Madrich

Jordan is a madrich (instructional assistant) in religious school this year. It is his first job of this kind. He is one of about 135 madrichim at our synagogue, in grades 8-12 (serving about 450 students K-7). Many of them help in the classrooms, but they are also song leaders, photographers, librarians, art room organizers, you name it. It's an awesome program.

Jordan is a madrich in a kindergarten class... in the same classroom where he was a preschooler the year we moved here. (My heart!) He reports that the kindergarteners are very cute, that most of them do not say R's or L's properly, and that some of them act very authoritative or bossy, but are not very good at it. Jordan wants to say, "Dude, you're six years old." But he doesn't, because it is his job to be friendly and helpful to them. He didn't even react when the hot glue gun blurped melted glue all over his thumb, because he felt he needed to appear calm and disciplined in front of the students. This was very difficult: his hand was in extreme pain and all he wanted to do was run out of the room and plunge his hand into ice water, but instead he explained patiently to the children something like, "if you don't use a hot glue gun properly, you can get an owie. See, like this right here? It really hurts." A teacher's life, I tell you what.

One of the young ladies, whose name seems to be Poppy, has taken a special shine to Jordan. She spotted him at a park when she was in her family car and babbled to him out the window, saying, "I'm kind of obthethed with you!" Too funny. Jordan claims he hardly does anything to merit this obsession, just listens to her as she chatters happily away. But that clearly counts for a lot.