In response to last week’s discussion of the issue of teacher training, I would like to share my perspective as a first year teacher in the high school system in Israel, and as someone who was also trained here.
Education is a field about which everyone has something to say. Unlike other areas where it is understood that not everyone is an expert, education is something which directly affects and is important to everyone in the Jewish community, whether or not one has children currently in the school system. Often, in conversations with people who are not in the field and are critical of the way things are done, I’m tempted to ask them to “leave it to the professionalsâ€. But then I ask myself the same question which Rabbi Blau asks - what exactly do I mean by “professionalsâ€? Does the fact that I have a teaching certificate render me a professional, just as passing the bar would qualify me to practice law? Do I feel that I gained something from the teaching certificate which is serving me now in my first year of teaching in the Israeli school system? The answer is no.
The many hours spent learning educational theory as well as the 20 hours of classroom observation (where I learned more about how not to teach than how to teach) did little if anything to prepare me for the challenges I am facing now in my first year teaching Gemara to a difficult group of Israeli eighth graders. After fulfilling my requirement of two hours of student teaching, I was certified, and thrown into a job where theoretically, I was left to sink or swim (I’m aware that in different programs the requirement is more, but I am speaking from my own experience). I happen to be lucky for two reasons. Firstly, unlike other new teachers, I came in with a substantial amount of teaching experience under my belt. I taught for many summers in Camp Moshava and have been teaching in the seminary system for four years. In camp, I taught three times the minimum hours required to receive a license here after the first year. It is this experience, in addition to having been on a staff with experienced and talented educators, that I learned the invaluable lessons which have been helping me this year. I would be in a much sorrier situation had I come in without having already learned, for example, not to take misbehavior personally and to meet students at their level and bring them up from there. Secondly, I ended up in a school which places great emphasis on new teacher support, something which, from what I hear from my peers, is lacking in many other places.
I agree with Professor Levine that extensive content knowledge is also crucial. This would seem obvious, but it is quite the norm here in Israel to give Limmudei Kodesh hours to anyone who needs additional hours to fill their salary quota, whether or not they are qualified. It seemed peculiar to me that every second teacher where I work teaches Gemara, and so I recently asked one about her learning background. She answered that she took a couple of nighttime adult education courses but that was the extent of it, and ended by saying, “yeah, I haven’t really learned, but I teach!†That is not a sentence that should be coming out of the mouths of teachers of any subject, let alone Gemara, where much of the emphasis in the early stages is on teaching how to learn and not just content. This is the main reason that I chose to do a B.A. in Tanach and Talmud, with a teaching certificate on the side, rather than a B.ed in a teacher’s college. I wanted to study the subject for its own sake, rather than from the perspective of teaching, and I don’t regret that decision. I also have a number of years of higher Beit Midrash learning experience, and think that any Limmudei Kodesh teacher should ideally have spent more than one year learning in a yeshiva or midrasha. There is obviously much learning that happens on the job, but I don’t think there is any replacement for learning for its own sake. In short, I believe that a good educator is created primarily through experience while a good teacher has mastery over a topic.
The last point I would like to raise is that in addition to these two elements, the human element is no less important. Teaching is more than just relaying information and skills; it is a mifgash between individuals which is hard to describe. So much of what we do is about making personal connections with students and inspiring them. This is not something that can be taught in any teacher training program, but is something which comes naturally for some and not others. I think we would do well to put more emphasis on new teachers’ passion, creativity, content knowledge, and ability to connect to students than on their holding a teaching degree.
Shabbat shalom,
Daphna Ansel
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2017 01:23PM by mlb.
