Aspie Spring Term: A Proactive Stance

Today is my birthday.

As usual, my birthday is on one side or the other of the line between break and a return to reality. For the Engineering Geek, it was a return to reality, and he went off down the snowy road to work today. For the Boychick, today is the absolutely last day to sleep until noon. He still hasn't gotten dressed, but he did get clothes into the washer.

For me, today is both . . . and . . .
I am at home today, and although I considered going into town, since the Boychick wanted to sleep late, I decided against it. But, there was work for me to do to get us ready for the spring term. The fun part was a good e-mail from my neuropsychology mentor. I have several new assignments that ought to carry me to the end of January, all related to getting a paper published.

Another part is for me to begin preparing for the Boychick's IEP--which is going to be collaborative between me, his special education teacher, and the Boychick himself. The eligibility will be Autism (it has taken years to get to this for various reasons) and I want the goals to broadly address his social and educational needs, so that we can work on skills that transcend any particular subject matter. For example, I want us to address the issue of working memory. Although there are those who say that WM cannot be improved much past the age of 13, new studies about the brain development of children with AD/HD, ASD and other developmental problems, as well as for gifted children, show that peak cortical thickness and the subsequent thinning that marks the maturing brain come later in all of these groups. So it is possible that working on working memory (sorry, couldn't resist!) could spark some improvement.

As I was dredging my virtual files (all stored on thumbdrives) for papers about this, I got sidetracked by another start-of-term chore: dealing with Machon (Jewish Education). As I wrote towards the end of last term, there were problems (again) for the Boychick at Machon. The problems could have been nipped in the bud had the Education Director done the following:

• read the material I sent along about AS and passed it on to the teachers
• read the information about the Boychick and AS and passed it on to the teachers
• read the e-mail I sent her that informed her that I would be sitting in the lounge and available to help should there be any problem with the Boychick whatsoever.

I got sidetracked because I found the information I had sent out last September, along with my e-mails dealing with the problem, in my files on AS, ASD, and the Boychick.

So I edited my The Boychick and AS Information for Machon file and sent that (again) to the synagogue Director of Jewish Ed (DJE), along with a note that included the following:

"I would like the opportunity to meet with the Boychick's teachers to make sure that they understand his AS symptoms and I would also like your assurance that I will be notified immediately when classroom problems occur. . . Once again, I will be in the lounge by 7 PM each evening that the Boychick is present. . . This coming Wednesday, we will be there early in order to be introduced to the Boychick's teachers. . . it would also be really helpful to me if I could sit down with him before Wednesday evening and present him with his schedule. I would like to be able to tell him what to expect: the courses, the teacher’s names, and a general outline of what he will be learning in each class. Getting the “set” for each class will help the Boychick be ready to participate in the class. This is an absolute necessity for the Boychick to get the most he can out of the classes, and for the teachers to see the best in the Boychick . . . "

Given that I was never allowed to speak to the teacher last semester, even when the problems had been exacerbated by lack of timely communication, I was decidedly more pushy in this e-mail than I was in the one I sent last fall. I did not request that a meeting with the teachers be set up, rather, I simply told the DE that we (the Engineering Geek's quietly imposing six feet plus is more helpful in getting taken seriously than is my title, sad to say!) would be there early to meet the teachers.

On this e-mail I attached only the aforementioned information sheet. It includes a description of the Boychick's diagnoses, what they mean, his strengths and weaknesses, and a detailed list of suggested classroom interventions. I will include here just the first two parts:

Diagnoses: The Boychick is a gifted child with Asperger Syndrome (AS) with co-morbidities of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), and Attention Deficit and Generalized Anxiety Disorder as the result of the AS. Asperger Syndrome is an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) characterized by at least normal intelligence, normal speech, a tendency to perseveration, and profound difficulties with social communication. Auditory processing deficits affect auditory working memory and accurate understanding of verbal/auditory based instructional methods. It also affects reading and writing, which are primarily verbal skills. The Boychick currently qualifies for special education services as a child with Autism under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The Boychick's strengths:
*excellent visual memory
*focuses strongly on details
*passion for nature, natural philosophy, and science
*high level of curiosity about and awareness of the physical world
*excellent large muscle coordination and timing
*passion for the visual arts

*well developed vocabulary

The Boychick's weaknesses:
*dysgraphia
*difficulty reading body language and social cues
*difficulty with metaphors, symbolic language, sophisticated verbal humor, and sarcasm
*difficulty processing complex verbal instructions
*difficulty processing auditory input in a noisy environment (low signal to noise filtering ratio)
*dysfunction of sensory integration
*high need for structure and environmental predictability
*tendency toward pessimistic world view (the glass is not only half-empty, but dingy and cracked as well)
*short attention span/limited cognitive endurance

In a different e-mail (so as not to confuse the issue), I also sent along two short articles that will be very helpful to the Boychick's teachers, should they be given the opportunity to read them:

1) Blinded By Their Strengths: The Topsy-Turvey World of Asperger's Syndrome This paper discusses the problems that teachers encounter because an Aspie student's strengths raise expectations that he will be entirely normal and successful in the classroom. It also includes five areas that direct teaching strategies ought to address for these kids: perspective taking, sociocommunicative expression and understanding, reading/language comprehension, executive dysfunction (i.e. problems with planning and organization), and problem solving.

2) Overcoming Inertia: Five Survival Strategies for Children with AS

This paper discusses the profound apraxia in cognitive, affective, and behavioral tasks often seen in AS that leads to great difficulty in initiating action. (Apraxia leads to shut-downs, which are often interpreted by neurotypicals [NT] as oppositional behavior, because NT's in authority tend to think that a child's behavior is a reaction to them. They rarely consider that it may be internal to the student). The problems are described, giving examples, and then five strategies are suggested: consult with the AS student to reduce stress, use a pre-arranged touch-prompt to signal the beginning of a new step in a sequence of actions, lead from behind, teach paced breathing as a calming technique, and teach binary decision making.

And just in case these attachments do not get passed along, I have printed them out to give to the teachers.

I had already made another proactive arrangement to reduce our stress in the coming term. I have reduced by GA hours to ten per week, so that I will have more time for my own schoolwork and for managing the Boychick's school issues, Machon issues and whatever else comes up.

And what is so cool about getting sidetracked today, is that as I re-read and edited The Boychick and AS for Machon file, and read the short papers again, I realized that all of this concise information will be valuable for the upcoming IEP. The five categories of intervention listed in the first paper described above will be useful categories for IEP goals. The five survival strategies in the second paper are useful reminders for me to give teachers about how to keep the Boychick on task in his regular school classrooms, and will help them key in to what the apraxia is (internal) and what it is not (oppositionality).

A good day's work. I think I deserve to go listen to the radio and relax for a while!

Humming: "When I'm old and wise . . . bitter words mean little to me, like autumn winds, they'll blow right through me . . ."

I can hardly wait until next year.

Hannukah, Teenage Angst, and Snowstorm Malaise

Here we go again!

I love snow. Normally. Really, I do. But in the past two weeks we have had one storm after another. And this week, I have left the subdivision once. On Wednesday. For an hour at the grocery store.

The storms have come one after another, and the county is not doing a great job plowing our road. So we have been snowbound.

And our Hannukah has been strange. Not bad. Just strange. For the second and third night we had the Boychick's friend A. (also Jewish) snowed in with us. For some reason, the Boychick decided that it would be cool to demonstrate teenage angst about the Hannukah observance.

Before we light the candles, we usually talk about the meaning of Hannukah. On each night, our discussion is framed by a Hebew word expressing a Jewish value or a Maccabean value. On the first night that A. was here both boys acted like they had never heard of the Maccabees when we talked about Jewish Identity and the importance of knowing who we are.

This irritated me a bit because, after all, we have spent thousands of dollars and countless hours sending these little tw . . . uh, young men to Hebrew School and Machon. "What do you mean, you don't know much about Hannukah?" I said. Forcefully.

The Engineering Geek said to me (out of the side of his mouth), "This is the result of all those years of discussing the damn December Dilemma* rather than telling the kids straight up who they are and what they are expected to do about it." That may be true. But certainly they have discussed the Maccabees recently? The boys say that they haven't. But I don't want to get started on the state of Jewish education in the Reform movement these days . . . been there, done that, got the blog entries. And anyway, there was that eye-rolling, 'this is just so tiresome' teenage angst to deal with. So I made them watch the Sam Glaser/JewishFan You-Tube. I will leave the heavy sighs and peach-fuzz lip facial expressions to your imagination.

*It is rather peculiar that in the Reform Movement's Jewish Education, they spend more time talking about how it feels to be different in December, and how it's not so bad to have a Christmas tree in a Jewish home, rather than teaching a solid understanding of why we celebrate Hannukah, why it's not a major holiday, and what it has to do with Jewish Identity. In fact, it reminds me of a joke. But I will tell it later . . . Just think about Jessica Tansley's line in Driving Miss Daisy: With a nose like that, she has no right to be hollaring 'Merry Christmas!' But I digress.

On the nights of Hannukah, while the candles burn, we have a rule that all family members will stay in the room, and we will do something together. Usually, we sing some Hannukah songs, open a present, play games, or read aloud. But no TV and no computers.

On the same night as the Maccabee Ignorance Claim, we played dreidl for a while, after A. and the Boychick both opened their presents. A. actually got into it, but the Boychick used those special teen signals to let us know exactly how juvenile and tiresome it all was. Life. With. Parents. Is. Just. So. B-O-O-O-RING.

Bruce and I exchanged glances. And pretended we did not notice any of it. They. Do. Turn. Back. Into. Humans. Eventually.

But when they are being especially obnoxious, when they are performing for their friends, doing anything together as a family takes much more effort.

Over the next nights of Hannukah, I have been ready. On the third night I sat the boys down and said to them:
"Remember in the You-Tube how they said that studying Torah was a capital offense? Do you know what that means? Do you know what they did to the mothers and babies that were circumcised in defiance of the tyrant's decrees?" And we read Hannah and her Seven Sons from one of the books of Maccabees. (These are in the Jewish Apocrypha).

Then the EG asked them: Suppose you lived in those times. First, you were told you had to sacrifice to the genus of Antiochus. Then you were told you had to sacrifice a pig on the altar. Then you were forced to eat pig. Then you were forced to watch your sons compete naked in the gymnasium. Then you were forbidden to teach and study Torah on pain of death. Then you were forced to watch an execution of a woman and her baby because the baby had a bris. At what point would you stand up for your values? Why that point?"

They both responded with some sighs and angst, but then as they disagreed with one another, we actually had a reasonable conversation. Reasonable for teens.
And the Boychick's attitude has become more cooperative since A. went home. Not because A. is a problem, but because there's no one to perform for except parents. And we are not impressed.

Outside, we now have around six inches and the snow is still falling steadily.
Earlier we took the dogs out. They have to go, rain, shine or blizzard.

And our little Tomboy Lily made me reconsider my grumpy reaction to yet another blizzard.

She just loves snow! Her ears perk up, she gets excited. She romps and plays in it.

That's the thing about the dogs. They are always happy about something. They get excited about the important things: Snow. Snoozing. People coming home. Walks. Dinner. Being together.

They may create mischief now and then. But there's never a moment of angst.

Happy Hannukah!

Machon: Two Steps Forward . . .Maybe

In the past few years, I have written quite a bit about the problems we have had with Machon--the teen religious education program at our synagogue.

This year, we enrolled the Boychick once again, and he has been attending on Wednesday nights, albeit reluctantly. It takes quite a bit of arranging to get him across the mountain each week. We carpool with his friend A., who also attends Machon. Every Wednesday he is picked up after school by A.'s mom, who drives both boys and a third who lives off of Frost road between the A. house and EMHS. They get to Machon in time to have dinner. This is a new feature this year: for $44/semester the kids can eat at the synagogue and have social time together as they eat. Then they have their Jewish Studies class for one hour hour, followed by an elective (another new feature this year), followed by a weekday evening service. It all ends at about 8:15 PM. I leave the COE Graduate Writing Studio at 7 PM, and I arrive at the temple at about 7:20. I wait in the lounge for the boys to be finished, and I drive A. home, and we arrive home after 9:00 PM.

There does seem to be a curriculum this year, though I have not yet got a written copy of it. This semester, the Boychick has a course on the history of Israel and Zionism for Jewish Studies, and his elective is Israeli Martial Arts. Next term, he will take A Jewish Guide to American Christianity for Jewish Studies, and Jewish Community Leadership for his elective.

And so it has been going well. Or so I thought from my perspective from the chair in the lounge where I waited for the boys to finish. Or so I thought until the day after the election. I arrive quite late that evening, it was almost 8 PM when I strolled into the lounge. C. was waiting there for me. She is the Special Education Liason for Machon. She pulled me aside and began:

C: "We need to talk about your son."
Me, to myself, parenthetically: (Why does he cease to have a name whenever there's a problem).
Me, out loud: "Oh?"
C: "He doesn't want to be here you know."
Me, to myself, parenthetically: (Tell me something new, lady).
Me, out loud: "I know."
C: "He has been disruptive lately, and K. (the new director) called me in to deal with it."
Me: "How long has this been a problem?"

To make a long story short, I was floored to find out that the Boychick had supposedly been disruptive from the beginning of the year. Why is the parent the last to know?
That led to this conversation with K., the new director of education.

K: "He has been disruptive since the first day, according to the teacher."
Me: "Why wasn't I told immediately?"
K: "Mr. S is a very dynamic teacher, and we decided to try a few things first."
C: "I think they wanted to call me in first . . ."
Me: "I see. (I really didn't see at all). Why wasn't I told about this at the beginning?"
K: "Sometimes we like to try some things first before we involve the parent."
Me, to myself, parenthetically: (Wow. Involving the parent is the last priority?)
Me, out loud: "So can you please tell me what the discipline policy in the classroom is? What interventions did you try?"
C: Mr. S is a very dynamic teacher, and there are a lot of discussions. This should be right up the Boychick's alley. But he's very angry. He wouldn't even look at me."
Me, using Premack's Principle*: "What is the discipline policy in the classroom? What interventions did you try?"
C: Tonight, when Mr. S. asked the Boychick what he thought of the election, the Boychick put his foot up on the desk and said: "This is all a bunch of crap!" He was very disrespectful."
Me, to myself, parenthetically: (I'm getting none of my questions answered. Hmmm. The election, I wonder if that's the trigger?)
Me, with one more try at Premack: "So what did you say the discipline policy in the classroom is? And what interventions have you tried with the Boychick?
K, defensively: "We really can't allow him in the classroom if he continues to be disruptive."
Me, to myself, parenthetically: (Wow! They just now tell me there's a problem and they want to kick him out. It is apparent that they haven't tried anything at all, and it is clear that this new director has not been on top of this. I wonder if the teacher even told her about it before last week? I bet not).
Me, out loud: "Well, I will talk to the Boychick and he will get a consequence for his disrespectful remark this week. But I really cannot punish him for anything in the past since I am unclear about what exactly he did, which classroom norms he violated, and what was done in response. In the meantime, it would be very helpful if you could find out exactly what has been going on in the classroom. Has this teacher had any classroom management training?"
Silence.
Me, feeling steamed from being blindsided: "I'll take the silence to mean 'no.' "

First, the Boychick did have his computer internet privileges removed for a week. The restoration of said interent privileges was contingent on a good report from the next class. C. was to be in there to monitor.

Then I had a long talk with the Boychick to find out what was triggering the behavior, which I learned was mostly a passive refusal to participate, with occasional dramatic refusals to participate. I knew there had to be a trigger. And sure enough, there was. It took awhile to get the story out of the Boychick and in an understandable sequence (that's an AS characteristic)but on the first day of class, Mr. S. had a discussion about the election (this was in September). When asked, the Boychick, a proud NRA member, said he was rooting for McCain.

Digression: I should have warned him about that. His AS blinds him to the fact that many Reform Jews are well to the left of Bill Clinton. And many of those also have the that "but of course everyone with a brain agrees" mentality. Aspies do not even begin to understand those vibes, and they also tend to be naive about the nature of political disagreement in the post-20th century world.

Note: The Boychick's support of McCain was entirely his own decision. In our household, we have one registered Democrat who votes like an independent, one registered Libertarian, who votes third party and write-in, and one too young to vote. The Chem Geek Princess is our only major-party voter, and the only one registered Republican in our family in five generations.

Anyway, the teacher was surprised, and the other kids--mostly supporting Obama--determined that the Boychick was a pariah from that moment on. A new kid in the class, one who did not know the Boychick, became the ringleader of a clique who decided to convince the Boychick of the error of his ways. Failing that over the next few weeks, they decided to snub and ridicule him. Being an Aspie, the Boychick's all-or-nothing thinking kicked in, and he decided that nobody there liked him, and that everybody hated him, including the temple administrator. "She glared at me, Mom."
Probably not.
But that was his impression.
And beneath that Aspie exterior, the Boychick has tender feelings. So he responded badly whenever the class discussed the election.

Last week, I e-mailed K. and requested a meeting. In my e-mail I made it clear that I understood that the Boychick's disrespectful remark was unacceptable and that he had received consequences for it. And I also pointed out that had I been told of the problem immediately, we could have intervened before the bullying situation had a chance to become routine. And finally, I said that I expected the politically motivated bullying to be ended immediately.

And then the Engineering Geek and I began to consider other options.
I really expected that nothing would be done. Past experience set my low expectations.
The Chem Geek Princess endured over five years of bullying there. And despite numerous attempts on my part to put an end to the situation, nothing was done. The chief bully was the son of some of the rabbi's groupies.
Finally, the Chem Geek Princess became fed-up enough to slap the bully in the face one day during Confirmation class. That was the last time anyone made a cutting remark about her or anyone else in her presence.
But she has also determined not to darken the door of this synagogue again. Too many bad memories.

When I came into the office this past Wednesday however, K. apologized for leaving me in the dark. Further, she confessed that the teacher had only come to her recently about the Boychick, and that this teacher was inexperienced and had no classroom management skills. C. told me that she had gone in and helped the teacher set up the classroom to include all of the kids, as a few, including the Boychick, had been sitting on the fringes.

Then I mentioned the bullying behavior that had started all of this.
I insisted that there needed to be an intervention about bullying for all the students, done in such a way that the Boychick is not singled out as the complainant. I also insisted that the students be taught about the First Amendment to the US Constitution, with an emphasis on freedom of speech, and the need for tolerance of political viewpoints. I pointed out that this particular Constitutional Amendment is very important to American Jews, because of the protection for religious expression. It was agreed that this special topic would be covered in a special session in February. (December's special session had already been planned).
In the meantime, I was told, K. would pull the New Kid aside for a personal talk, and the teacher would be instructed to give a short, general talk about political speech and bullying.

So.
This is very interesting. A new reaction to an old problem.

Although letting the problem grow and keeping me in the dark was one step back, the interventions could be two steps forward.
That would mean that we are making some small progress at Machon.

I am cautiously optimistic.

The Baby and the Bathwater III: Losing My Religion

Recently, I have been writing about the concerns that the Engineering Geek and I have about our synagogue membership. I wrote about how the rabbi's sermon on Rosh Hashanah caused me to think about his assertion that the organization is indeed a community, and I wrote more about that in light of my experiences when it felt like community and how that changed.

In the first of these posts I also wrote this: "Reform Judaism has a well-developed set of traditions." And I said I'd return to this idea in a future post. This is the promised post.

"Reform Judaism has a well-developed set of traditions."
For those who know anything about the early Reformers, those in Germany, and those in the United States, this may seem like an odd statement. Many Jews, Reform and otherwise, believe that the early Reformers threw the baby out with the bathwater, that they not only deprived the past of a veto, but also of a vote. In short, many believe that the phrase "Reform tradition" is an oxymoron. The Pittsburg Platform (1885) threw out kashrut (the dietary laws), as well as the ritual laws, in favor of a focus on the uniquely Reform virtues of Ethical Monotheism. Thus the Reform Movement entered the period know as Classical Reform.
During this time the service was mostly in English, nobody wore kippot (yarmulkes), synagogues were called temples (the reformers were not waiting for the rebuilding of the original in Jerusalem) and we were to be Jews at home, Americans on the street. In short, it looked like Reform got rid of tradition entirely. Tevye the Milkman was an embarrassing Ostjude (Eastern European Jew); an example of all that was wrong with unenlightened Orthodoxy. Reform tradition? It's as antiquated as a fiddler on the roof!

But, what was once a reform, if it lasts a hundred years, becomes a tradition.
And as Reform Judaism has been taught and passed down from one generation to another, a certain worldview has developed. (I see it in my husband, who is fifth generation Reform--from Austria to Cincinnati to San Franscisco). Of course, the Reform I was taught, from the New Union Prayerbook, had evolved from the High Classical Reform of the Union Prayerbook. After the Shoah, we had all become Zionists, and we understood the meaning of the People of Israel in a more traditional way. Hebrew had become more common, Bar Mitzvah ceremonies had been restored, Bat Mitzvah ceremonies added, and the use of ritual objects was no longer discourged.

At the same time, important aspects of the Reform worldview continued to appeal. Ethical monotheism--the idea that the ethics of the prophets--justice, righteousness, acts of loving kindness--combined with the rational worldview of the Enlightenment, was held to be the standard of behavior. The ritual commandments that the early reformers threw out wholesale were to be observed by the educated choice of the individual. The Chem Geek Princess is old enough to have been taught Ethical Monotheism as the essence of Reform Jewish life, but she is young enough to have been brought up with more ritual than was common in Reform Jewish households in my generation. The Boychick's formal Jewish education has been sadly lacking in Ethical Monotheism, which might give the mishmash of half-understood ritual some organizing idea that would last a lifetime. (This is why I homeschooled his Jewish education and Torah Talk at the Shabbat table-- I taught him a more comprehensive way of being Jewish).

And the truth to be told, I also think the early reformers did throw the baby out with bathwater. There is much to be said for the beauty and symbolic importance of ritual in the lives of human beings. Ritual defines who we are and who are not as we rub up against other cultures. Symbols send powerful messages of the meaning of our identity as Jews directly to the soul. When I wrap myself in the tallit--the prayer shawl--and say in Hebrew: "Eternal One, you are very great! Arrayed in glory and majesty, you wrap yourself in light as with a garment, you stretch out the heavens like a curtain." I feel that I am wrapping myself in light, that I am clothed in the majesty and glory. That I dwell in the midst of endless possibilities.

And when I wrap my middle finger with the tefillin straps and say in Hebrew: "I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me with righteousness, with impeccability, with loving-kindness, with compassion; I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know (physically, emotionally, spiritually) G-d"; I bind myself to G-d, Torah and Israel. But I bind myself also to those prophetic ethical precepts that I say--I bind myself as a Reform Jew with a very particular understanding of the prophetic values. I not only hear in them the voices of my rabbis and teachers, as well as the the voice of the long past; I also hear the call to be a moral human being, even in places where there are no moral human beings.

So although I understand the resurgence of ritual in Reform, I sense that I am losing my religion. The observance of half-understood ritual presented as an optional mishmash, combined with the loss of the organizing principle of Ethical Monotheism, is not a shortcut to a strong Jewish identity. The younger generation is losing an appreciation for both the baby and the bathwater. They are not being trained in the rubrics of ritual practice that will last a lifetime and uphold them during hardship and duress; and neither are they being given the ethical foundation that would give them the guts to stand up against evil and oppression. The moral fiber of Reform sensibility has been replaced with a schlock-rock, touchy-feely, short-cut to spirituality that is unlikely to survive assimilationist pressures from the dominant secular society.

Digression: In reading that last sentence, I see that I am placing myself squarely in the grand Jewish tradition. Ever since Jacob, who worried on his deathbed that his children would no longer be Jews, every generation has so worried. But will we hear the response, as Jacob did: "Sh'ma Yisrael . . . Listen, Israel (Jacob's G-d-given name), the Eternal is our G-d, the Eternal is One"? Will our children have the intestinal fortitude to so proclaim if they are pressed to the wall when they have not been taught the prophetic voice? When Judaism is reduced to an "our crowd" version of a country club?
See what I mean?

I see no harm in bringing back Hebrew. I see no harm in the use of carefully chosen ritual.
But I see great harm in losing the central tenents of Reform Judaism: Rational adherence to the Prophetic voice, crying out for Justice and Righteousness; in short, the precepts of Ethical Monotheism. Ritual observances should be carefully taught. The symbolic nature of the ritual should be elucidated, so that it is not misunderstood as a magic short-cut to holiness, or to the desired end of strong Jewish identity and the comcommitant moral absolutes and sensibilities that make up the Jewish worldview.

And speaking of those sensibilities: Reform Judaism has beautiful ritual and practice of its own. These include strong teaching from the Bimah, a firm tie to the American ideals of Liberty and Justice, and the ethical message expounded in beautiful English and a tradition of majestic choral music.

Nothing reminds me more of the Ethicial Monotheism inherent in the Reform tradition than these words, carried over nearly intact from the Union Prayerbook to the New Union Prayerbook:

" . . . Fervently we pray that the day may come when all shall turn to You in love, when corruption and evil shall give way to to integrity and goodness, when superstition shall no longer enslave the mind, nor idolatry blind the eye . . . then shall Your kingdom be established on the earth and the word of Your Prophet fulfilled . . ."

And I'd love to hear the majestic and beautiful old German-Reform melodies to Yigdal and Adon Olam, Especially the High Holy Day melodies.

Not hearing them for years on end: That's me in the corner . . . losing my religion.

A Practical Matter: Power and Control at Machon

Last week, I wrote about my thinking on Jewish prayer. That post was a response to ideas that came from a Christian writer through another blogger, as well as a difficulty N. has been having in Machon--his secondary religious education program. When I wrote, I said that I did not know yet what I was going to do about N.'s concerns.

Concerns. Note the plural ending there.

There has been more going on at Machon than the experience N. had during T'fillah last Wednesday night. I have discussed the concern we had last spring, as well as problems that occured this fall in other posts here on Ragamuffin Studies. And those problems combined with some incidents that happened in early January, are what is driving my thinking about the goodness-of-fit between N.'s unique needs, my educational philosophy, and the Machon program. Once again. Oy.

Our rabbis taught in Pirke Avot: "Turn it and turn it again, for everything is within it." They were talking about wrestling with Torah, but it seems that N. and I --and even Bruce and the Chemistry Geek Princess--are having a similar experience with our discussions about wrestling with Machon. So although I am feeling rather grumpy about it, since I have once again made an appointment to go see the rabbi about this, I can say that this mizukis does have the benefit of making us struggle with what our Jewish practice means to us, consider what we want N.'s Jewish education to accomplish, and clarify our values concerning our affiliation with a particular religious institution.

And there is another piece to this puzzle, one that comes out of something N. witnessed in January at Machon, an incident that illustrates issues of control that pertain to a wider discussion about the purpose and practice of education in general.

Last month, N. witnessed part of an incident in which a staff member at Machon engaged in a power struggle with another child at Machon. This staff member is the same one who insists that the students keep their eyes on the prayerbook in T'fillah and follow the Hebrew words with their fingers.

An aside: This is not necessarily a bad technique to improve Hebrew reading skills for some students. And it is true that in the Jewish practice of prayer, a tight focus on the Hebrew words is emphasized. My objection to this practice is two-fold: where it is done, and to whom it is done. First, that this kind of drill is better reserved for Hebrew school proper, and not for the practice of public prayer. Second, that the technique be applied kindly and creatively, and only with students who's learning will be benefited by it. Some students either do not need it because they already can track the service well, or they will not benefit from it because it is not the best match for how they learn. One size does not fit all.

Back to the incident. The gory details do not matter to us here. (N. gave me a blow-by-blow account, so the incident clearly made an impression on him). The precipitating event does matter. The power struggle started because the student asked this particular staff member for permission to go to the bathroom. And the staff member refused the request.

Think about that. Kids in school are relatively powerless. They must follow the instructions and directions of adult who may or may not care about them. They must accept humbly numerous evaluations of their work, their disposition, their very selves from adults who may or may not appreciate their individuality. And their personal power over their bodily functions is limited by adults for institutional reasons. They may not be allowed to eat when they are hungry, get a drink when they are thirsty, and they must notify an adult if they need to leave the room in order to use the bathroom. Their lack of privacy extends also to the emotional realm, in that feelings such as happiness, joy, rambunctiousness, hurt, anger, and sadness, are all judged as appropriate or not by adults.

Much of this powerlessness and lack of privacy is necessary for the sake of safety and accountability in an institutional setting. But in my years in the classroom, I have witnessed many teachers who took their power over children to an extreme that I judged to be harmful to the child's dignity. Such adult behavior puzzled me and still does. Not every word that comes out of a teacher's mouth is a pearl of wisdom. And even if each word was, a child in need of the bathroom, a drink, or a good cry, is unlikely to hear those pearls anyway. And sometimes, believe it or not, a kid really needs a break from the teacher. And that's okay.

I have taught children of all ages, and I quickly learned to set policies in the classroom to minimize my control over a child's need to use the bathroom, get a drink, or even to go cry in private. I did this by establishing a permanent pass to leave the room. I had two such passes, made of wood, and nicely painted. They were on my demo bench where I taught high school science, and these same passes hung by the door of my Gifted Pull-Out classroom. At the beginning of the year, I explained to the kids that although I understood their desire for dignity and privacy, I also had the obligation to know who was out of the room. And I also had the need not to be verbally interrupted in the middle of a thought. It was distracting. Therefore, a child in need of leaving the room ought to quietly get up, get the pass, and go. Of course, if s/he did not return in a reasonable amount of time, I would probably come looking or send someone else to see if s/he was still breathing. Emergencies like needing to be sick were exceptions, I told them, and if they bolted without a pass, I would certainly follow up right away to ensure their safety and inform the nurse.

It was amazing how well this worked, too. (Of course with the younger elemetary kids, I also had regular bathroom breaks, because the little ones can get so absorbed in the classroom activities that they forget until...oops). I think that the kids appreciated my understanding of their need for some dignity and privacy, and they responded to my respect of their situation by respecting my need to account for them.

Back to the incident N. witnessed at Machon. I might have chalked it up to a mistake on the part of the staff member, except for other evidence of an extreme need for control over others. Evidence that comes from the way in which the T'filllah experience has been handled, the use of a disrespectful tone towards parents when policies are questioned, and attempts to control adults in other situations.

I cannot even guess at what drives this kind of behavior. I can say that it is unlikely to provoke a desirable response. And it certainly did not in this case. The details of the fireworks that ensued, including use of various inappropriate words by the angry student, were known throughout the school. (Another lesson I learned very quickly as a teacher: the kids know everything. Always). Of course, this did nothing to provoke respect by the other students towards this staff member. And, although I am not excusing the response of the student (there are better ways to get your point across), ultimately the responsibility for an incident lies with the person in power. Another lesson I learned early on in my teaching career: never, never engage a power struggle with a student. Nobody wins. But the teacher will be the bigger loser.

On the more personal level, this incident, as well as the other issues of control, have resulted in problems for N. He has become afraid. His generalized anxiety about everything--a common comorbidity of AS--has found a target. He is now anxious about Machon in general, and about T'fillah in particular, when this person is present. On Friday night, we went to Shabbat services, and when this staff member entered the chapel, N. departed. He sat out services in the lounge. This indicates that for him, the fear is not about Machon, but about T'fillah. Or about T'fillah with this person.

So at Seudat Sh'lishit (supper on Saturday evening), we had a discussion. Bruce told him that he understood why N. left services, and explained that we thought if best to let him do so on Friday night. And then I talked about the need to take control of the fear, and focus on the keva (appointed ritual) and kavanah (aim of the heart) of T'fillah in order to carry him beyond his anxiety about this person. After all, he cannot control the presence or actions of another person, he can only control his own. And then we gave him permission to politely tell anyone his limits.

If, for example, during T'fillah, an adult insists on a certain practice--and he is not being disruptive (very important)--he should nod politely and when the adult moves on, go back to praying his own way. Later, after the service is over, he should then respectfully but firmly tell that adult that he has his own way of praying, and that he would like to be left alone to do it. And that should be the end of it. We hope.

If an adult asks him for a hug--another control issue with--you guessed it!--the same person, he should say: "I'm not a touchy, feely person. But I'll be glad to shake your hand." And that should be the end of it. We hope.

Naturally, we practiced these situations, and helped him form a statement that would be seen as polite but firm. In this way, we hope to return to N. some sense of control over his situation and alleviate the anxiety.

This, then, is what we are going to do about it. And this will be the content of my conversation with the rabbi. We've determined that we cannot change the overall situation in Machon, but we hope to change the situation for N. in order to alleviate his anxiety so that he can pray.

I hope this is truly the last time I have to go to the rabbi about Machon. The whole situation feeds my own anxieties. Parents with children who are behaviorally different will understand what I mean. When your kid responds differently than others your parenting is always on trial. And the judgments never go in your favor.
But it's the child's needs that matter.

"A person's a person, no matter how small!"

The Commonplace Meal: On the Experience of Jewish Prayer

I have been thinking about the nature of Jewish prayer lately.

It all started about a week ago, when I happened upon a post about the quality and nature of worship by Mama Squirrel over at Dewey's Treehouse. She used a quotation from a Christian author, and the image presented interested me greatly, and so I wrote a short reply, and went on to celebrate Shabbat. But the image has been there in my mind since, and I have been playing with it and how it might relate to Jewish prayer.

This week, I have been wrestling with some big ideas that affect how I think about my field of special education, but my thoughts on Jewish prayer have still been rattling around in my mind, and I have the niggling feeling that the two are somehow connected. But it is something that happened to N. yesterday that really brought the question of the experience of Jewish prayer back into focus for me.

Last night, it was my turn to drive A. and N. home from Machon. After dropping A. off to his mother at the Dairy Queen in Edgewood, N. and I had the drive back to Sedillo and home alone together. N. was unusually quiet on the way out to Edgewood from Albuquerque, but as we neared the Sedillo exit, he began sighing. Mothers with adolescents everywhere know the familiar exchange that followed:
Me: "What's wrong?"
N.: (Heavy sigh) "Nothing."
Me: "Did something happen tonight?"
N.: "Not really." (More sighs).
And so forth and so on....it is pulling teeth to drag something out of an adolescent, even when they really want to tell you about it.

What I got out of N. was that class (about the origins of Ashkenazi Jewry) was "boring, but okay," that he did not get teased about his haircut (which is too short for his liking), and that things were fine between him and A. as well as among his classmates.
The problem had to do with T'fillah, the short prayer service at the end of Machon. (I have already written about the problem of who owns that service, and you can find that at 'Making It Theirs'). N.'s current problem is that apparently one of the "clergy" (I hate using this term in a Jewish setting, it implies knowledge and power that traditionally belongs to all Jews, but this is what they call themselves) has been practicing what N. calls "mind control." Upon further questioning, what this means to N. is that the person has commanded all the teens to keep their eyes on the pages of the prayer book and follow the service with their fingers. Not content with making this demand, the person has taken to patrolling the aisles to enforce this, although I do not know whether this is done verbally or physically. Mind control, indeed.


So now I am thinking again on the experience of Jewish prayer.
And I am starting with two thoughts from Mama Squirrel's post. They are both from John Piper's essay, Desiring God.

First:
"...The widespread notion that high moral acts must be free from self-interest is a great enemy of true worship..."

And:
"...when worship is reduced to disinterested duty, it ceases to be worship. For worship is a feast."




I am thinking that if the Christian Hedonist's worship is a feast, Jewish prayer is a homely and commonplace meal. Traditional Jews pray three services a day, Shacharit, Mincha, and Ma'ariv (Dawn, Gifts--the afternoon service, and Evening). How does one experience the homely meal? It is comfort food and it is often eaten as if by rote as the family talks around the table about other things. But every now and then, when a person is particularly hungry, or when the stew is particularly good, one will notice, in the midst of the ordinariness of it all, the sweet taste and texture of a perfectly cooked carrot, or the color and flavor of the spice, or the warm scent and soft feel of the homemade bread and butter.

And so it is when one is practiced in the art of T'fillah. The services are patterned, the nusach (cantillation) of the prayer is so familiar, and the pace is such that the one praying is often immersed in it as if by rote. One can lean into the prayer, unconsciously, "like a weaned child at rest on his mother's knee" as the psalmist sang in the Songs of the Ascents. And in that unconscious rest, sometimes a word or phrase will come to the fore, colorful and beautiful, asking to be noticed, to be heard, to be ruminated on, and understood anew. And in the way of traditional Jewish communal prayer, the coming together and drifting apart of the holy congregation that is praying, this need is accomodated in the standing, the swaying, the bowing and bending, the whole choreography of the service.

And so, of course, to get to this place of T'fillah, this holy time in which one stands with oneself (mitpallel--in judgement of oneself) before the Eternal, requires the discipline of praying regularly, and of learning the nusach, and the minhag--the customary choreography of the place--and also the use of the props of Jewish prayer, the tallit (prayer shawl) and t'fillin (phylacteries), and the siddur (prayer book). And it is the Jewish custom to focus on the words of the prayer book, words read and spoken in the holy tongue--Hebrew. And this is, or should be, an important part of Jewish education. Thus the importance of the study of Hebrew language, and Torah, and the experience of T'fillah.

But T'fillah is also an intensely personal experience, even though it is commonly practiced in the minyan, the quorum of at least ten adult Jews necessary for public prayer. And it seems to me, that when teaching T'fillah, one must provide instruction in the keva, the appointed discipline, as well as the experience of the kavanah, the aim of the heart and soul in prayer.
It is a delicate balance, one which cannot be attained by patrolling the Beit T'fillah like a Prussian schoolmaster, in search of the perfect: the perfect focus, the perfect stance, the perfect sequence of bows and sways. The desire for such perfection ultimately inhibits the dance of prayer. The desire for perfection is the desire for the unattainable, and it inhibits beauty and grace and life. And the beauty of individuality stems from the imperfect; the slightly crooked smile, the laugh lines around the eyes, that certain huskiness of voice that makes us love our lover above all others.

N. has become familiar with the keva and kavanah of T'fillah through the practice of the art of T'fillah. And maybe he has experienced those transcendent moments of realization and focus that come in the midst of the commonplace act of prayer. I don't know. I don't watch or inspect his practice. To do so, is to intrude on a most intimate moment. It is like inspecting and judging someone making love. Or think of it this way, participating in public prayer is like participating in a dance: if one goes to dance, one does not spend the time critiquing every move of the other dancers. T'fillah is not a performance to be judged and applauded, it is an experience to be lived.

So in teaching the practice of T'fillah, the teacher must leave much room for the individual, for the imperfection, and for the serendipity of those moments of transcendence that cannot be commanded or controlled. Prayer is ultimately a wild thing that dies when confined or controlled. And therefore, to return to the metaphor of the commonplace meal, the teacher must have the patience to allow the appetite to come with the eating.

I don't know what I am going to do about N.'s complaint exactly. For some time I have felt myself becoming dissatisfied with the forced feeding of one person's idea of what prayer and study are at our synagogue. Out of sheer self-preservation, I have distanced myself from worship services because of the emphasis on uniform practice, an emphasis that has become intrusive to the kavannah I need for T'fillah to nurture me. The heavy-handed and ungraceful "management" of the holy congregation's prayer has not been confined to the students in Machon. I have seen adults publically corrected--and I have experienced correction--in the middle of a service for the observance of a different minhag, a different custom, in the practice of the choreography of worship.

I am now coming to the realization of how important the culture of the synagogue is to my comfort with what happens there, and how fragile that culture is, and how susceptible it is to change and disintegration. As I have said elsewhere, Reform Judaim has a certain formalistic side to its practice that is at odds with its philosophy of individual choice about ritual observance to be made from knowledge. I guess I want N.'s Jewish education to feed him the knowledge and let him make the individual choice. And I want the same for myself.

Maybe it is time to consider moving to a different table for the commonplace meal?

Two Steps Back Part IV: What Positive Behavioral Supports Might Look Like

This is the final part of the Machon issues discussion. Here are links to the 'whole megillah' if you want to follow in order: Part I, Part II, and Part III.



The concept of Positive Behavioral Supports (PBS) is derived from the not-particularly-new idea that successful student behavior is linked to the host environment. It is really a philosophy about behavior, as well as a value system or to put it Jewishly, the derech eretz, (the way of the land) that influences how a person will act in a particular place. The point of developing such derech eretz is to reduce disruptions by developing a culture of respect, responsibility and safety and thus educate beyond the particular environment in order to inculcate the utmost virtue for the children and prepare them for living in the world.



Derech eretz can also be understood to mean "the way things are done here," and if you think about it, what is really being implied is a series of rules--spoken and unspoken--that everyone follows reasonably well in order to create an environment conducive to the aims of the place, whether it is a family, a religious organization, a school, or a nation. These rules can become complex when an environment has multiple purposes. For example, a synagogue has three overarching functions. It is a beit knesset--house of assembly, a beit midrash--house of study, and a beit t'filah--a house of prayer. Each of these purposes requires people to assume different roles and each has particular rules. For example, when you enter the beit knesset, you may be coming to meet and debate, to argue and come to consensus, and at that time you will use a different voice than when you come to study or to pray. There are also overarching rules that govern behavior within the Jewish community at all times, whether you come to pray, to assemble, or to study. And much of the derech eretz is flavored by culture going back centuries. In this particular synagogue, the flavor is a blend of Jewish sensibilities coming from the Askenazi tradition, classical Reform Judaism, as well as something that is unique to New Mexico. All of this must be taken into account to develop a system of successful behavioral supports for this place.


And when considering rules, it is really important to remember that all rules are taught. Some are taught explicitly and some by example, but people do not just know them through telepathy. For example, since he was a baby, whenever N. was brought to a ceremony or worship service, we put a kippah (yarmulke) on his head. (We had lots of fun keeping the Noah's Rainbow kippah on his head during his bris--ritual circumcision--but we started with it on). He saw others doing the same: I cover my head with a scarf when I light candles for Shabbat and Yom Tov, Bruce wears a kippah at the Shabbat table, MLC got a beautiful knit kippah to wear at her Bat Mitzvah. Eventually, though, he got the idea that Jews cover their heads when they pray, eat or do something 'Jewish.'



The point is that positive behavioral supports requires that rules be explicitly developed to match or transform the culture of a place, and that they must be also be explicitly taught. People cannot follow a rule if they do not know what the expected behavior looks like. Further, it is important for those modeling and enforcing rules to remember Buddha's encounter with the Sitar master.

A Story: One day, as Buddha was meditating under the Bo tree near the river Ganges, he heard a boat coming by. On the boat, a Sitar master instructed his student: "If you pull the string too tightly it will break. If you leave the string too lose, it will not make a sound." And that is when Buddha discovered the lesson of the middle way.



In making and enforcing rules, the Sitar rule applies in this way. You don't want to be so rigid that you break the student, but at the same time, you do not want to be so loose that you are unpredictable. You want to have consistency and room for negotiation. But the consistency comes first. Establishing consistency is, in a sense, an establishment of a common vocabulary with which future negotiations can be accomplished. For example, we established the "rule" that Jews cover their heads when they pray through consistent practice. But as N. grew, he began to notice that some Reform Jews do not do so. When he asked about it, we explained that in Reform Judaism, each person chooses which ritual customs he or she will follow upon becoming a Jewish adult. We also introduced the idea of minhag ha-makom, which means "custom of the place." N. learned that when we attend services at Chabad, the kippah is not optional. We continued to reinforce the practice of wearing the kippah, however, until N. became Bar Mitzvah. Consistent practice of the rule came first, and was followed by negotiation of the practice for Reform Judaism. So far, N. has chosen to continue to wear the kippah.



Another important practice when it comes to modeling rules is to positively reinforce the behavior you want to see. It can be as simple as saying, "N., you are getting to be such a mensch! You got your kippah on all by yourself!" This does two things. First, it lets the child know that doing the expected behavior feels good and right. The other is that, if he is behaving as expected, he cannot simultaneously be behaving in unwelcome ways. This is often called "Grandma's principle." If you give the kid the toy you want him to play with, and then reward him for it by playing with him, then he cannot also be, say, dumping your shampoo down the drain. Sometimes parents call this the "child psychology" method.



For most children, most of the time, this approach will get the desired behavior if the behavior is taught, consistently modeled, and reinforced. Of course, all children come to a place where they will challenge rules and some children will consistently challenge them. In these cases, there have to be consequences to repeated challenging behavior. Consequences work best when they are either determined in advance or clearly explained, and when they are predictable. When N. was about five, for example, he went through a phase of refusing the kippah. But when he did that, he was told that since he was too young to follow the rule, he was too young to be in services, and so one of us would take him out. Of course, people who do not attend services don't get to have a cookie at the oneg afterwards e.g. no kippah, no services; no services, no cookie. Of course, that meant that we left before the oneg, so we adults did not get to shmooze, either. But being a parent sometimes means sacrificing for the child.



NOTE: It is important to adjust rules and expectations to the child. This is known as "choosing your battle." If a child has sensory sensitivities, for example, expecting him to remain in a Purim service with noisemakers might be a tad unrealistic. You can either spend your time fighting the kid or you can take him to the nursery. When N. was little this was our choice. So we expected him to remain for through the Amidah (prayer) and then we took turns taking him out. Now he takes himself out when it gets to be too much. Groggers (noisemakers) were not a hill we chose to die on.



So how does all of this apply to Machon? First, the stakeholders for Machon must agree upon a limited number of positively stated rules and consequences. Everyone needs to know what they are--staff, parents and students. Secondly, the rules must be taught to the students so that they know what the expected behavior looks like. Thirdly, the expected behavior must be modeled by teachers and parents. Fourthly, the expected behavior must be reinforced so that students get social and personal rewards out of behaving well, and equally important, consequences must be assessed when students challenge the rules. All of this should be done with the assumption that the kids are not inherently unwilling to follow the rules. Most of them are social beings, after all. And it is really, really important not to punish all of the kids for the infractions of a few.



For me, this was an exercise in thinking through this problem, if nothing else. And it probably will come to nothing else. My teacher, Cantor Jacquie used to say: "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you and annoys the pig."



But it is fun while it lasts.

Two Steps Back Part III: Good Behavior Must Be Taught

In two previous posts, I have discussed at length the problems we are experiencing with Machon--N.'s religious education. And you may be wondering, well, what do you think ought to be done about it? Besides this:

"...No more committees but only picnics and orgies

and dances. I have spoken. So be it forevermore."

Marge Piercy, The Report of the Fourteenth Subcommittee on Convening a Discussion Group

I mean picnics and dances are probably a good idea, once in a while. But orgies? Definitely not an activity likely to be acceptable in a religious school!

What I propose is a model of old-fashioned discipline, a system called Positive Behavior Supports. Although this sounds slightly politically correct, another fad out of the schools of education, it is really just 'educationese' for the development of a comprehensive disciplinary set of rules that govern a school, and the methodology used to teach the students proper behavior. In reality it is as 'old as the hills,' something that every teacher in the one-room schoolhouses on the prairie knew: in order to get good behavior from pupils, a teacher must establish a clear set of rules and classroom procedures, teach the students these rules and procedures, and then visit consequences on those pupils who do not choose to follow the rules and procedures.

There is one difference between the teacher in the one-room schoolhouse and teachers today, however. In those days, the teacher could be fairly certain that children would come to school having learned rules and procedures for polite behavior and smooth family living at home. Those teachers only needed to tweak the rules and procedures to fit the classroom.

Unfortunately, in our own day, many of the children starting school have not been raised by their own parents in the their own homes, but by underpaid and overworked daycare staffers who may have found it more expedient to do for the kids, rather than teach them how to do for themselves. Or even worse, children in low-quality facilities may be somewhat neglected in the area of discipline altogether. To make matters worse, kindergarten, which used to be the place where children were systematically taught the rules and procedures for working well in a classroom, has become academic and such lessons are assumed to have been taught in the pre-school or daycare. But in reality, they may not have been taught at all. Not in early childhood, not in elementary school, and not in middle school or high school.

There have also been changes in the way that children are being raised by their parents in our culture. Many parents do not maintain consistent, well-thought out discipline in the home for their children. For at least one whole generation, and part of another, children have been seen as friends and companions for many parents, and the relationship of the parent as teacher of the child has been neglected. This has consequences on what a child knows about his or her place in the world, and about discipline when they come to school or other public places. It is not my intention to disparage parents here, many of whom are doing the best they can with the tools they have been taught; rather it is my purpose to point out that we can discuss who should be responsible until the cows come home, but it will still be necessary for a teacher to teach more than content if a well-ordered classroom environment is desired.

An aside: I have noticed that homeschooled children, by and large, are much more likely to have been taught good manners and discipline by their parents. I have rarely experienced a homeschool child without them. I suspect that a parent is more bound to be more committed to this than anyone else, since parents have the greatest interest in good results in all areas.

Now, when a school or other educational setting has a system of Positive Behavior Supports in place, it is relatively easy to introduce the little ones just starting out to the rules and procedures, because the rest of the group, administrators, teachers, staff, and older students are, for the most part, modeling the good behavior. It is true that most kids will, at one time or another, challenge the rules and procedures, but if the child has been consistently taught, and has seen good behavior modeled, and has been given consequences for poor behavior, then correcting this is not that difficult. It is in the range of the child's experience to expect that the challenge will be met and the behavior corrected. One can expect that about 90% of children will respond well to a system of positive behavior supports. (NOTE: I say 'well' not 'perfectly.' One problem that we have in making any positive changes in our society is the tendency to make the perfect the enemy of the good. No child is ever going to behave perfectly. We are striving to get good behavior consistently, not perfect behavior).

However, there are real problems in implementing Positive Behavior Supports in a situation like that of Machon. There, the students are teenagers who have grown to expect inconsistent discipline or none at all, in that environment. Some may also not have been taught polite manners toward their peers and adults in other settings, such as home and/or school. In my experience as a teacher in a private school, many of the parents themselves lacked good manners in their behavior towards faculty and staff, and encouraged the same in their children. Some parents also found ways to protect their children from the consequences of poor behavior, which had some disasterous results as the children reached the age of majority. At any rate, it is more difficult to unteach poor behavior in a certain setting than it would have been to teach good behavior in the first place. The kids in Machon have had a number of years in which they have learned to work the system, getting out of any consequences for bad behavior.

An institution in the situation that Machon is in cannot expect quick response or magical changes. This does not mean that Positive Behavior Supports will not work. It does mean that it must be consistently applied for a longer period of time, and the principles must be modeled not only for the students, but for the parents in their interactions with the teachers and staff. Teachers and staff must be supported in their efforts to consistently apply the rules and procedures. Although this is not a zero-tolerance type of strategy, the rules and procedures must be applied fairly to all. If the "powers that be" find ways to make exceptions for particular parents, the strategy will fail.

Personally, I believe that Positive Behavior Supports would be a good way to go for Machon and the entire religious school at our synagogue. It would require training teachers and staff, and consistent, non-egoizing support from the clergy and adminstrators. However, in my experience with the system there, it seems they go for the quick-fix, like the arbitrary 'kick 'em' out rule outlined in the letter. There was a pretty good system of discipline outlined in the parent handbook at the beginning of the year. It failed for lack of being used in the difficult cases. This new rule will fail regardless of whether it becomes a one-strike-and-you're-out policy or a revolving door, because there is no consistent set of rules and procedures, no method for teaching the desired behavior, and the misbehavior is not well defined, which means that the kids and parents can continue to work the system.

Still, one can hope!

Next time, I am going to outline what a Positive Behavior Supports system might look like in the Machon setting.

Two Steps Back Part II: The Organization or Lack Thereof

A Digression on Cause

"In the room fog gathers under the ceiling and thickens

in every brain. Let us form committees spawning

subcommittees all laying little moldy eggs of reports.

Under the gray fluorescent sun they will crack

to hatch scuttling lizards of more committees."

--Marge Piercy, Report of the Fourtheenth Subcommittee on Convening a Discussion Group

The quote from the poem above summarizes some of my feelings about what might be going on with the problems in Machon, and in religious education in general, which has encompassed Sunday School (K-6) and Hebrew School. This at least, is how have experienced it over the past four years.

I think the ultimate problem is that the problem has been talked to death. Many bright and shining generalizations have been developed, mission statements have been written, and overarching dreams for a utopian future for education at the synagogue have been expressed. All of this at the expense of actually hiring an educator who knows what he or she is doing and then letting that person actually get something done. To put it more bluntly, the problem lies in talk as a substitute for action, and micromanagement as a substitute for competent leadership. Rather like the federal government.

Gentle Reader, I will leave who is doing the talking and who is doing the micromanagement to your imagination. If you have ever been a member of an organization that has slid into chaos, especially religious chaos, you know who I am talking about. If you haven't, then count yourself as a fortunate soul, and may you always be so blessed.

Now I don't have a clue as to how to solve such a problem. And I am rather thankful that my synagogue would never call on me to solve it. Or even to help solve it. I am not among the rabbi's favorites, and in fact, I expect he winces every time I approach him with a question, like I did on Friday night.

We haven't been going to services much lately.

We have lots of reasons, most of which are probably unimportant to anyone else. However, this past Friday night, we had been invited, and then uninvited, and then, through some politic maneuvering on the part of someone far more skilled at diplomacy than I, invited again, to light the candles at the evening service in honor of our covert anniversary. If you can follow that, you can probably understand why we have felt the need to step way back in our participation in the synagogue.

That this small personal insult unfolded at the same time as the latest crisis in Machon, and a turf-war surrounding a Torah study group, and a sudden, unexplained reoganization in the early childhood center--and if you can grok the fact that these are all probably unrelated--except to certain egos-- you might begin to get the picture of why I call it chaos. And you can probably also see how difficult all of this for me, hampered as I am by the absence of political and social savvy that is associated with the broader autistic phenotype, to even begin to unravel. For example, I am not certain which egos are at work here, or who might be behind what, but I can certainly smell something rotten in Denmark.

And I wonder why it took G-d forty years to get the Israelites to the promised land?

Meshuggeneh*!

*Nuts.

Where was I? Even telling the story tends to induce an episode of full-blown situational confusion in which all I want to do is throw my hands up in disgust and plead for mercy. Well.

Oh, yes. Friday night.

So we lit candles, although our blessing was omitted, for reasons that are unclear and which will remain so until the coming of the Messiah. We also stroked the possibly responsible egos by thanking them profusely and pretending we did not know that we had nearly been handed our hats.
(Score: political correctness 2, us 1).

The sermon--why, oh, why did the early reformers have to copy that particular Protestant invention?--was about the latest vision statement out of the Lifelong Learning Committee. They actually have a plan. Well, maybe not an actual plan--more like an ideal. Or..well, I don't know what to call it, but they said that they wanted to hire a Director of Life-Long Learning that will do just about everything except actually run the religious school. For that they want a Religious Education Coordinator. Oh, and they will need an Early Childhood Coordinator. And, naturally, so that adult education will not feel left out, they need one for that, too.

At this point, Bruce leaned over and began calculating on his watch. He was muttering:

"Open parentheses. Recruitment expenses. Salary. Expense account. Benefits. Close Parentheses. Open parentheses...."

I poked him in the ribs and muttered, "Don't geek out on me on Shabbat!"

He poked me back and hissed: "Well, they're the ones that mentioned money."

I whispered: "Well, they actually didn't, but..."

He muttered: "I can't pray when they start upping our dues in the middle of a service. How many relatives do they have anyway?"

But the part that really got my attention was when were told that if they could not find exactly the right person, they'd wait until the next year and start again.

I poked Bruce. "Great," I whispered, "So we can have chaos in the religious school for another year."

Bruce whispered: "I thought our G-d liked cosmos."

"No, honey," I whispered. "That's the 'Geek' gods. Ba-bum!"

Then we both turned and smiled angelically at the rabbi who was gazing in our direction.

Maybe he was regretting making us move out of the back row.

So at the oneg I asked my question: "In the meantime, what are you going to do about the current problems in Machon?"

I could give you a blow-by-blow account of that conversation, but my fingers are getting tired. Let's just cut to the chase.

Probably not much.

Possibly some new emergency policy that has not been well thought out.

Maybe a "coordinator" who knows something about school policy and discipline. Which raises another question. Will they let the person actually do the job?

Score: 'Process' 100, our kids ZIP.

I realize that I did not write the promised What Should Be Done installment.

But I wanted to answer a comments question: Why do you think this has become a widespread problem?

Maybe you can ferret out an answer from this account. I think it is ego-politics and focus on process at the expense of results.

In part III, I will get to what I would do if I were the Queen of Machon.

Here's a hint:

"...but oh, oh in me

Lurks a tyrant with double-bladed axe who longs

to swing it wide and shining, who longs to stand

And shreik, You Shall Do As I Say, pig-bastards!

No more committees but only picnics and orgies

And dances. I have spoken. So be it forevermore."

--Marge Piercy, Report of the Fourteenth Subcomittee on Convening a Discussion Group