In life, there are critical moments when you have to take a seat or take a stand.ForBrittany Rozen, that moment came as a sophomore at Le Moyne College, when her professor asked all the students to stand up.
“He said ‘if you are Catholic, sit down, if you’re Protestant, sit down,’” she recalled. “He called out every religion and he even mentioned if you don’t believe in God. He never mentioned Judaism. I couldn’t get myself to sit down and I was the only one standing. I told him I was Jewish. He looked at me like I was crazy. At that point, it hit me and I realized that I was different and it wouldn’t work out there.”
Rozen was a star guard at Vestal High School and she said the main reason she chose to go to a Le Moyne, a Jesuit school, was because she got a scholarship for basketball and would be a starter.
She had visited Chabad on Friday nights and she applied for a transfer to Binghamton but made up her mind that her sophomore year would be her last. She could have hidden the decision from her coach but wanted to be honest in case the coach wanted to play her a little less to give another player time to develop, Rozen recalled. With a tissue box in hand and tears streaming from her eyes, she told her coach of her decision and was shocked by the response.
“She just threw me off the team right there,” Rozen said. “It was heartbreaking. I think in that moment, I lost my identity as a basketball player but I gained my identity as a Jew.”
She remembers crying in the Chabad sukkah soon after and Rivky told her the door was open any time. Now, Rozen is opening the doors of a new school as the director of education. After working at Winston Prep School in Manhattan, she’s been entrusted with starting a satellite school with the same name that is also for children with special needs, in New Jersey. She received her Reading Specialist master’s degree from Columbia University’s Teacher’s College.
Rozen said she is honored to start the new school and her educational philosophy involves proactive teachers who understand cognitive, academic and social requirements and can also be dynamic.
“If the student is not learning the material that you are trying to teach, it is the teacher’s responsibility to figure out why,” she said.
“Once that understanding is developed, a new set of instructional methods must be devised that are directly compatible with that knowledge. Students need to be celebrated and encouraged to believe in themselves in the same way that their optimistic teachers believe in them.”
Rozen, who lives in Washington Heights, shoots hoops once in a while. She fondly recalls being the ball girl for Binghamton’s Women’s Basketball team for five years, ending after the eighth grade. She said it was touching that the team cared enough about her to come to her bat mitzvah.
Rozen, who has done research in autism and graduated from Binghamton in 2007, said she is thrilled to have a job where she enriches the lives of students and helps them feel less excluded.
“My role models are definitely my mom, my dad and the Slonims,” she said. “My parents had faith in me when I wanted to go away to school. The Slonims were there for me without ever being judgmental. When people have confidence in you that you can make the right decision, it makes a big difference.”
Alan Zeitlin teaches English and Journalism at a Brooklyn public high school. As a freelance writer for the past 11 years, his articles have in The Jewish Week, The Journal News and other publications.