The moment after Morah Miriam announced she was assigning a project, she regretted it. Before she could even finish the “ect” sound, the questions exploded into the classroom air like a collection of disorganized fireworks.
“Is it a group project?” “Can we choose our partners?” “When is it due?” “Is it graded?” “Can I make a cartoon?” “Can I write a song?” “Do we have to do it?” “Can I work alone?” “Can we triple up?” Of course Miriam had all the answers, but that wouldn’t stop her students from complaining about her answers, mishearing her answers and complaining about things she didn’t even say, and interrupting her and each other. And of course, after everyone was tired from all the questions, at least one student would wake up and say, “Wait, we have a project?”
Yes, projects can be sometimes stressful for students. “Next time,” Miriam thought to herself, “I’m going to print out all of the details and record a video of myself explaining them. Let them yell at my recording instead.” Anyway, once it became clear that students MUST work in groups (“Can I work in a group with just myself?” “No Sammy, you may not.”) and that each group must have three or four members (“Can the six of us work together?” “No Eva, you may not.”), the students got to work. This class had all taken the Marketing elective, and their task was to create an advertisement, aimed at a specific group of people, that was meant to convince them to learn Mishna.
For the next two days, Morah Miriam gave her students the entire class time to work on their projects. At first, all was well, which made Morah Miriam nervous. If the usual messiness wasn’t happening, was something else brewing? Maybe the class got it out of their system on the day she announced the project. Either way, Morah Miriam began to check in with each of the groups. And it was while she was with the last group that Morah Miriam saw the storm that was coming.
“So, what’s doing with you guys? Have you chosen your target group and the message about Mishna you want to send them?” Chaya, the most motivated of the three girls, answered immediately. “Yes. We are going to target people who have very busy lives. We are going to tell them how learning Mishna can be done in small chunks of free time. We are also going to show how learning Mishna can help someone understand many areas of Judaism without a huge time commitment.” Well, so far so good. But then… “I’m very impressed. What about your advertisement?”
This time, Ayala spoke up. “I got that.” Morah Miriam was puzzled. “What do you mean you got that, Ayala? This is a group project; you all must participate in each part.” Ayala didn’t look happy. “But I love editing videos! I even plan on using some of my babysitting money to buy a new video editor! They will be fine doing the other stuff.” The other girls nodded. “We’ll be fine! If Ayala wants to take care of the recording and editing, can we please let her?” Morah Miriam didn’t feel like fighting, but she also didn’t want to seem like she agreed. “Girls,” sighed their Morah, “please work together like I asked.” With that, she moved on to help a student who had a question.
Unfortunately, the girls did not take their teacher’s instructions seriously. Morah Miriam expected as much, and left school on Friday with the feeling she’d be refereeing a fight on Monday. And, when class came around on Monday morning, her worst fears seemed to have come true.
Class had not even started when Morah Miriam heard the screaming coming down the hall. “The Care Bears theme song? What does that have to do with Mishna?!” “Well, next time you do it! And we are keeping the subtitles! I didn’t work all weekend on timing the captions perfectly just to delete them!” “Why didn’t you ask us first?” “Ask you?! This video was MY part!”
Just as Morah Miriam expected, Ayala’s decision to put more time and money into the project gave her a sense of control over the entire group. And, just as Morah Miriam expected, the other girls didn’t really appreciate the extra effort, they just saw it as Ayala’s gift to them; they didn’t expect to give up any of the decision-making. Fortunately, the wise teacher was able to diffuse the situation and help the girls see the other side of the story. The project ended up as a huge success, thanks to including the subtitles and leaving out any Care Bears references.
The collection of silver at the start of Parshat Ki Tisa is meant to find the Korbanot brought on behalf of Bnei Yisrael. Each Jew who gave was required to give the same amount, no matter how poor or rich. This likely meant giving up a significant amount of money that could have been donated by the wealthier Jews. However, another factor is at play here—control. Regarding important matters, people shouldn’t feel as if their opinions are automatically better or more significant just because they gave more money or decided to put in extra work. Partnerships are an important part of life; let’s make sure we are each doing our share of the work.
Yair Daar is the middle school dean of students at Yeshivat He’Atid. He can be reached at [email protected].
