During the last two weeks in June, I had two distinct privileges: the first was the unique privilege to be Mesader Kedushin at my dear student Judah Mantell’s wedding. Five days later I took nine current students to present on the Frisch News Network (FNN), our news broadcasting club, at the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference, the largest educational technology conference in the world.

This got me reminiscing about six years ago when I took Judah to ISTE when he was a high school student. He presented on Cougar Nation Network, our live-streaming sports broadcasting network, and gave an Ignite session on his experience creating Midnight Coffee Inc. a gaming studio, as a high school student.

I encouraged him to give this talk to a wide audience as he was one of those super creative students who sometimes does not do well in the conventional classroom but excels when given the space to create.

Judah presented this talk to our entire faculty to practice for ISTE. And I remember him going over his talk over and over again with his girlfriend, now his wife, who was also a student in my school, in the largest room we could find in school so he could hone his talk for the conference.

The following year, Judah took a directed study with me on the prophet Jeremiah as a part of a micro-grant we received from The Jewish Education Project. But not in the conventional way. We would learn a chapter and then he would create a virtual reality experience so you could walk through the world of Jeremiah’s prophecy. See the map of Anatot, Jeremiah’s hometown, on the floor, find the almond branch quickly sprouting, the boiling pot pouring over predicting the troubles that would befall the Jewish people, and finally enter the Temple in Jerusalem. This project took many months to complete. It represented a whole new way of teaching for me and learning for Judah.

Later, when Judah graduated, rather than take a gap year in Israel he took a gap year teaching technology in a local Jewish elementary school and teaching digital media with me at Frisch. He gave students only two years younger than him the experience of storyboarding and editing movies using Premiere Pro. Full confession, while I was officially the teacher and Judah the assistant, Judah knew Premiere Pro and video production way better than me.

Then Judah went off to college but also developed a new project designing a virtual and augmented reality filming platform to plan and storyboard movie scenes before filming. He would update me regularly on this project, which soon became a company with VC investors. Eventually his company was purchased by a major movie production studio so Judah could continue developing his passion on a much larger scale. When we would talk, I marveled that his virtual platform was exactly what he had already done when we worked together on the Jeremiah VR Experience.

And then last week, I was privileged to officiate as the rabbi at his wedding.

So how does this connect to my taking students once again to present at the ISTE Conference?

During the last year of her life while I was at Gruss Kollel in Jerusalem, I had a privilege to take a class with the unparalleled educator, Nechama Leibowitz. I remember the van ride to her apartment where we learned. I remember her study lined wall to wall with her writings. I remember when she would ask a question in Tanach and have each of us write our answer on a piece of paper. And she would then read our answers one by one. Throwing away the wrong ones. And then exclaiming in joy when we got it right. I remember the experience of learning with Nechama.

Nechama used to say. Your students will remember nothing. They will not remember the chapters you learn together. The pesukim and mephorshim you spend hours discussing. They won’t remember anything. But they will remember the experience. The joy, the excitement, the discovery.

This is why I teach. Why I take my students to conferences so they can present on their passion to educators from around the world. Why I learn the prophets with my students and then let them create.

They might not remember every verse we study together. They might not remember every film tip as we create a newscast about happenings in school together. But they will remember our experience together. And we will keep in touch for years after they graduate. And one day I will have the sublime joy to dance at their wedding.

Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky is the director of educational technology at Yeshivat Frisch.