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Homegrown
alent
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DIANA LIEBERMAN
Copy. Editor/Education Writer

t's the week before Passover at the
Marcus home in Southfield, and
the shelves are filled with wineglasses
and shiny candlesticks. With several
weeks' vacation from graduate school, and
her first career job just weeks away, Lauren
Marcus, 26, has moved back, temporarily,
with her parents.
In deference to her mother's newly
shampooed carpet, she's removed her
shoes, and, in a black sweatshirt with her
bare feet tucked under her, she seems
more like a teenager on break than a ded-
icated and experienced Jewish activist.
"It's important for people to know
that, through our faith, we can get

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tradition of activism.

together on issues that affect us all," she
says. "Through our literature, we have
the responsibility of tikkun olam — the
responsibility to repair the world. That's
something I take very seriously."
Marcus comes by her Jewish activism
naturally. Beginning with her great-
grandmother Lillian and grandmother
Adele, and continuing with her mother
Ruth Miller Marcus, the women of the
family have always taken leadership posi-
tions in the Women's League for
Conservative Judaism. While her mother
is on the WLCJ national board, Marcus
herself chairs the Z'havah group at the
family's synagogue, Congregation Beth
Shalom in Oak Park.
The WLCJ is dedicated to strength-
ening the role of women in their syna-

Teaching B
Tech

Gary Weisserman

brings a simulated

248.642.6787

www. glanczsalon. com

world of knowledge

into the classroom.

SHELL' LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer

94

carries on a family

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•...owne,::

4/26
2002

Lauren Marcus

ary Weisserman's students know if he's not in the
classroom, he's in the University of Michigan
computer lab or at a West Bloomfield Caribou
Coffee, where he is such a regular patron that,
for a while, "Jamaican Blue Mountain: Gary's Favorite" was
on the menu board.
They also know their teacher as a man who is always
accessible, forever working on something amazingly innova-

tive and almost never asleep.
Weisserman, whose refrigerator is
plastered with thank-you letters from
kids who say he's changed their lives,
didn't even mean to become a teacher.
"It just kind of happened," says the 32-
year-old White Lake Township resident
who graduated from college with publica-
tions and writing awards already in hand.
At 20, the Detroit native, who
attended Hillel Day School of
Metropolitan Detroit and Farmington
Harrison High School, found himself
with a University of Michigan English
degree, a teaching certificate and a
classroom full of Michigan State
University college students.
"After a year, I found I enjoyed
teaching far more than I liked writ-
ing," he says.
Now a teacher at West Bloomfield
High School and lecturer and project
developer at U-M, his demanding
schedule includes designing, creating
and implementing Web-based projects
for his students as well as completing a Ph.D. in education-
al technology from U-M, where he also received a master's
degree in school administration with a focus on finance
and policy.

Teaching Through Technology

Early on in his teaching career, Weisserman discovered one
way to make certain that students were challenged and
engaged was to create "the opportunity for exceptional
learning experiences."
Knowing what works for kids, his focus has been on