very last number in the concert was his rendition of "When Peace Comes" (sung to the tune of "When the Saints Go Marchin' In"), performed with Dominanta as backup singers. He was dancing and bouncing all over the stage, making everyone smile and applaud raucously. I deem it a great honor to have performed with Israel Gurion as part of the Holon Festival -- and am very geekily excited to announce that backstage before the show he needed to call his wife, and borrowed my cell phone to do it, so I do in fact have his home number saved in my phone, and am resisting every urge to call it and gush my adoration to him over the phone.

At this point you're probably wondering what the title of this blog post has to do with anything that I have mentioned thus far. Well, it doesn't. You're quite right. I have been sneakily tantalizing and have saved the most important news item for last.

Some of you may know parts of this, some of you may not... so for the benefit of those who are now staring at their computer screens in bafflement, wracking their brains for any information I might have given them about this, I will explain from the beginning.

It all started on the DePauw Chamber Choir tour to Louisiana in January 2010. (I know, you weren't expecting that. Bear with me.)

As part of our tour, our sixteen-person choir + two amazing chaperones, Gabriel Crouch and Amanda Hopson, performed at an underprivileged K-12 school in Jackson, Louisiana. This gig was arranged for us by Gabriel's friend Allison, the principal of the school, whose foray into education began when she was assigned to teach French at the school as part of the program Teach for America. Upon her arrival at the school, she discovered that the statistics were appalling -- approximately 50% of the students who entered the high school graduated, and those that did did so at the eighth grade reading level.

After having had an open conversation with the sixth grade class myself, as part of the choir, I can attest to the fact that the lack of education was NOT due to a lack of ambition. After asking the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up, the words "astronaut," "doctor," "lawyer," "famous sports figure," "actress," "veterinarian" and countless others were left hovering in the room, even long after it was vacated.

Allison's reaction during her Teach for America term was similar, and she stayed past her two years to keep teaching. As I mentioned, now she is the principal, and through her passion and her dedication she has completely turned this school upside down, and has almost single-handedly gotten the kids back on their feet.

I was so inspired after our visit to the school that I started to research Teach for America myself, as a possible option for after college. As my then tentative decision to come to Israel became more and more realized, however, the idea of teaching for America became, naturally, less relevant. It was then that my good friend Cora, a graduate of the Teach for America program, told me that TFA is actually part of a worldwide organization called Teach for All, an organization of sixteen participating countries. I looked them up online and discovered that one of those participating countries is Israel.

Over the past few months, I have engaged myself in a long and very harrowing application process, passing many obstacles along the way. The first, which almost deflected me right from the start, was my lack of qualifying exam grades, customary in Israeli high schools -- since I grew up in the United States, I took the SAT and other standardized tests, but was not required to take subject tests (for those of you who know the European system, the Israeli tests, or bagruyot, are similar in style to the International Baccalaureate exams). TFI, or Teach First Israel (known in Israel as the Chotam program), differs from TFA in that it is specifically geared to prepare students for these exams. This means that participants in the program teach only relevant subjects, and only at the middle and high school levels. My request to be considered as an English teacher was, therefore, denied on the grounds that my lack of subject testing and my background in music and French leave me grossly unqualified as an English teacher.

After some interventions, however, mostly on the part of my family's good friend Eitan, a professor in the English department at the Beer Sheva University, it seemed that my fluency in English, my experience both learning and teaching languages, my extensive experience with kids, and my degrees from an American university were enough to override the problems with my candidacy, and I was allowed to apply.

After two separate applications (one extremely lengthy and taxing), a demo lesson, a one-on-one analysis, four different interviews and a group assignment (all of which, incidentally, were timed militarily to the second by a girl in the back of a room with a stopwatch), I am pleased to announce that I have been accepted as a teacher for Israel... for two full years of teaching English! With this program, I get the structure that I have so been missing this year, a social network, job security for the next two years, a full salary, a teaching certification, a grant to continue my masters degree, and above all, the chance to really make a difference. All that's left now is to hook me up with a school.

I'm terrified. But could not be more excited. :)