News
Check out our latest issue of TELEMtalk from Spring 2007! This issue brings you:
- highlights from TELEM's trip with the American Jewish World Service to Mexico with pictures!
- a profile of Congregation Beth El of Sudbury
- information about the Greater Boston Jewish Coalition for Literacy's 10th anniversary
- more information on how you can get involved!
To download a PDF of this issue of our newsletter, click here. And look for our next issue soon in the late fall!
To see our Winter 2006-2007 issue, click here. For our first issue from Winter 2005, click here.
Teen teacher learns life lessons in class
by Erica Schwartz
The Jewish Advocate
June 15, 2007
I recently wrote a paper for my Literature and Composition III class about my tendency to want everything to be perfect. I gave it the title "The Way I See It" because it focused mainly on my self-image and the origin of my perfectionism. As a student at a competitive all girls school, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well academically. I am very ambitious yet anxious about the future.
My weaknesses have really been tested this year at Etgar L'Noar. As a new volunteer in the fall, I did not know what to expect. I knew that I would be working with a child with special needs but was nervous about how I would handle situations and could not predict what would happen each Sunday. This was my worst nightmare: having no control or a way to predict how each day would unfold. As weeks progressed, however, I realized how nice it was to come to Etgar and just "be." I had no need to predict what class would be like or whether or not my student would remember her Hebrew. All I had to do was be patient, relax, and not take things too seriously. I disocvered that these are the key ingredients to working with kids, especially those with special needs.
I believe that kids are the most honest and uninhibited of human beings. They are taken with emotion when something is sad or happy, they say what they want to and they rarely worry about what other people think of them. My student is most certainly this way. She will sing as loud as she possibly can without caring about what the other kids think of her. She is always smiling, happy, and loving. She is, spiritually, almost always in the moment.
I have come home many times from Etgar wishing that I could be like her. Life has gotten complicated as I have grown older but being a volunteer has slowed me down. My student has helped me to be in the moment with her. She seems to have filled a void for me.
I'm not sure how much I have helped my student, though I have taught her Hebrew, assisted with her art projects, and directed her social interactions. I feel as if this year has been a great success for her, but only she, and her parents, know for sure. I see that she has opened up a lot to me and has become more confident when socializing with other kids. And, while she was learning to open up to me, I was learning to open up to her. We grew together this year. I feel more at ease with unpredictability now. I actually like it a lot. Being a volunteer has done so much for me. I am more comfortable and feel better about myself and I have learned to accept life for what it is. There is no way to describe how grateful I am for being a part of this program.
Erica Schwartz, a junior at the Dana Hall School, was on of 56 teen volunteers this year at Etgar L'Noar, which provides a Jewish education to children with moderate to severe disabilities. Erica participated in Etgar L'Noar through her enrollment at Prozdor at Hebrew College.
Check out what Laura Abrasley, Youth Educator at Temple Israel of Boston, has to say about her teens' Organizing class!
Organizing 101 – How TI teens will change the world!
Laura Abrasley
Walking into the Social Hall on the last night of the winter semester, I must admit I was skeptical that the organizing class would be able to pull it off. They had come to me just a few short weeks prior, asking for an hour of their peers’ time at Monday Night School (MNS) to “take the pulse” of MNS students about issues and concerns. I was happy to move things around for them, but was worried about all the obstacles standing in the way of their success. I feared the short notice would create a difficult, chaotic hour and lead to frustrations for the teen leaders who had been learning how to organize for social change in this class.
The buzz of excited voices as I entered the doors, however, instantly alleviated my annoying and unnecessary adult fears. I encountered 60 teens actively engaged in serious conversations about issues that connected them. Now, of course, any educator is thrilled simply to have their students engaged in an activity. But these teens were more than engaged, they were inspiring.
As I wandered around the room, privy to conversations many adults do not get to hear (unless, of course, you pay really close attention when it’s your turn to drive the carpool), I was moved and amazed at the topics of conversation and the injustice they see and worry about in their lives. Teens concerned about each other, worried about unfair privilege in schools, wanting to have a voice, seeing violence in the streets and in their schools, concerned about what we’re doing to the environment, the materialism of their peers, and on and on and on.
Without fail, almost every teen in the room felt safe enough to speak up. Every teen in the room listened to their peers without judging or comparing. And, many pledged to try to work together with the teen organizing leaders on an issue that concerns everyone. This spring these leaders will, like adult organizers striving to make change in our world, sift through the mountains of concerns from their peers and move the group forward on an issue of community concern. Stay tuned!
Learning through service to othersBy Rich Barlow
Boston Globe
Saturday, July 1, 2006
Summer's arrival means students have brought home the lunch boxes, pencils, and other mementos of the departed academic year. Emily Schuster has another token, her friendship with 4-year-old Leanne Ambros.
The Asian-American tot, her cherubic face beneath a bowl of black hair, affectionately holds Schuster's hand while she recalls, with a toddler's halting bashfulness, their six months reading together. "We read `The Mailbox,' " she says. "We read `The Dinosaurs.' "
Besides enjoying books about prehistoric beasts, Leanne was a big fan of Dr. Seuss. Asked if Schuster was the first person to read so many books with her, Leanne gives a shy nod.
They are sitting in the Lilliputian classroom chairs at the Rev. Dr. Michael E. Haynes Early Education Center in Roxbury, where Schuster and dozens of other teens tutored children in a new program teaching Jewish values through service.
TELEM, sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, wrapped its first year last month after placing 325 Jewish teenagers into service working with children, the elderly, the poor, and the disabled.
For 17-year-old Schuster, it was her first prolonged exposure to the concrete and brick of urban Boston from the suburban perch of Newton, where she lives. Her first visits to the Haynes Center in December found
"I went to Prozdor Hebrew High School" in Newton, one of several feeding institutions for TELEM, "which has classes about social justice. . . . But I never really had the opportunity to connect [community service] to what I learned in classes."
Volunteers to the needy know that for every little girl who falls in love with books, there are inevitable cases of disappointment.
Korman's charge at the Haynes Center was a 5-year-old boy who, unknown to her when she began, was hobbled by slight autism and severe hyperactivity (TELEM and its partners try to screen out children with disabilities).
The slightest distraction snapped his concentration; he might break into a dance or careen in an instant from happiness to withdrawal.
In the end, it was decided that the program was too much for the boy to handle, and Korman, now in college, lost touch with him. Even so, "he was a great little role model," she says. "I think we had a very close bond. . . . He was a very bright kid in his own way."
As for Schuster, schedule permitting, she'll be back at Haynes next year, reading to an adorable munchkin with a hankering for Dr. Seuss.
Making a difference: Jewish youth movement applies Torah's teachings to everyday lifeBy Tenley Woodman
Boston Herald
Monday, October 31, 2005
For some teenagers, community service is just for padding the college application. Middle school and high school students in TELEM: Jewish Youth Making a Difference have a different attitude. The Boston-based movement helps Jewish youths apply lessons learned in temple to life.
"One thing we were taught in our first lesson, is in the Torah everyone had to leave a small amount of food in the corners of their field so anyone could take it," said Dan Matz, 13, who served food at a Cambridge homeless shelter earlier this month.
TELEM, which roughly translated from Hebrew means "groove" or "moving together," requires participants to dedicate 2 to 4 hours each month to learn about hunger and homelessness, mentoring and tutoring, eldercare and special needs and disabilities. They then perform 4 to 8 hours of service in the community.
"There were leaders in the Jewish community who wanted to make community service a right of passage for all Jewish teens in Boston," said Rebecca Sweder, director of TELEM. "For teens who are not so religious, this is another way to connect to the community," she said.
Thus far, students can participate through eight synagogues, Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston and the Prozdor Hebrew High School. Funding for the program is provided by Combined Jewish Philanthropies.
Valerie Gumes, principal of Haynes Early Education Center in Roxbury, welcomes the partnership with TELEM. "You should see the kids. If they don't come, they are annoyed. They establish a relationship with folks very quickly. They look at them as older and they want to be like them and that's OK with me," Gumes said of her students, ages 3 to 7. "We are in the same boat together. They are learning and we're learning, too," she said.
Matz, an eighth-grader at Wilson Middle School, recently celebrated his bar mitzvah and said this project has helped him have a deeper understanding of his faith. Besides, he said, helping others while hanging out with friends is a bonus.
TELEM LaunchSunday, October 23, 2005
5:00-7:30pm
On Sunday, October 23rd scores of students convened at the Greater Boston Food Bank to kick off the carnival themed launch of TELEM: Jewish Youth Making a Difference Together.
The students, all sporting the new TELEM "I'm Making a Difference" t-shirts, represented the ten sites that have partnered with the JCRC this year to make TELEM a reality. To kick off the event Josh Kraft and Barry Shrage provided the students with a few inspirational words about the importance of social justice, community service and Jewish service-learning.
With DJs rocking out in the background the students worked together to create an extremely unique, oversized tzedakah box to symbolize the significant work that the students are doing this year at their different volunteer sites. After the completion of the art project, the students really united to package food for the Food Bank. In production line fashion the launch participants packaged a whopping 1261 pounds of food; showcasing the dedication and success that can come about when working together. Each participant at the launch, beyond a doubt, can honestly say they "made a difference."
