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(Editor’s Note: This is the last in a series of stories about Naomi Rubinstein,
a first-year teacher at Potomac Elementary School.)
Her first year of teaching behind her, former financial analyst Naomi
Rubinstein has risen to the challenge of the classroom
By Meredith Carlson Daly
Naomi Rubinstein has rounded the corner of her learning curve. In just one
year after trading a high-paying job as a financial analyst in New York City
for a teaching post back home in Montgomery County, Naomi, 28, has accelerated
from novice classroom teacher at Potomac Elementary School to confident, fourth-grade
team leader.
School Principal Linda Goldberg promoted Naomi early this year to lead the
team of four, all of whom are new to the school. “I think her personality
is so serious, she cares so much, she had planned out the first nine weeks
of school before it started,” Goldberg says.
Naomi already has offered to come in over the summer to help Goldberg interview
new teachers and prepare for next year.
Highly organized and disciplined, Naomi brought her intense work ethic honed
from years of 90-hour work weeks to the cheerful, brightly colored Classroom
5 where she admits she did as much learning as teaching this year. “The first
day of school, I scripted every word,” Naomi says. “Those first 10 minutes
are so crucial, that’s when kids make their first impression.”
Like most new teachers, she worried about the first few weeks of school,
mainly how her students would behave. “You have this fear that you won’t be
able to control the class,” Naomi says. “But that fear went away immediately.”
Indeed, Goldberg says, there has been a noticeable change in confidence in
Naomi and her peers. “That nervousness has dissipated,” Goldberg says.
“In the beginning of the year, I was new, I was trying to give everyone what
they needed,” Naomi says. “It became easier for me to do that as the year
went on.” She speaks about her first year in the past tense—weeks before the
year is over—because she believes the hard times are behind her and already
has incorporated the lessons learned into practice.
Naomi borrowed tricks and props, learned from school specialists, to meet
her students’ needs. For example, she gave students in small reading groups
a stack of index cards and asked them to use one when they wanted to participate.
That way, children who weren’t as quick to raise their hand could place a
card on the table and get a turn to speak.
“I think…meeting each kid’s needs, that’s been the biggest area of growth
this year for me,” Naomi says.
She recalls one student whose trademark comment “I
don’t get it,” finally got to her. She pulled him aside
one day and asked him if he knew the story of The
Little Engine That Could.
He did not and she recited it, making him repeat the refrain: “I think I
can; I think I can.”
“I know it sounds corny, but it totally worked,” she says, laughing at the
simplicity of the lesson.
Naomi has closely followed the county’s copious curriculum guidelines, making
sure she has read the material well before class begins. She expected her
first year to be a lot of after-school hours, late nights of preparations
and readings and weekends working from home—and she was right.
She still takes work home, but she doesn’t stay late every day as she did
earlier in the year. She reserves time on Sunday evenings to prepare for the
week.
“I’m much more efficient,” Naomi says. “Now, I don’t feel like if I haven’t
spent an hour looking at a lesson I won’t know what to do,” Naomi says. “I’m
better at thinking on my feet.”
As she has become more comfortable in the classroom, she draws on her own
life experiences growing up in Rockville. Music and the arts were integral
parts of her early years.
Her mother is a musician and artist, and her sister is an actress. Naomi
began ballet at age 3 and continued with jazz dance. Her penchant for performing
arts was one of the key reasons she was drawn to Potomac’s arts program—one
of three county elementary schools with the original opera and arts-in-the-classroom
projects.
As part of a federal grant, the school hires a consultant who helps teachers
and students put together an annual “Museum in Progress.” Naomi’s students
participated in the Native American Museum, which included floor-to-ceiling
exhibits along the hallways.
Students made life-size sunflowers and corn stalks that hung outside Classroom
5, illustrating the “three sister crops” of the tribe: corns, beans and squash.
Naomi says the exercise was a huge hit. “It’s a way for students to show
they’re learning,” Naomi says. “It really motivates them.”
The students became docents, museum guides for their peers and parents during
their museum’s opening night. In the coming year, Naomi says she hopes to
incorporate even more of the arts into her everyday lessons.
“My philosophy is the teacher should not be the center of attention in a
classroom,” Naomi says. “It’s very important that the kids know that they
can figure it out.”
Occasionally, Naomi says, she misses the mental challenge of the financial
world she left behind. “I wouldn’t want to go back to it,” she says, especially
getting home at 4 a.m., crying because she was so exhausted. “This is like
a walk in the park,” she adds, “except it’s not in the sense that you have
to have an incredible amount of patience.”
Naomi says the only crying she anticipates this year is when her first crop
of students move on. “I’m really happy,” she says. “One of the reasons I love
teaching is that I loved being onstage as a kid. As a teacher, you’re constantly needing to perform.”
Meredith Carlson Daly is a freelance writer living in Silver Spring.
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