Recipient: Judy Snowbell Diamond

Judy said that “her love of learning Torah” is what inspires her to teach with excellence. She gets excited about instilling her love of the Torah in her students and seeing them come to love it too. A good day is when students stay beyond class time because their passions have been ignited.

From the beginning of the year, Judy models different kinds of inquiry. She weans her students from her doing the work and guides them with questions. She loves being able to ‘pull back’ and let them see into the text on their own. She includes lots of discussion, question and answer and insures that each student is involved somehow each day. She is thrilled when a lesson goes differently than planned because it challenges her thinking and raises issues in her understanding of the text.

Judy feels very fortunate to combine her passion for teaching with raising her children and thanks Etan, her very supportive husband.

Lizzie, one of Mrs. Snowbell Diamond’s students wrote:

Mrs. Snowbell Diamond is a brilliant, outstanding, inspiring teacher, person and role model, who was born to teach!

Her classes are incredible—she brought learning Torah to new heights. I find that while learning from her, I gain deeper perspectives and meanings in the text. She clearly loves her subject and her classes stay with me vividly.

She encouraged me to participate more in class. It is to her credit that I do so in other classes as well. Prior to having her, I was often afraid to raise my hand and participate for fear that I would have the wrong answer or embarrass myself.

She really cares about each of her students. She goes above and beyond her job description. Most days she took a moment to say hi to us personally and she brightened our day with little things she said, such as words of encouragement or commendation, noticing when people improved. She congratulated us in front of the class for various milestones.

Mrs. Snowbell Diamond touches, inspires and makes a difference in her student’s lives. She makes the world a better place by teaching in it.