Rona Sterling, Hebrew Teacher
Rona Sterling has been a Jewish educator for 48 years. She has a Masters in Reading and has devoted her knowledge and energy to making Jewish education meaningful, fun and creative. For 12 years she taught 3rd and 4th grade at Woodlands Community Temple in White Plains where she and her co-teacher created an innovative Israel curriculum that was shared with the Board of Jewish Education. Rona taught beginning and conversational Hebrew as well.
For 17 years, Rona joyously worked as a preschool teacher at Beginning Years in Chappaqua, New York. She was one of the founding teachers and eventually became the Assistant Director. Rona has shared her love of Judaism with Sinai Free Synagogue over many years. She and her co-teacher Barbara Korner originated our Beresheet Program for 3 and 4 year olds, allowing them and their families to experience the holidays through song, art, stories, and cooking. She has taught 4th-6th grade Hebrew in our congregation for several years. During the past two years, due to Covid, Rona began teaching Hebrew virtually. She works individually with each student for 25-30 minutes using Eyal, a self-paced program, as well as interactive programs for teaching prayers. To her great surprise, both she and the students have found that learning this way for Hebrew works very well. Each lesson is tailored to the student’s needs.
Some comments from parents at the end of this year:
“It takes a special person/teacher to engage a kid like my son in virtual Hebrew lessons and I could tell it went well for him. I appreciate you spending the time getting to know him and talking sports. It made all the difference!”
“We appreciate your patience and your flexibility with our schedule”
“Thank you for your patience, knowledge, time and overall AWESOMENESS. We look forward to continuing our children’s Hebrew education with you.”
Mary Petzke, K-3 Teacher
All of our religious school teachers are also great academics, and Mary Petzke is no exception. A beloved and devoted SFS congregant of many years, Mary is the Assistant Dean for Medical Student Research at New York Medical College, and her impressive history of university teaching has transferred to our youngest students in the most impactful way. Long before the Jewish Life Vocabulary curriculum came to be, Mary taught Hebrew words and the aleph bet to our K-3 students. Mary loves to create age-appropriate curriculum and she incorporates Jewish art, books, dance, song and film/media into her teaching.
Mindi Lo Cicero, 4th and 5th Grade Teacher
Mindi Lo Cicero, known to her students as “MizLo”, graduated from SUNY Cortland with a degree in Education and English, began a Master’s program at Stony Brook and finished at Manhattanville College. She is the proud mother of a son and a daughter, each of whom has added two amazing granddaughters to the family.
After raising her children in Scarsdale, she lived in Hartsdale for 17 years and now calls Yonkers home. Beginning her teaching career with kindergarteners, she has taught every grade from K-12, except fifth. During her 20-year tenure in the English Department at Lehman High School in the Bronx, she taught all four grades from skills level through honors, wrote the Senior Honors curriculum, inaugurated a double period class for recently arrived non-English speaking immigrants, partnered with a Special Education teacher in an ICT class, taught night school for students who needed extra help passing the Regents exam (where the AP referred to her as “the Closer”) and mentored 18 new teachers, as well as countless students, while maintaining her private tutoring students. She retired in 2016.
As a member of Scarsdale Synagogue Tremont Temple for 22 years, she served as president of the Sisterhood for many years and taught Judaica to grades 4 though 6, as well as teaching Gesher L’Kesher, the middle school portion of the Confirmation program.
On the social side, she especially enjoyed, and was a founding and participating member of, the monthly Torah study group. As a volunteer, she tutors grammar school students who need extra reading help and works at a program teaching immigrants to read. She loves to read, belongs to 3 book clubs, is addicted to WORDLE, walks 5 miles a day, is beyond delighted to be able to travel again and spends lots of time in her garden. Her favorite activity is the time she spends with her four granddaughters aged 5 through 12.
Harriet Braunstein, Youth Coordinator and Grades 6-7 Teacher
Harriet has been repairing the world her entire life and career. Along with an impressive career as an RN, Harriet has been a religious educator for 17 years, teaching at Beth El Temple Center in Belmont, MA, until joining our teaching staff at SFS Religious School in 2021. In her own words, “I get joy from teaching young people about the richness of their Jewish experience and look forward to teaching the students at SFS in the future”.
Peter Grand, Academy Teacher
Our beloved long-time congregant, Peter Grand, has a huge teen following for his wonderful, down-to-earth rapport in teaching Torah and hot topics to our teens. Of his teaching style, Peter says:
“I come to Judaism after a long away-and-back journey. I was raised under the strict supervision of Rabbis Freud, Marx, and Einstein. To me, the universe seems alive in a way that atheism no longer captures, a miracle of evolving self-awareness. Through journeys into science and comparative religion, I have slowly come to appreciate the depth of my own time-tested Jewish spiritual tradition. Since all learning is self-education, my teaching method is to engage to join with my students as a student. I deeply appreciate the chance to hear them think.”
