This past week I lost my cool with a student. He said something age appropriate for a middle school boy and pressed a button of mine. I lost my temper and raised my voice at him. The thing that upset me the most was not what he said- which was rude- and not that I raised my voice at him- one could argue that it was a “teachable moment” and sometimes raising one’s voice is called for. The thing that upset me the most was that I felt angry inside. I recall a dear friend who taught me years ago that when a gadol (I can’t remember who she said) was once yelling at his students, a monitor was measuring his heart rate and it stayed completely normal. Meaning, this gadol was “showing” anger at his students and yet he didn’t feel angry inside. His yelling was simply for “chinuch” (teaching/building character) purposes. I felt dejected and frustrated with myself. Why couldn’t I be like that gadol?
And then I started to read a dear friend’s book- Ruchi Koval’s Soul Construction. In this beautiful book she interweaves modern day examples from her life with ancient teachings of mussar (ancient Jewish text about character development). As I read, and thought about how I could “change” my student’s behavior- one thing struck me that kept emerging as a theme in this book about mussar- I couldn’t change my students, I could only possibly, with a lot of internal work, change myself. Gulp. But how could I possibly change myself? That was so challenging. As I was listening to some online classes about our Torah portions over the last few weeks, I saw the connection between these portions and my life. These portions delve into the teshuva (repentance) of Yosef’s brothers. The stories were so human and humbling. We read about the brothers who once felt they had to throw Yosef into a pit in order to protect their family’s legacy, to hearing them cry out to each other:
Bereishit 42:21 “Indeed we are guilty concerning our brother that we felt his anguish when he pleaded with us and we paid no attention to him; that is why this anguish has come upon us”
And then we read about Yehuda’s impassioned plea to Yosef to replace him instead of Binyamin as a slave to Yosef when he once told his brothers:
Bereishit 37: 26: Judah said to his brothers: “What gain will there be if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come let us sell him to the Ishmaelites- but let our hand not be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.”
And so I decided it was the right week to try to push myself to focus entirely on myself and my reactions to my students, as opposed to focusing on my students’ behavior. And I noticed something fascinating- no I didn’t become the perfect teacher overnight avoiding any and all confrontation and discipline in my classrooms (though this would be lovely). But I did notice that I didn’t raise my voice at all with my students and instead remained much more calm and confident when I disciplined them. This in turn caused me to be able to switch over from being a disciplinarian to my preferred state of teaching- enjoying being with my students. I was able to discipline in one moment and then laugh with that same student the next.
While I look back at this week I hope that I don’t forget the lesson that I learned from Ruchi’s book and from my trying to apply the lessons of these Torah portions to our lives: It’s never too late to look inward and try to work on ourselves. We cannot change the world but hopefully we can change ourselves.
