“…I was so surprised at the love I received after having made a mistake.”

Story by: Chaya Rockford

I tell people that my favorite year of school was the 6th grade. Ironically, that was the year that I remember starting to feel the (self-imposed) perfection pressure more intensely in my schoolwork.

Perhaps this is why this special moment of kindness, sensitivity, and care had such a profound impact on me. We were reviewing Rashi in class and I mistook a letter Gimmel for a Zayin. Morah (Ahuva) New responded: “Honeybunch, that’s a gimmel, not a zayin”. I was so surprised at the love I received after having made a mistake that all I could focus on was the word “honeybunch” as opposed to the mistake. It was such a nice loving word and she directed it towards me even though I made a mistake (aka: did wrong in my mind)! Had she not used that word, I probably would have obsessed for months about that mistake. I probably would not have been able to read aloud in class again out of fear and worry. Instead, I “obsessed” over that beautiful word: Honeybunch. Thank you, Morah New, for trying to show me that making a mistake isn’t the end of the world.

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