Don't Tell Me Not to Believe

About the Book

            TEACHING!  NEW YORK CITY!  The most important thing that I must state of this book is that this book is a work of fiction.  I am a novelist, so the things chronicled within these pages are undoubtedly not true and the people depicted within are merely figments of my imagination.  The incidents I tell herein never happened; I invented them all.   One day I just sat down at my computer and I figured out that I would invent a story about a teacher in the New York City School System, so here it is.  Coincidentally, I was a teacher, a supervisor, an administrator for that same New York City School System.  But that is merely a coincidence.  And the events depicted within could have possibly happened.   I could pretend to write a memoir, as many teachers have. I could pretend to be Don Quixote, tilting at the windmills of education.  I could pretend to be the Pied Piper of Hamlin, leading my students towards Moses’ Promised Land.  I could tell you that the main reason I wrote this book is to try to make sense of my career.  This book here has a nice feel to it.  After you read it, you probably will figure it could have happened.  Yup, it could have.  It definitely could have happened.  But it is a novel, after all.

This is the story of Larry Rothstein, who was—and is still--a teacher.  He navigated the Red Sea with the abilities of Moses; he taught, motivated and inspired his students and fought regulations and upper echelon administrators to TEACH.  He got sick, teaching, because of construction in his high school, and became a whistle blower—a whistle blower whose whistle constantly was stolen from him.   Regardless of all, he succeeded.  And it isn’t Up the Down Staircase or ‘Tis—but it is education;, or what pretends to be education in our new age.

About the Author

            Gary Chattman has had many varied and celebratory careers dating back to when, as an eleven-year-old, when he was a piano teacher, visiting his pupils’ homes by riding there on his bicycle.  He was a highly successful teacher/administrator with the New York City Department of Education for over 30 years.  Now retired, he also has been a camp director of various camps; a professor of English/drama/music at Pace University, Westchester; The College of New Rochelle; Lehman College of the Bronx.  Throughout his career, he has also served as principal for various Hebrew schools, as well as secular schools.  His concept of personal Judaic education has led to his formulating (with his students and their families) 200 Bar/Bat Mitzvah services in the New York City Metropolitan area.  This utilizes the concept of the child celebrated as the “rabbi” of the day. 

Chattman has formulated many curricula about Jewish education, such as “Jewish Bingo”; “Who Wants to Be a Jewish Millionaire”; “Jewish Monopoly”; board and card games for Judaic educational needs.  Next to his personal Torah in his car trunk is his Casio keyboard, which he uses to teach Jewish music and to write Jewish songs with his students.  Each week he dramatizes Jewish ideas, holidays, history, culture, religion, in short plays featuring Yuki, the Japanese Jewish dog who speaks English and Hebrew.  His students, in this active Jewish learning, read these with him.  His unique brand of “Have Torah—Will Travel” has earned him laudatory articles in both the Jewish Week Newspaper and Westchester Gannett’s The Journal News.

            Chattman has written many stories, songs, plays and novels, as well as the non-fiction parental guide to Bar-and-Bat-Mitzvah titled Coming of Age, the novel If I Should Die Before I Wake; Don’t Tell Me Not To Believe: One Teacher’s Odyssey.  He has formed SUPERTUTORS for the express purpose of bringing religious (and secular) education and identity to children of enlightened families who are eager to give their children a Jewish education that will “stick.”  His unique brand of educational fortitude, whether in teaching piano; the SAT’s; tutoring school subjects from kindergarten-through-college, gives children a sense of “self” and confidence, that not only will help them presently, but for their future.

            The written works of Gary Chattman illustrate the hope and faith that he believes, and that he imparts to his students.