This week at school...

Last Tuesday, my second year students and I had participated in a Seder Meal during class. We had just finished talking about Moses and the Passover, and I thought it would be appropriate for them to experience what I dubbed the "Seder Snack." The students were pretty excited about it. I made a "Seder Snack" Guide and they practiced the prayers and discussion of the Seder in English for homework.

For me, the Seder was a lot of work to prepare for - especially the grocery shopping part. I wasn't sure where to find things such as: matzoh, horse radish, bitter herbs (lettuce???), etc. Luckily, I ran into three of my fifth year boys at the potraviny. I recruited them for help. When even they couldn't find some of the things I was looking for, we decided to take some creative liberties with the Seder (bitter herbs = cabbage, matzoh = a very flat cracker... you get the idea). I think the boys thought I was nuts.

Here are pictures of my second Old Testament class enjoying the Seder.

In other news, I gave my third year Life and Teachings of Jesus classes their first test and collected their journals for the first time. (Every week, the students receive a new prompt to write about in their journals. I collect their journals on test days.) I would like to share with you excerpts from a few of my students' journals.

Because we discussing the Law as it related to the Hebrews in class, the prompt for one week was something like: "What are laws? What are their purpose? Do you consider laws helpful or hurtful? Why? Do you consider yourself law-abiding?" Katarina was very honest in her journal response to the question "Do you consider yourself law-abiding?"

She wrote: "It depends if we are talking laws in the constitution or laws written by mum. Of course I respect laws in the constitution because I don’t want to get arretsed. But sometimes I break mum’s laws because I’m growing up and some of them have lost their need." Slovak teenagers are no different than American teenagers : ).

In another journal entry, students were asked to assume the role of a person living at the time of Jesus. They were supposed write a diary entry from a day in the life of that person. (In class, we had been talking about life at the time of Jesus: housing, transportation, food, government, religious practices, education and marriage.) The students could be anyone they wanted: a rabbi, a young boy, a pregnant woman, a Pharisee, someone who was unclean, an engaged man or woman, etc. My student, Zuzi, made me laugh out loud. She began her journal with these two sentences: "My name is Aylar, and I live in Jerusalem. I am one of King Herod's concubines." Needless to say her entry was entertaining but also very insightful. Another one of my students wrote from the point of view of Joshua, who was a young Jewish boy. His entry said, "Today has been a long day. As usual I went to school this morning, but before I left I ate my breakfast – some grains and milk. In our school, our teacher went on reading and repeating the second book of the Torah (may Elohim bless him) – it was boring." I guess students are picking on my southern habit of saying, "God bless him."