The Priority List - David Menache

"A Teacher's Final Quest to Discover Life's Greatest Lessons"

A friend from the past came to visit me while I was in a very poor situation, and gave me this book. "you must read it !" he said.


The book tells the story of a teacher who finds out one day that he has a terminal brain cancer, and he won't be able to teach from now on. He decided to go out on a journey to meet his former students and ask each one of them one question: "Did I change something in your life?"
Being an educator is the main roll of my professional life. More than once I wondered if I'm a meaningful person to my students' lives?
As long as I was a homeroom teacher, as well as an English teacher, I hardly had any doubt. In the last few years, I was forced, due to health isuess, to be "just" an English teacher. It was then when I first asked myself "Am I a meaningful person in my students' lives?" "Do I leave a mark or make a change in their lives?"
Along his journey, David experience remarkable meetings with his students. He realize that he was much more than a literature and grammar teacher. I dare to say that the different between a teacher and an educator is not about what you teach but the way you teach.
You can find it in a Hebrew translation - סולם הערכים - דוויד מנשה


2 comments:

  1. Eti,

    Your post got my interest from the beginning and kept it all through to the end. I would like to read the book because I feel I learned enough from your review to take a chance on it, without feeling like I already know everything about it. That's a hard balance to strike in a review, but you've done it well here. A good friend once told me "God sends you the book you need to read at the moment you need it." This book sounds like it might fit that description.

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  2. This was very moving. Thank you for your review, Eti.

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