As meaningful and rewarding as a teaching career may be, it can also be very stressful and demanding. The last few years have been particularly exhausting as teachers have needed to navigate unprecedented challenges—the pandemic, political and social unrest, economic uncertainty, racism, antisemitism, and gun violence in our schools and communities—all of which affect our daily emotional state and feelings of security.
Jewish educators speak about meaning in multiple ways: There is a factual or descriptive sense (e.g., The meaning of the Hebrew word סוס is “horse.”). Meaning can also refer to the relevance of what is learned, the ability of learners to engage with learning in a way that has some emotional investment (e.g., Max found the unit on horses to be meaningful because he grew up on a farm. The unit on iguanas? Not so much.).
