Gaining Momentum

When I started working at Germantown Jewish Centre (GJC) as a Madrich in Fall 2024, I was nervous. I’ve never really connected to kids, and I had no idea what I was doing. At the start of this year (my second year), I went from working with fourth graders to working with an age group only two years younger than me. Despite having a year of experience under my belt, I felt no more prepared to work with the sixth and seventh graders. And now I had an additional fear… I worried that they wouldn’t listen to me, that I would have no control over them, that I might be the reason they got into an unsafe situation. I started the year feeling like a student again in more ways than one. The teacher had been my teacher just a little while ago. The other Madrich working in the class had also been my Madrich when I was that age. I had no idea how I could be successful in my new class.

When I first heard about the TAP program, I was intrigued. Here was a program with so many benefits and no downsides. The TAP program would help me learn about the children I was working with, learning their needs and how to communicate with them, and learning how to help them.

I’ve always struggled at being attentive to the body language of others and even when I saw it, I never really could interpret it. I’ve had my own issues with learning disabilities for which I was only recently diagnosed. Because I went so many years without support, I learned to overlook learning problems others had as well. I originally interpreted my own learning problems as ordinary and therefore came to interpret others’ learning problems as ordinary as well. I was excited at the chance to improve my understanding, to be able to help the kids under my watch and give them what they need.

The TAP program was exactly what I’d hoped for. Not only was it informative but it was also understanding and very accommodating to all the problems it was teaching about. Not a lot programs are set up expecting and understanding the needs of its participants. But the TAP program did. Every lesson was informative and interesting, touching on important topics for working with kids and navigating the world of adults. TAP gave me information on the way children learn, process, and respond that reassures me in a classroom setting. And because some of the things taught applied to kids my age and older, it gave me faith in my ability to manage a class similar in age to me. TAP taught me so many important things about working with special needs children, but it also gave me the confidence I needed to learn to manage and build connections with my kids at religious school. The TAP program gave me the foundation I needed to grow my skills and confidence as a classroom Madrich as well as teaching me many important lessons that will continue to serve me well as I progress through life.