How I became interested

Mindful of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan's teaching that Jews live in two civilizations, when I was ready to send my children to school, I looked for a Jewish school that would explain the majority culture, but in Jewish terms. "When you teach Chaucer," I would ask, "What do you tell the students about 'the holy blissful martyr?'" We chose our school accordingly, and I knew that my husband and I had succeeded based on two incidents.
1. When my older daughter was 5, my Catholic uncle died and I took her with me to Montreal for the funeral. The priest was very sensitive to the fact that all the mourners were Jewish, but the funeral did take place in a church. My yeshiva-educated daughter looked around the room and said, "I didn't know Catholics believed in avodah zarah (idol worship)." I explained to her that the statues of saints were there for worshipers to use as focuses for their devotions, and that they were representations of good people. "Ah," she said with some satisfaction, "Tzaddikim."
2. During Christmas week, many of our neighbors had creche scenes in their front yards. My younger daughter, about 3, came to me at a melave malka (Saturday night party to extend the sabbath) and announced in a rather loud voice to the gathered crowd that she knew the difference between Jews and Catholics. "We think G-d is single," she opined, "and they think He has a family."

Later, I realized that culturally appropriate education went beyond religion. Working in East New York with multiply handicapped children, I saw that many of the computer programs designed to teach them vocabulary were limited. My children would see and say "sofa" and the program would say "couch." They were being asked to distinguish between a duck and a goose, when what they really needed was to be able to distinguish between a policeman and someone in a doorman's uniform on his way home from work. My response was to begin writing my own software.

If I am teaching a concept (for example: rhyme, contrast, similarity, gravity) it is independent of content, which means that the more familiar the content, the more easily grasped the concept. Even when training adults to use databases, using "their" data makes the training go more smoothly.

I'm looking for your insights, from your experience as a teacher or a learner. Post examples of when getting on the same wavelength has helped you to convey or learn something new.