Ep. 70: Zooming In on with Jewish Day Schools with Aviva Summers
Aviva’s Instagram (this is a private account, but you can follow her to get access)
Transcript
Melissa Milner 0:09
Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. I'm your host Melissa Milner, a teacher who is painfully curious and very easily inspired. This podcast is ever changing. And I hope with each season, you find episodes that speak to you in your work as an educator. This is the fourth season of The Teacher As... and it's exciting to see the growth in how many educators are listening. Episodes are released every other week. If you enjoy The Teacher As..., please rate it on Apple podcasts and leave a review. It helps the podcast reach more educators. Thanks for listening.
Melissa Milner 0:41
In my 30 plus years of teaching, five of those years were at an amazing Jewish Day School, Cohen Hillel Academy. It's now called something else and Aviva will talk about that. But at that school, I had a student Aviva Summers. Like many of my students, I've kept in touch with them through Facebook. And when I saw that Aviva Summers was teaching and not only was she teaching, she was teaching at the same Jewish Day School that she went to, and that her mother taught at, I just felt it might be really cool to kind of do you know Zooming in on Jewish Day Schools. The difference between public and private, zooming in on, you know, what do you learn at a Jewish Day School...that I just think it's a really cool topic. So that's what this is about. Really proud of Aviva and she's clearly doing some great work. In our chatting, I did forget to ask her for her contact information for the listeners. So I do have her contact information if you're interested in getting in touch with her. It will be on the episode 70 Page of theteacheras.com
Aviva Summers 1:48
I'm Aviva Summers I'm an early childhood teacher at Epstein Hillel School in Marblehead, Massachusetts. I am also a furniture historian, soccer podcaster and the social media director for Atlanta Spurs, the Atlanta supporters group of Tottenham Hotspurs.
Melissa Milner 2:05
Atlanta's Spurs?
Aviva Summers 2:09
Atlanta Spurs. So the team in England is called Tottenham Hotspurs. And the nickname is just Spurs. And so I used to live in Atlanta, and I'm still the social media director for the Atlanta Spurs Supporters Group.
Melissa Milner 2:19
Oh...
Aviva Summers 2:20
Like the official group of supporters in Atlanta.
Melissa Milner 2:23
Okay, I know the answer to this, but how did you get into anything related to England?
Aviva Summers 2:30
Oh, England. Oh, because my dad, my dad is from London. And I was actually just there in the summer. My family's there and I support the soccer team that my family supports. And my parents were introduced, because he had a friend from England who sent his kids to the school my mother taught out, which is the school that I taught at the school that you taught at. So, I kind of owe my life to this, like my brother's named after a former head of school at that school who hired my mother. So I kind of owe my life to that school that I work at right now. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that school.
Melissa Milner 3:04
Nice. So we're talking about a Jewish Day School. When you were going through that school? What did you love about it?
Aviva Summers 3:12
Well, of course, Melissa Fleishman.
Melissa Milner 3:13
No, no, no, no, no. No, what about the school compared to if you had gone to a regular public school?
Aviva Summers 3:22
I mean, that's the interesting thing. And for those who don't know, Melissa was my teacher and she was my fifth grade teacher. I don't think you've mentioned that, but you are my fifth grade teacher. You were my drama teacher, my director, extraordinaire. It's interesting. I don't really, I've only ever been in day schools. Even for high school, I went to a Jewish High School. Oh, my. So So really, it was only once I did a practicum for a master's in a school in Jamaica Plain that I kind of realized, wow, this is public school. And not to say that all public schools are the same. But you know, it gave me an inside look into like, truly the differences between private and public. And I think the biggest one was size. I, I flourished in small class sizes with more one on one teaching. And it just seems like that's like, so...such an oxymoron in public school. My eighth grade graduating class is 18 kids.
Melissa Milner 4:17
Yeah.
Aviva Summers 4:18
And if you tell it to public school, they're just like, 18. What, like, just including me 18. So I think size is the biggest one size and just our whole thing about Hillel, back then it was called Cohen Hillel when Melissa was a teacher and I was there, is that it really felt like a family, community. Everyone knew each other. And that's where I grew up, grew up loving. My mother was a teacher. And so I grew up. I know that school like the back of my hand. And now I just, I just love it and I wanted to and it's the thing that a lot of people don't think is that important is private education. There's a stigma that private schools are, everyone has money and everyone is smart and everyone is is nothing, nothing happens. But it couldn't be farther from the truth. There are families with as many problems as anyone else with kids with as many issues learning-wize, socially, family, and the majority of people cannot afford to do it. You know, private schools have to give a lot of money. And teachers make so much less at private schools than their contemporaries I make, with a master's degree, my contemporary in like New York City would be making more than twice what I do.
Melissa Milner 5:30
Yeah.
Aviva Summers 5:31
There's a lack of like respect for, you know, parochial schools, private schools, even if it's no religious affiliation, even if a school is to just cater to having small class sizes, or a philosophy. We work just as hard as public school teachers, and we do it for usually much less money. So my, my job right now is truly a passion job. I'm not in it for the money. The money would be nice, but I know I'm not gonna get it. I know, it's gonna take some time to get it, you know, really administration is where the money is.
Melissa Milner 6:03
Would you consider going to public school?
Aviva Summers 6:08
Here's when here's the thing when I was in my master's degree, it was when you start your master's program, it's assumed off the bat, you're going to do your licensure. I was at BU Wheelock. And so there's classes you take, like ESL and all these other ones. I'm thinking I know I want to go in a day school. I didn't know which one yet, but I was really passionate about day schools. And you don't need a license to work in private schools. When a private school is formed, they decide right then and there. Do they want to require licensure? Once we decide yes or no, they can't discriminate whether you have it or not. So I decided I wanted to focus on the classes that were going to be relevant to me, like reading and math rather than ESL, which is not as pertinent in private school, especially Jewish day schools. Ironically, I have been working with a Russian speaker right now. I just feel like I was so used to being in a small class settings, with especially Jewish day schools with that environment, that culture, that the ethos that at the current time, I don't see myself going to public school, just because I have friends who work in public school, and they're so overworked, their work-life balance right now is not ideal. And I couldn't ask for a better work-life balance at the moment. So we'll see. It might change. You know, like I said, I'm not making that much money, but I'm making enough right now to support myself. And that's all it matters.
Melissa Milner 7:22
I know that when I was teaching there, there were three teachers for the grade level. And you know, one teacher was doing math and science, one teacher was doing Hebrew and...
Aviva Summers 7:33
J.S. Jewish Studies.
Melissa Milner 7:34
Jewish Studies, and then the other teacher was doing Social Studies/Science. So what are you teaching now?
Aviva Summers 7:40
So I it's funny, I was hired. I was hired. I didn't apply to work there. I was working at the time, part time my last second to last semester, at Maimonides, early childhood, and in at the time in Newton, just part time, so I was only taking two classes my last semester. And I called the current head of school Epstein Hillel, Amy Gold, because I was working on a paper and I wanted to pick her brain about private school teacher retention and attrition. And she just said to me, "Aviva, do you want to come work with Laurie Armstrong?" And I was like, now I don't remember if you remember Laurie Armstrong. Laurie Armstrong was my first grade teacher at Hillel and we called her Miss A. She left the year I, the year after I was with her because she had a baby. But she recently had come back. And I wrote my admissions essay to graduate school about Laurie Armstrong. So, I started off teaching there, they needed someone to cover, they had a first grade teacher going on maternity leave. So Laurie was going to cover that was going to be the replacement teach, I was going to be her assistant. The following half of the year we had another person in kindergarten go on maternity leave, so I switched to being the assistantt in kindergarten. The following year, they needed someone to teach kindergarten in Hebrew alongside the current teacher there Beth Tassinari. So, last year I did K and first, Hebrew and Judaics. And this year, because that last year's first grade is so big this year in second grade, they need someone to help there. So right now I'm doing kindergarten and second grade Hebrew and Judaics, which ironically, when my mother was hired was also by chance, her first job was teaching kindergarten, Hebrew and Judaics, after graduating from Wheelock, just like me,
Melissa Milner 9:13
Oh, wow. Talk about besherte... meant to be...
Aviva Summers 9:17
Meant to be there you go love. Love, you're throwing in a little bit of Yiddish there.
Melissa Milner 9:20
Yes, of course.
Aviva Summers 9:22
So yes, I'm doing that. And I'm working with several students in different grades who either are transfer students or who also need help with their Hebrew. So we actually have one child, Nikita, who arrived with his mother from Ukraine last year to the North Shore area. His father's still in Ukraine. And so he had, he has no Hebrew. And right now, I'm not so much worried about him learning the Hebrew as keeping him happy and smiling and making sure this kid is is doing well. So my days are busy. Yeah,
Melissa Milner 9:53
Yeah. So the Hebrew. Do they still have the service every day where you go in and do the whole...thing.
Aviva Summers 10:00
The praying? They've been it's been changing a little bit right now they call it Zhan Kodesh, which is means like holy time, and they're trying to take when I was there Hillel was a Solomon Schechter affiliated school. So which is the conservative Jewish movement. So we had a very certain way of davening of praying with certain, you know, prayer books. It's a bit more pluralistic, more so pluralistic. We have a lot of our families, our Inter, our interfaith families, actually, I think, probably the majority, and don't quote me on that, but. But because of that, we have a lot of families who actually aren't members of synagogues. I don't know if you remember, but back at Hillel in the day, the one requirement of coming to Hillel is that you had to be members of a synagogue.
Melissa Milner 10:46
Yes.
Aviva Summers 10:46
That was to ensure that like, what we're doing what you were teaching your kids in school is being supported or reinforced at home. For many reasons, just the majority of our students aren't. So we have Reform, Reconstructionist, we even have Chabad Orthodox students now, and a separate track for them. And so it's not every day, but it's definitely very present in our, in our schedules.
Melissa Milner 11:14
Yeah. So when you're teaching Hebrew, you're teaching to students that are just acquiring their own English. They're young, young students, right. So are you... You know, when when they're walking in for, for when it's time to learn Hebrew. Are you speaking English at all? Do you do full immersion? Like, what style of teaching do you do for that with lots of visuals and all that kind of thing?
Aviva Summers 11:43
I mean, so, before I was working here, when I was still in Atlanta, I was working for my mother at the school she was the principal over at the time, the director of what is now called Atlanta Jewish Academy, for Greenfield. It was before that was Greenfield Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. And their model was full immersion starting in the four year old classes, they actually went from infancy to eighth grade. Now, they've merged in with the high school now their infancy of 12th grade. But how it would work is starting actually no, sorry, starting in the three year old class, it was full immersion. You had one teacher to speak only Hebrew, one spoke only English. When I worked, I was in a two year old class and because two year old is still learning English, I was the Hebrew speaking teacher, but I only spoke it's like 50 to 75% of the time.
Melissa Milner 12:22
Okay.
Aviva Summers 12:22
And but the fascinating thing is, by the end of the year, these young children are, are comprehending Hebrew, like this, they might, they might not speak it just yet the two worlds but they know if I'd give them a direction here, they know what it means. Because I know they say, before the age of seven, you learn a second language in the same part of your brain as your native language. So when I came into Hillo, and I started working with Beth Tassinari, who herself is actually also an alumni of the school, back from like, way back. She and I both have kind of a very similar style. And I said to her, like, we need to speak more Hebrew. And we speak it a lot more than we did. Because I think it's because these kids will pick it up so we can tell them even now if only the third week of school we can tell them to put their chair bring their chair to the carpet in Hebrew and they'll know what that means.
Melissa Milner 13:08
Yeah, I'm sure they know they know ken and lo, right?
Aviva Summers 13:12
Ken and lo. Of courseken and lo, Abba and Emma. We have a lot of visuals we know we're working on our Hebrew letters and vocab that goes with it.
Melissa Milner 13:19
To the listeners, what is ken and lo mean?
Aviva Summers 13:21
Ken means yes, in Hebrew, lo means no.
Melissa Milner 13:26
So they learn that real fast.
Aviva Summers 13:28
Real fast, they learn the word bathroom in Hebrew very quickly. Like when we I was working in first grade, you couldn't go to the bathroom unless you asked to go in Hebrew during Hebrew class. You know, you put put up these expectations these these bars to hit to meet and kids, these kids will reach them. So but kindergarten goes very slow. It's more about the the letter recognition right now we don't even worry about them speaking. So it's different than the old school is that but we're still you know, same common goal with Hebrew in mind.
Melissa Milner 13:57
So again, for the listeners, if you're not familiar with what Hebrew looks like, it does not look like English.
Aviva Summers 14:05
It also does not the you know, concept of print, for example, Hebrew goes from right to left. So a lot of these kids when they're writing their Hebrew names, on the first day, you know, we have it on their desk next to their English name, either they write it left to right, like starting on the left side of the page, or when they're writing on the right they'll write it from left to right, their name left to right, starting on the right. So it's very you might think it's confusing, but like I said, these kids, they can pick it up just to keep doing it. So and it's wonderful. They love it we do we it's much more interactive than it was when I was at we have a smartboard now we have iPads we have we don't use them all the time. It's only usually for like Final reviews. We play a game or otherwise it's still worksheet and coloring and projects and songs and it's more important for them to as my mother would say, live Hebrew, experience Hebrew, and they'll learn to read later in the later grades, it's not important right now, they just need to experience it.
Melissa Milner 15:03
That sounds just like her. Wow. So when you were learning Hebrew, so did your parents. Did your mom speak it in the home a lot?
Aviva Summers 15:14
No.
Melissa Milner 15:15
Okay. So you were learning it with everybody else in your class. Right?
Aviva Summers 15:20
Yeah. And, and that's not to say that my mother liked the way they taught Hebrew at the school that she was, you know, she mostly teachers, because it changes. Everyone has a different style. In fact, I was looking through materials in our collection of like Hebrew teaching materials, and I found a bunch of stuff my mother made, like, has her name on it and stuff. So I could see how she used to do it. I'm actually teaching in the last two and a half years I've taught including this year, over 30 students whose parents my mother taught, which is just for me, amazing.
Melissa Milner 15:51
Full Circle. Full circle.
Aviva Summers 15:53
L'dor V'dor, which means from generation to generation.
Melissa Milner 15:56
When you were learning Hebrew, you were you were learning English and Hebrew at the same time?
Aviva Summers 16:01
Yeah. Yeah. But the interesting thing what Beth and I do now, because right now we do our English curriculum in Lower School is Fundations, which is like, you know, B, ball, b. You know, that kind of stuff. So what what Beth came up with is we do even though I'm, everyone has their own styles her way she wanted to teach it kind of parallel to how they're learning their English. So we have a chart, so it's bet so for example, the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, it's called bet. So that's bet, ball, b. I remember sitting in like first grade, and just having three letter combinations of the same three letters and just reading different combinations of it over and over and over again in the book. It's not how we do it now. So very different, very different approach now.
Melissa Milner 16:45
A lot of repetition, like over and over
Aviva Summers 16:47
Yeah, but it's also a stylistic difference and a generational difference in teaching, I think.
Melissa Milner 16:52
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. When you went to high school, did you go to Gann?
Aviva Summers 16:59
No. So I got into Gann, and I was gonna go to Gann. My brother went to Gann, but no, we moved to Atlanta. After I finished the eighth grade.
Melissa Milner 17:07
Oh, okay.
Aviva Summers 17:07
So I went to a school called the Weber School, which is like the Gann equivalent in Atlanta, the Jewish High School in Atlanta.
Melissa Milner 17:13
And you go to college, did you feel 100% prepared when you got to college? Did you learn everything you needed to learn even though you had been going through private school not a public school? Like let's like give props to the private school, right?
Aviva Summers 17:26
Yeah. Props to private school. I wasn't ready. I went on a gap year first. I went on a gap year to Israel first. And that experience made me realize had I gone straight to high school, college I wouldn't have been ready just met the maturity wise not in terms of like I'm like was immature but just life just like if something happens not like freaking out nothing's gonna fix it. Because everything wrong that could have happened in Israel did, broke my phone, broke my broke my computer, got lice twice, got the flu. And Mom and Dad weren't around, you have to figure it out. So once I went off to college, I felt ready. And even though I wasalways in a private school, I really enjoyed. I went to Binghamton University, which is in upstate New York, even though it's a public university, when I went it was maybe around, like, I'm not quite sure it's not like giant. But I did try to find my people. And I ended up becoming friends with people who also went to day schools. And it wasn't like a thing we were trying to be cliquey. But we had a lot in common. In a large area, I think, you try to find people who you can you can find commonalities with. And so a lot of the time the Jewish students, we just like, would always have lunch together. Again, this wasn't a cliquey thing, but we just it was something we could we knew right off the bat we had in common. And that's not to say that I didn't have friends who weren't Jewish. I did. And it was actually the first time I had friends of different ethnicities was when I was in college. And that's not because I didn't have the opportunity, private school, but the North Shore as you'll remember, Melissa is very, uh, not in a bad way. It's just very bubbly. It's a Jewish middle class bubble. And it which is ironic, because like I grew up, you have Marblehead and Swampscott on the North Shore of Massachusetts. And then right next to us is Lynn. And Lynn is like a melting pot. And yet everything north of it isn't. But the great thing about Hillel is that because it's private, we have people who come from all over. We have right now we have people from Wakefield and Lynn. And at one point we have people from Brighton and we have people from Salem and Peabody and Beverly. And now with a Hamilton. It is great. I mean, and we also diversity in the students. We have people who are who are we have students who are black, we have students who identify as gender of gender neutral, we have people who, you know, identify as queer, and it's, it's definitely progressed in terms of the social landscape and the gender landscape of the school compared to what we were.
Melissa Milner 20:00
Yeah. So I know it's been 15 years since I taught there. And I just like, I think it must be so different now. Because I mean, 15 years, even at my school where I'm at now, it's, it's so different. So I can't imagine that small little school, like how much, you know, you get a whole new batch of teachers in there, younger teachers with new ideas. And it's just fascinating.
Aviva Summers 20:27
Not a lot of super young teachers. Like when my mother, my mother, when she started working there, it was like this whole generation of, of, of children of Holocaust survivors who went to like day camp in the 60s and 70s. And like, wanted to do this, they all got, they all got hired en masse, and they all built curriculum together. And that is the generation in Jewish education in America. They are the backbone of current Jewish education in America, in my opinion, is is was built on the backs of these teachers in the 1980s and late 70s, who grew up in Jewish American life on the backs of, of immigrant families and Holocaust surviving families. And it's just a different landscape right now, a lot of people my age don't want to go into day schools because there's just no money. I'm kind of a unicorn in that respect.
Melissa Milner 21:15
Yeah.
Aviva Summers 21:16
But despite that, there's still a lot of dedicated teachers who love what they do and stay on. I mean, Tali Blum, Rivka Perry had been there almost 40 years and it's just it's amazing to see this commitment, which is inspiring to me as a young teacher just starting out, but yeah, you should come visit. Our school plays are giant productions. As of last year, we have a new teacher in eighth grade who's also there. I think they got Marblehead, the Marblehead theater children's Little Theater whatever it's called. Playhouse As for this coming year. We're gonna do Fiddler on the Roof. Last year it was Joseph's Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was like a whole production with lights up and like bigger than whatever we did. Though I loved what we did though, to be fair,
Melissa Milner 21:55
We did mini lights and a mini sound system.
Aviva Summers 21:57
See the USA in your Chevrolet. America is asking you to call. I fractured my wrist on opening night.
Melissa Milner 22:06
Oh, I forgot about that.
Melissa Milner 22:08
But I did as Dinah Shore.
Melissa Milner 22:10
Oh my gosh. That was like what the 50s review we did like I Love Lucy.
Aviva Summers 22:15
That was so...and we did Sid Caesar This is Your Life.
Melissa Milner 22:18
And the honeymooners.
Aviva Summers 22:19
Chiquita banana. Gabby Dinkin was Chiquita Banana. I, I have always... and then we did Romeo and Harriet.
Melissa Milner 22:28
Oh, right.
Aviva Summers 22:29
I mean...
Melissa Milner 22:30
Oh, my gosh, I forgot about that.
Aviva Summers 22:30
I was Harriet.
Melissa Milner 22:31
Yeah, you were.
Aviva Summers 22:33
I mean, I have so because of you looks like I have so many memories of just like, I was like, I guess ceremony ceremonially like the president of the drama club even though that wasn't a thing.
Melissa Milner 22:42
That's right. Oh my gosh. Can we talk a little about the Judaic studies when you're with those young young young kids? What are you teaching them?
Aviva Summers 22:54
I mean, again, it's not about the deep, dark, you know, history of Jewish history. We're really working on the tangible things for them. So we're, it's actually it's funny, we're coming up to this next week is the start of our busy season of holidays, where we just have like holidays every single week. So the great thing about you know, the Jewish calendar is we have so many wonderful holidays that are vibrant and have stories that go go with them, and customs that go with them and food that you eat, and things that you sing. And so for young children early education, it's it's it's just a match made in heaven. We have a curriculum, like naturally already there for us, it's just how do we present it to them. So Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish New Year is next week. So we have, you know, we have the apples and honey and we they learn the words for apple and honey and Hebrew, and we talk about the shofar, the ram's horn that's blown, and the symbolism behind that they can practice they hear it every morning. And all these things. We do Shabbat every Friday, we have a Kabbalat Shabbat, which is an all school gathering, where we talk about the week that we just had, and we say the blessing over the bread and the wine and the candles. So we really make it firsthand experience for them, which for young children is the best thing because like I said, it's all about living it because a lot of these kids unlike when I was there, a large majority of these children aren't doing this at home. I grew up having it at home, right after school every night celebrating it and keeping Shabbat. A lot of these kids, whether they come from multi faith families or non observant families, this is the only place they're going to get it. So we have to make it stick and make it matter. So I get to be creative. We do puppets, we we have fun, we sing songs, I bring my guitar out we dance. And then as you get older, we start to have more discussions about things about the stories behind these holidays, the characters, the lessons, the morals, all that. It goes as deep as talking in Upper School about about you know the Jewish exile and the Holocaust and and Jewish Life In America and it just progresses. Right now we're just planting the seeds for them wanting to learn more about their Jewish heritage.
Melissa Milner 25:07
Well, that is amazing. And it's so good to see you.
Aviva Summers 25:12
This was so good thing you Melissa.
Melissa Milner 25:14
For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner and I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.