...no it isn't. So what the hell is it?...
...it's a missile.
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I will begin this post by apologizing for the seeming irrelevance of its contents... when I began to write it, this was a very present topic, and one that was occupying the thoughts of everyone in Israel. Sadly, though, amidst all the hubbub, the post was left unfinished, gathering dust in a small electronic drawer in the nebulous e-world, only to be revived by me today. After a bit of arm-twisting, however, on the part of my father, it was decided that you may still find it interesting to read my take on the political situation in Israel, despite the several weeks of peace since the fall of the last rocket. As a consolation prize, I will offer you "two posts for the price of one," so to speak, and conclude with a post-within-a-post about a particularly rewarding tale from my adventures in Israeli education. So, in the meantime, enjoy!
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When one of the Superman films came out in Israeli theatres, the tagline was "look up in the sky -- you never know what you're about to see!" Shortly after, Israel was bombarded with missiles and the tagline was quickly altered to reduce nationwide panic and retain political correctness. The idea behind the Superman saga was to generate excitement and adventurous wonderment, not to send people screaming to their bomb shelters.
Not since 1991 has there been that kind of excitement in Israel. Until now.
The action started on a sunny Thursday afternoon, when I was on my way to a birthday party to pick up a seven-year-old girl I babysit on Thursdays (a good family friend) and take her home. The birthday party was in the Land of Israel Museum in Ramat Aviv. I had just entered the museum grounds when the first siren sounded.
It is unreasonable to expect a mind that has spent 23 of its 26 active years in the United States to associate that sound with falling missiles. Writing off the wailing as that of an ambulance, I walked around, looking for party action and listening for the sounds of children's voices. All around me, I grew increasingly more and more aware of panic and chaos as several parents tried to find a healthy balance between seeking emergency shelter and finding their kids as quickly as possible. Suddenly the penny dropped and I understood what I was hearing. At long last I happened on the museum's bomb shelter. 40 crying children, hardly any parents in sight, some holding pieces of cake in their hands, unable to see or eat them due to faces covered in streaky tears. A crashed cellphone system preventing anyone from being able to contact their parents and vice versa. A girl in my charge who did not stop crying for two and a half hours, despite the early return of her mother and the popcorn/movie/pajama party in lieu of going to sleep. In short: the birthday party from hell.
But all of this was just the tip of the iceberg. The real drama happened the following Sunday, my first day at work since the rockets began to reach Tel Aviv.
The war with Gaza was all anyone could talk about when I arrived at the school Sunday morning -- teachers, students, administrators. We decided to do a school-wide exercise in the event of sirens in Bat Yam. The students had all been instructed as to the protocol by their home teachers, so at the sound of an erroneous school bell (in my case, in the middle of an exam review session), we practiced the entire procedure. Students began by laying down on the floor of their classrooms, hands over their heads, in silence, until told by the vice principal to run down to the school's bomb shelter. I was in a fourth grade class at the time, monitoring them in proper alarm etiquette. After the exercise was over, the students resumed their seats and opened their notebooks.
At that exact moment, a real alarm sounded outside.
I thank every star/god/deity that I can think of that the kids had just done a safety exercise... without it, the school would have been a chaotic, panicked mess. But this way, through all the screaming, the procedure was fresh in their minds and the kids were able to operate, even under such extreme pressure, according to the rules.
After the stage where they lay down in the classrooms with their hands over their heads, I accompanied my class (fourth grade) down to the bomb shelter. Our bomb shelter is very organized, and there are signs on the wall indicating where each class needs to sit. I stood in front of daled 2 (Israeli classes are numbered by "home" class -- the Hebrew letters alef, bet, gimel, daled etc for grade, and then the number of the class), staring at the faces of crying children, sobbing children, shaking children, completely hysterical children -- in some cases, even on-the-verge-of-collapse children -- trying to comfort them. I kept hearing phrases like "my dad is in Beer Sheva today!" and "my grandmother is alone in the apartment, and can't get to the mamad (safe place, bomb shelter) by herself!" Not knowing what comforting words to say, I simply told them that everything would be fine, and I began reading names from the class roster. Suddenly there was a power outage in the shelter.
Any calm or restraint that may have been present up until this point vanished instantly. Kids were screaming, and nobody could see even their hands in front of their faces. While I (as well as, I'm sure, the rest of the teachers and administrative staff who were in the shelter) knew that nothing would or could happen to us down there, there were five hundred hysterical children -- ranging from the extremely hysterical to the moderately insane -- who thought otherwise. I had been halfway through reading out the names of kids and hadn't the faintest idea if the others were around me, if they were sitting or standing, or running or screaming, or indoors or out. I could only hold the small sweaty hands of those nearest to me and put my arms around shaking shoulders, one pair at a time, until the power came back on, five interminable minutes later.
When the threat was finally over, and all five (five!!) consecutive sirens had subsided, when the power came back on and 500 glistening faces were once again illuminated by the intimate, highly romantic fluorescent lights, we made our way solemnly up the stairs, in a winding crocodile of frightened children, back to the classrooms. The teachers stopped by the teacher's lounge on the way to the classrooms, helping themselves to cups full of sugar to distribute into the kids' water bottles in an attempt to fight off shock trauma, and the school principal, vice principal and counselor were running around crazed between classrooms trying to avoid a city-wide cellular collapse by commanding kids all over the building to PLEASE turn off their cell phones and go to the reception desk to call. Parents were running in at every minute, snatching up their kids and hurrying home to hot chocolate and warm blankets, and everywhere students were poking their heads into their siblings' classrooms to make sure nobody was harmed or had fainted.
Meanwhile, in daled 2, I resumed my exam review session.
Very funny.
There was, of course, absolutely no learning to be had. Instead, I tried to corral the nervous energy into group games, acting games (thank you to my performance past for giving me some of these to have under my belt), songs, and lots of jumping up and down. I was losing students to harried parents right and left, as they filed in the door at a very impressive rate, and by the end of the lesson had a total of seven remaining students.
Through the entire ordeal, of course, it was imperative to keep my cool while fighting off the hysteria. The kids needed a calm and collected mother figure, and they got one.
As soon as I walked out of the school grounds at the end of the day, I burst into tears.
I had been so moved by the events of the day, it had been all I could do to keep it in. In my eyes, despite the unprecedented attacks and my lack of experience with a heated political climate, there was very little logical reason to panic. Not only were the rockets that were aerodynamic enough to actually reach the Tel Aviv area subsequently small and dinky and incapable of any very serious damage (as long as everyone was hiding), but Israel's Asimov-esque "Iron Dome," a computerized interceptor designed to spot a missile in midair, take aim, and blow it up before it ever reaches the ground, was put into play at the very start and was able to nip 99% of the threats in the bud. As my dad pointed out, the entire power struggle between Israel and Gaza can be described by the following statistic: a rocket over Israel costs about $80 to make and fire; each Iron Dome blast costs about $50,000.
I was so moved, though, by the earnest fear of five hundred kids that day. Kids who really believed that the world was coming to an end, that anyone who was not within immediate sight was in mortal danger, that it was, of course, their families that would suffer and that every citizen of Israel who was at that moment in the south was batting off rockets with a stick. There is no way for a ten year old to hold onto proportion in a panic situation, especially when surrounded by so many others who are screaming (a very dramatic snowball effect) and when there are no parents in sight. Whatever I told them, "everything's fine," "shh," "you'll see them very soon"... anything I said was lost on them. But I continued as best as I could, and it was only afterwards, as I was out of earshot of the school, that I let my own emotions spill out.
That was not an easy day.
As everyone can see, however (and as was predicted very impressively and very prophetically by my father), the excitement died down very quickly and life rapidly resumed an average level of normalcy. With the exception of a pathetic attempt to cause panic by blowing up a bus in Tel Aviv, everyone settled down, and the state of Israel has now turned to far more important matters -- preparations for the upcoming elections, on January 22nd. I'm sure a further political update will follow that day, during which all schools and jobs are canceled and everyone in Israel over the age of 18 hits the polls.
In other news, my last blog post did not include the biggest and most important change in my life, because at the time it was being kept secret (I wanted to surprise my dad upon his return to Israel) -- now that the cat is out of the bag, however, it is time to introduce you all to C.J., my new roommate! While the name began as an homage to my favorite White House Press Secretary (if you're confused, you are severely behind on the West Wing -- flip it on and watch it, it will be a very good use of the next 45 min of your time), the wake of destruction caused by a rambunctious puppy in my house has led me to redub her, instead of Claudia Jean as on the show, Calamity Jane. But despite the rubble and rapid demise of everything that I own, she is a lovely addition to my small, one-person house and a very adorable companion!
And her favorite toy...
And even though she causes this...
...she is well worth the effort!
And now, since I promised you a post-within-a-post to conclude my story about missiles over Israel on a slightly more optimistic note, I give you the following.
In Which Spot is a Dog
Part of my job description as a newly-inducted educator of Israel includes a package outside of the classroom. Israel is delving ever more deeply into progressive education, and is very intent on providing extra support for students who are falling behind or experiencing difficulties. So in addition to 21 hours a week in the classroom itself, I have four hours a week (usually after school hours) in which I teach "partani" classes -- groups of five students at a time, whom I teach basics in an effort to fill gaps and catch them up to the rest of the class.
This week, in my very last partani class with the fourth graders before the groups switch around next week, most of the group reported having other family commitments, and I ended up with one student in an impromptu private lesson.
This student, O*, is in her fourth year of studying English and is still not familiar with any of the letters. I had been giving her worksheets that had gotten progressively more difficult, from basic letter recognition, to knowing the sounds they make, to matching capital with lowercase, and so on, but each time she would stare at them blankly and then fill them out using a big chart of the ABCs in page one of her textbook, not having any idea which letter was which or what she was actually doing. On this day, I had taken an ambitious step forward (as per the instructions of my pedagogical instructor) and brought in a very short text with basic comprehension questions. When I say very short, I mean the following text:
This is Spot.
Spot is a dog.
Spot the dog is not in the box.
Spot the dog is on the box.
This was accompanied by a lively picture of Spot the dog standing on a box, as well as true/false questions (along the lines of ___ Spot is a cat, asking the students to mark a check or an X on the line).
O stared at the page, and then at me. She looked hopelessly lost and had no idea where to start. She did not yet have the ability to recognize letters and associate them with sounds -- we weren't even close to tackling the problem of comprehension yet. So I did the following.
I wrote the text up on the board, in big letters with big spaces under each line. I then demonstrated what I wanted her to do on the first letter by saying "S -- 'sss' -- like samech in Hebrew." I then wrote a samech underneath. She continued ("P -- 'p' -- like peh in Hebrew" and so forth). (The first instance of "th," btw, I circled and explained to her that she was not able to find on her page because the combination of the two letters made a new sound -- so she then went through and circled the rest of the "th"s herself.)
For the first few lines, she had to look up every single letter and often ask me what the sound was. Slowly, however, she began to remember them and move faster. Finally, she had transcribed the entire text on the board.
Here is what happened. (Disclaimer: this video is, of course, private -- not that any of you would repost it anywhere, but it is important to state that it is for your -- and my -- enjoyment only! Also, most of this is in Hebrew, so will be difficult for you to understand unless you are Semitically inclined -- but watch a bit of it anyway, it is fascinating. And for those of you who can't understand it, I resume my explanation of the procedure after the video.)
Finally, O was ready to read. She began sounding out the Hebrew letters she wrote, one by one, forming words. At the end of each line we stopped and discussed what it was about. When she was confident that she understood the sentence, she wrote the translation in Hebrew next to the English, and moved onto the next line. Again, she began moving faster and looking more and more at the English letters each time until finally she had cracked the entire text.
I stood watching her with tears in my eyes. A half hour before, she did not recognize a single letter in English (except O, which begins her name). Now she was reading. And she was just as excited as I was by the end of the lesson, even moving onto the questions (unprompted by me) and reading them without any Hebrew letters written underneath, marking the line victoriously when she knew the answer, until the bell rang to end the lesson.
It was one of the most rewarding experiences I've had to date. I just wanted to share. :)
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*name omitted for privacy reasons
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