![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This morning's early morning confusion was that the heat went on, and I can smell it, and it keeps confusing me- at first I thought that maybe there was a fire, or something. I've never been able to smell the heating before, that's for sure. It's mildly disconcerting.
This morning, medieval history was its usual amusing self- plenty of content without us quite realizing it. However, now that we're on to discussing the Jews under Islam, I'm finding it quite interesting to try to integrate what we're learning and reading with the things that I learned in my courses on women in Islamic Writing/Islamic Civilization (two different classes, two Very different teachers).
Afterwards, biblical theology started (for me) with a classmate commenting that she wasn't looking forward to the class, and another classmate asking rhetorically "is anyone?". After that depressing beginning, of course, I had a really inspiring time. Our teachers spent much of the time discussing/debating a spectrum of positions on revelation, and what groups- and how many groups- those positions could be classified into. It sounds dry, but was really fascinating, and one of them, in a tangent, suggested that Solomon Schechter's childhood growing up in a Chabad family and therefore learning Tanya had influenced his notion of Catholic Israel, and therefore the Conservative movement. I'm not entirely sure how he was seeing the Conservative movement as somehow linked to aspects of Chabad ideology, but it was certainly fascinating as a concept.
I taught my K-4 class again. The lesson went better this time- it felt less like I was pulling everyone along, although I'm still trying to get to know what these kids know, want to know, and what they like to do. It doesn't help that most of them are late to class, and we have to be Out of the building at the end of our hour- not just finishing class then. But we got through our lesson on Hanukkah, in which we Did actually discuss the war aspect as well as the miracle of the oil, did a little singing, and talked about the differences between the two songs that I brought. On the spot, I ended up both teaching Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel on how to light the hanukkiah, and also what the stuff on the dreidle is. Still, it worked out alright. As far as dividing the class up for discussion though, it doesn't help that one of my 2 second-graders is thinking much more like my 3rd and 4th grader, and the other is much more in line with my Kindergarten and 1st graders. Well, we'll weather that one as we go, I guess.
Afterwards, I spent some time getting vaguely more respectable white clothes, and actual non-leather shoes for Yom Kippur. The last few years, I've been wearing flip-flops or slipper socks or borrowed shoes, so it was about time that I got something a bit more reasonable. I got some nice walking in along the way, too.
Other than that, I've just been brooding over my Yom Kippur programs. I feel like I didn't spend very much time creating them- but staring at them, there isn't really anything in particular that I really want to change, or add, or elaborate- especially since on Rosh Hashanah, I paid so very little attention to my outlines... I'm just afraid I won't have enough material, although I know that I can pull stuff from the book without a problem...
This morning, medieval history was its usual amusing self- plenty of content without us quite realizing it. However, now that we're on to discussing the Jews under Islam, I'm finding it quite interesting to try to integrate what we're learning and reading with the things that I learned in my courses on women in Islamic Writing/Islamic Civilization (two different classes, two Very different teachers).
Afterwards, biblical theology started (for me) with a classmate commenting that she wasn't looking forward to the class, and another classmate asking rhetorically "is anyone?". After that depressing beginning, of course, I had a really inspiring time. Our teachers spent much of the time discussing/debating a spectrum of positions on revelation, and what groups- and how many groups- those positions could be classified into. It sounds dry, but was really fascinating, and one of them, in a tangent, suggested that Solomon Schechter's childhood growing up in a Chabad family and therefore learning Tanya had influenced his notion of Catholic Israel, and therefore the Conservative movement. I'm not entirely sure how he was seeing the Conservative movement as somehow linked to aspects of Chabad ideology, but it was certainly fascinating as a concept.
I taught my K-4 class again. The lesson went better this time- it felt less like I was pulling everyone along, although I'm still trying to get to know what these kids know, want to know, and what they like to do. It doesn't help that most of them are late to class, and we have to be Out of the building at the end of our hour- not just finishing class then. But we got through our lesson on Hanukkah, in which we Did actually discuss the war aspect as well as the miracle of the oil, did a little singing, and talked about the differences between the two songs that I brought. On the spot, I ended up both teaching Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel on how to light the hanukkiah, and also what the stuff on the dreidle is. Still, it worked out alright. As far as dividing the class up for discussion though, it doesn't help that one of my 2 second-graders is thinking much more like my 3rd and 4th grader, and the other is much more in line with my Kindergarten and 1st graders. Well, we'll weather that one as we go, I guess.
Afterwards, I spent some time getting vaguely more respectable white clothes, and actual non-leather shoes for Yom Kippur. The last few years, I've been wearing flip-flops or slipper socks or borrowed shoes, so it was about time that I got something a bit more reasonable. I got some nice walking in along the way, too.
Other than that, I've just been brooding over my Yom Kippur programs. I feel like I didn't spend very much time creating them- but staring at them, there isn't really anything in particular that I really want to change, or add, or elaborate- especially since on Rosh Hashanah, I paid so very little attention to my outlines... I'm just afraid I won't have enough material, although I know that I can pull stuff from the book without a problem...