by Lacey Friedman, Beth Sholom
In the past couple months, I have learned a lot from being in the TAP program. One topic it has taught me about accommodating students who have a hard time concentrating in Hebrew School. After we took a month break from the program, we finally had a session again all together in the brand new year.
This month, we had a meeting about how anyone including a comedian can help support mental health with Pam Schuller. Pam is someone who has a mental health disorder called Tourette’s Disease. Although she has this disease she has managed to do a lot including work at a school and help students with mental health concerns and she is a comedian. She was so fun to work with at our recent session. She was telling us about the students she gets to work with and all that she has overcome through her time of being a comedian. She also told us about how failure helped her grow like it does for everyone. This was so interesting to listen to because I agreed with her so much since in life you grow every time you overcome something difficult.
She also mentioned the app she created with students called Here Now app. This app was made to help students have less stress for tests and help with mental health issues. After Pam talked for a little bit, we were put into two separate groups to make some inspiring posters for the App. We had about 10 to 15 minutes to discuss and make the posters as a group. Once we finished we explained them to the group. After we finished with the posters we said goodbye to Pam and thanked her for talking to us about mental health.
For the rest of the session we discussed how Hebrew School was going and any trouble/issues we have been facing as madricha. Once someone spoke, we all would bring ideas on how to help that person or the situation they were having in the class. This was a great session. I learned so much about mental health and how to help someone in the moment.
