Truly great teachers inspire a love of learning! It can be challenging figuring out how to grab children’s attention and really engage them. One solution is to build connections with students.

As a parent and a teacher myself, I have seen teachers use different approaches when deciding how much of their own life to reveal to students. Over-sharing can become uncomfortable, but under-sharing can leave children not feeling the connection that inspires learning.

This year, my daughter had a teacher who shared about her own culture and faith. Learning about Judaism through the teacher’s stories inspired my daughter’s interest in history and WWII. Featured today on Theresa’s Reviews, I’m sharing this story written by my daughter along with a giveaway of a mini American Girl Molly doll, the doll who lived through WWII.

How One 4th Grade Teacher Sharing Her Life Impacted Mine

Hello, I am Samantha, and recently I finished 4th grade. My 4th grade teacher was Jewish. She always told us stories about her past and about her religion. While listening about her amazing culture, we learned many things about being Jewish. She doesn’t celebrate Christmas like I do, but she has a special holiday called Hanukkah. For eight days, she would like a candle each day, and each day, she would get a present. She believes in the same God that I believe in, but some beliefs are different.

In my fourth grade class, for a few months we had a student teacher. She was also Jewish. One of the most amazing things she told us was how her boyfriend fell off a cliff and broke many bones. The doctors told him that he might never walk again! However, he proved the doctors wrong. As he slowly regained health, my student teacher and her boyfriend planned their wedding. When he became healthy, they got married! This taught me that no matter how terrible something is, things can always get better.

His story was very inspirational. As the class listened, I remembered that Jews were the enemy of the Nazis during World War II. This reminded me of one special American Girl doll from that time period. This doll is named Molly! Molly is one of the first three historical American Girls dolls along with Samantha and Kirsten. Molly’s story was set in 1944. Her father was a soldier in World War II, which I imagine would have been very hard on her family. If I had been alive in 1944, I would have been very sad that my father went out to fight.

Molly is an amazing doll that I fortunately own in the miniature version. Inside the box, it had a miniature book! The book actually had words in it. If you look closely, you can read the story about Molly. There are miniature glasses for the doll to wear. My sister and I enjoy playing with this amazing miniature doll and learning more about what life was like during World War II.