SBL Alumni Profile: Tziri Lamm, Part 1
PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE| PART SIX
In part one of this six-part series, Tziri Lamm, an alumna of the M.A. Program in School Building Leadership Program at Brooklyn College, reflects on her life and early years as an educator. The application deadline for the M.A. in SBL is March 31, 2019.
(1/6) ” I Got to be a Teacher”
“My first teaching job was in 2005. It started with a mixture of panicky nausea and excitement. On the one hand, I would finally be a teacher, which was my dream, but on the other hand, I would have to contend with real children right in front of me. Lots of faces, and I was the one in charge.
After that year I got married and moved to Israel. During that time I couldn’t teach because I had no formal credentials. Instead, I did some tutoring during my time there. After four years, at the end of the summer, I came back to the States. I was in the process of getting divorced, and I spent the first few weeks just sitting on the couch. Around Yom Kippur, I decided it was time to get up and move on with my life, so I opened a newspaper to look for jobs. I found an advertisement posted in the help-wanted section of the paper, requesting a twelfth grade English teacher who could start immediately. It was for a Chassidish school, and they hired me just after Sukkos. This was a very chaotic time in my life, and taking a job, especially one in a classroom, helped ground me. Although only three hours a day, five days a week, this was the greatest source of stability I had. In those three hours, I got to be a teacher.
A lot of the definitions that I was accustomed to applying to myself no longer existed: I was no longer a wife, I no longer lived in Israel. Because there was so much in limbo, I didn’t feel I could talk to my friends about what was going on. I didn’t know what to tell them; I didn’t know what to tell myself. Even the label of ‘mother’ was overwhelming for me. I had three tiny kids: a three-year-old, a less than two-year-old, and a newborn. Although the word ‘mother’ definitely applied to me, it didn’t bring me stability because my children were so young and needed so much from me. But throughout all the turmoil, ‘teacher’ was a label that brought me calm. For three hours every day, I could leave all the chaos behind. It was such a comfort to have this one thing that I could lean into and just be.”
This profile is brought to The Jewish Education Project in partnership with The Layers Project Magazine. Read part two.
