Report Cards (III)

In school, we were struggling with how to measure Tefilla on the report card. If I give a student an A or a C in davening, what does that mean? Am I really able to judge another person's kavana?

Maybe I should only measure how a student act in Tefilla and call it "Behavior in Tefilla." But then what grade do you give a child who sits there very quietly, with no siddur and never saying a word to G-d or anyone around him? Is that an A (he behaved nicely) or an F? But then we're not really judging behavior, we're judging behavior we're judging something else. Maybe we should call it "Behaving like a mitpalel."

As I said, we were struggling.

I have twice discussed report cards in Israel (here and here). In the second of those posts, I discussed the self-assessment portion of the report cards and how great that is.

We decided to do that for Tefilla as well.

Each student, for his report card, has to write a mini-essay on how he thinks his tefilla has been going since the beginning of the year. He can write about a specific tefilla or a part of tefilla that was particularly meaningful. Or he can write about things in tefilla that make it hard for him to concentrate. Or he can write about ways he suggests that his tefilla can improve. Whatever he thinks is important for himself and for his parents and for his teachers to know about his own tefilla experience thus far in the year.

We'll see how it goes, but I like the fact - as I mentioned in the last Report Cards post - of the students themselves taking part in their growth. It sounds silly to say, but it bears repeating: The students themselves are an integral part in their own development as mitpalelim.