Get to Know a Co-op School Teacher!

The 10 Question Teacher Interview For Our Woodshop teacher, Rotem Linial!

1. How long have you been working at The Co-op School?

   “This is my first year with The Co-op School.”

2. What’s your favorite part of being part of The Co-op School?

   “I love working with all of the students. It’s been so much fun teaching everyone how to work in the woodshop, how to plan a project and how to execute it, how to work together and be safe. It’s been great learning about the school from the students and I absolutley love that what we are doing is based in curiosity, play and respect. I love coming up with new projects and things for us to build around the school.”

3. What do you like to do for fun?

   “I love making art in my studio, watching movies and hanging out at home, gardening, riding my bike around New York and visiting any one of the million museums we are so lucky to have in this city.”

4. What’s your favorite restaurant?

   “Cocoron in Manhattan, a small Japanese soba restaurant. I love their soba tea and their dipping sobas. It’s a place that makes you really play with your food and build your own meal as you go.”

5. What’s your favorite sandwich?

   “Fresh grilled fish on warm bread with huge chunks of tomato and a squeeze of lemon, parsley and hot pepper, bought and consumed off of a fishing boat in the harbor in Istanbul a few years ago. But second to that has to be the yummy satisfaction of making my own sandwich using bread I baked, tomatoes I grew and picked, scrambled eggs provided by my backyard chickens (see? I can’t help it—I love making things myself…).”

6. What’s your favorite song?

   “I’ve got Nina Simone playing on repeat recently. There really is nobody like her and somehow the changing weather makes her songs go straight to my heart — I don’t think I can pick just one favorite!”

7. Where do you want your next vacation to be?

   “Sometimes I play a game with my friends—if you could go somewhere for a day where would it be? a weekend? a week? a month?

   A day: Rome, walking the thousand year old streets and visiting the Pantheon.
   A weekend: Morocco, seeing the landscape of my grandma’s childhood in Marrakech.
   A week: Tanzania, visiting the tiny town of Kilwa Kivinje, where I learned to build a boat a few years ago.
   A month: Mongolia and Kazakhstan, hiking the mountains of central Asia and riding horses through the Mongolian steppe.”

8. What are you reading right now?

   ” “A Void” by George Perec (one of my all-time favorite writers). It is a strange book from 1969, famous for the fact that the entire book does not have the letter “e” in it. Pretty incredible (this answer alone has 23 “e”s in it!).”

9. If you could buy yourself anything what would it be?

   “I really have my eye on a open plane ticket around the world…”

10. What TV sitcom family would you most like to be a member of?

    “If they ever made a sitcom based on the Swiss Family Robinson I would definitely want in!”