Linda Barron in an English classroom in a Kfar Saba junior high.

Eton College or Rugby? Not even close. Bar Lev School in the scenic city of Kfar Saba is where Linda Barron, a former South African, holds court. “I am very tough. I believe in starting tight and then loosening up. They have to earn the right to be treated as my equal. After two years, only by the 9th grade, are the students allowed to call me by my first name. In my first lesson every year I tell them - I am not your friend, I am your teacher.”
Passionate about teaching English, Linda is determined to inculcate her love of language in her students. Her success is evident by the amount of letters she receives from former students expressing how she brought alive what was for them, when they first entered her classroom, just another subject. “I find it so rewarding when my students move beyond the syllabus and start reading English literature on their own initiative, just because it gives them pleasure - their pleasure is my pleasure.
Linda is head of the English department at Bar Lev Junior High School. She has an MA in speech and drama from Trinity College London, and a post graduate teaching degree through the University of South Africa (UNISA). What has changed about teaching English to Israeli school kids since she first came on aliyah 20 years ago from South Africa? She breaks into a broad smile when she recalls teaching fourth grade kids who could not get their tongues around English words “try getting them to say Robinson Crusoe, it's easier for them to scale Masada!”
“Today the situation is entirely different. With the advent of Cable TV, the internet, frequent trips abroad, and the general import of American culture, English has truly become a second language. The kids are coming into the classroom motivated, because they have the basic grounding of the language imposed by the culture.
“They have a desire to progress in English because they know that it is essential in the new age. This makes it all the more challenging and rewarding for the English teacher,” Linda always tells the parents of her pupils that she is not only teaching a subject in school, “I am opening a door to a culture in order for them to take their place in the wide world.”
Linda draws our attention to some of the more humorous by-products of cultural cross-pollination. The amount of English words that have crept into the Hebrew lexicon “leads to interesting results. Words like hamburger, television, radio, chips and steak are in everyday use.
“The other day when we were discussing these words in class, a pupil of mine proudly put up his hand to offer another example, sen-vich (sandwich). ‘Very good Omer,’ I said, ‘another example in the food category. ’ He then went on to embellish his finding, relating that he had seen an exciting Western on TV the night before, where some of the more unsavoury characters were referring to each other as sen-viches. Well, they could probably hear me cackling all the way to Ra‘anana when I realised he was referring to sons of bitches!”
Such is teaching in Israel. He was probably puzzled as to why these heavies were referring to each other as something tucked into two slices of bread, but that, Linda would have to explain later.

by David Kaplan

David Kaplan, a former South African, is a freelance writer living in Kfar Saba.