Like Water On Stone

[Drip – drip – drip – drip – drip]
Drip

[Shevy, please put that away.]

Drip

[Shevy, how about we make a contest?]

Drip

[Shevy, let’s go for a walk in the yard.]

Drip

[Shevy, Chumash on your desk.]

Drip

[Shevy, that was an excellent question! Did everyone hear Shevy’s question?!]

Drip

[Shevy’s going to be our Bentching Monitor today.]

Water

Soft, simple

Constant, consistent

Can bore a hole through impenetrable rock

It wasn’t the first drop that did it

It wasn’t the sixteenth

Or the six-hundredth –

It was each of them

It was all of them

It’s today’s gentle drop of effort

And yesterday’s

And tomorrow’s

That are penetrating the impossible

Moving mountains

Breaking boulders

Leaving the mark

of a teacher

who never says never.

MORE TO EXPLORE

Preventing the Summer Slide

Small efforts, big impacts We know how quickly children grow when learning is consistent—and how quickly skills can fade when routines disappear for months. The “Summer Slide” is real. Children can lose foundational academic skills, and even social and emotional progress, over the break. For some, September feels less like a continuation and more like starting all over again. A few intentional moments each week throughout the summer can help reinforce and protect the skills students worked hard to master during the year. That said, summer was never meant to be a third semester. Young children still need rest, play, family time, and freedom—and the goal isn’t to push them toward new skills. It’s simply to preserve what they already know. The Balance According to one of Torah Umesorah’s leading Intervention Specialists, assigning summer homework three times a week is sufficient for maintaining students’ progress. The assignments don’t need to

What do you wish more people understood about your job?

Let Summer Refill You

If you had a quiet moment this summer, what would you want to get better at? This one isn’t for everyone. Some of you are busier in July than in January — summer jobs, kids home, camps, family. If that’s you, bookmark this for when things settle. But if you do find yourself with a quiet mid-morning once the kids are out, or a calm early evening before the night gets going — that might be exactly enough. Torah Umesorah is offering sessions built for exactly those pockets of time. As little as 20 minutes, and you walk away with something real and usable for your classroom. Live Zoom or phone sessions Scheduled during mid-morning and early evening hours, when things tend to quiet down. On your own time Recorded sessions Listen whenever works for you — folding laundry, on a walk, or with a cup of coffee.

For the Teacher Who Can’t Find the Words

For the Teacher Who Can’t Find the Words The last day of school has a feeling all its own. Backpacks bulge with the year’s worth of seforim and workbooks. The classroom looks a little bare already. Coat hooks hold one last sweater. And somewhere between the goodbyes, you find yourself wondering where the time went. And then they’re gone. Just like that, the room that held so much — the noise, the questions, the breakthroughs, the giggles — goes quiet. There’s a particular hollow feeling that settles in when the last talmidah walks out the door, a mix of pride and nostalgia that’s hard to put into words. You want to stop them on their way out. You want to tell them how much they’ve grown, how much you’ve grown, how this year meant something. But you also know — because you know them — that a heartfelt speech from