Areader recently reached out to Ami with her story:
My husband and I come from chashuve families. We’re a family of rebbeim, morahs and prominent roshei yeshivah who have always been in chinuch.
I remember my mother’s dedication; her students would call her at all hours, and if a student needed a yeshuah, my mother would fast for a day in her zechus.
My siblings and I are (or were) in chinuch. Following our family tradition, my daughter taught first grade for a year between seminary and marriage. She was an excellent teacher and the school begged her to come back, but her husband is learning, and she can’t support a family on a teacher’s salary. She’s taking accounting courses now. I’ve been hiding this from my parents and in-laws because it would devastate them.
Teachers don’t get livable salaries, and the teaching profession isn’t respected the way it used to be. Chinuch was the gold standard; every child wanted to become a teacher. It isn’t like that anymore. I’m afraid for my grandchildren. What will happen if the best of our women choose not to go into chinuch? Who will be their teachers?
We must do something. We must pull together and renew our priorities. We must restore the crown of chinuch habanos to its glory.
“She Made Us
Want to Learn.”
When I think about my own teachers, I’m pretty sure I can point out the ones who loved what they did. They’re the ones whose voices I still hear: The Chumash teacher for whom I’d prepare mefarshim ahead, on my own, in anticipation of raising my hand during a discussion. The parshah teacher whose amazing explanations inspired me to teach parshah for more than 30 years.
And then there was Morah Neiman, who traveled from Williamsburg to Crown Heights for more than 50 years to teach Navi. Morah Neiman required that we memorize some of the pesukim. It’s more than four decades since I sat in her tenth grade Navi class. Start me off and I can keep going, and I can tell you what it means and why it matters.
My mother graduated from Bais Yaakov High School in 1964. Her Navi teacher was Rebbetzin Devorah Zoberman—who taught in Bais Yaakov for 50 years. My mother says, “I can still see Rebbetzin Zoberman, tall and regal, teaching pesukim from Yeshayahu. She made us want to learn.”
Rebbetzin Zoberman passed away 18 years ago. Her daughter, Miriam Tress, says, “My mother’s dedication to her students went far beyond the classroom. She was involved in their shidduchim, and she would help them in other ways as well. A woman recently shared that when she was in high school, her class had picture day, and the girls showed up with their hair all done up —the style then was elaborate beehives. She’d forgotten about picture day and came to school looking like she did every day. My mother put her arm around her and said, ‘You’re better off this way. Stay as you are, without showing off what isn’t real, and you’ll get far in life.’ She never forgot that.”
My grandmother would sit on her big chair near the beveled glass windows in her living room on 51st Street in Boro Park and recite for us: “Chazon Yeshahayau ben Amotz,” which she had studied as a girl in Zdunska Wola, Poland. Bubby came through the concentration camps, through the loss of her parents and most of her siblings, through the rocky transition to a new country and a new language. She lost so much, but the words of the Navi stayed with her throughout the many years after she had first heard them in a world that no longer exists.
Teachers shape young minds and hearts from generation to generation. As our communities grow, as times change, so do the challenges of chinuch.
When Goodwill Isn’t Enough
Many of today’s schools are facing an alarming teacher shortage. Rabbi Zvi Bloom is the executive director at Torah Umesorah, which places rebbeim, morahs, and principals in positions all over the country. Rabbi Bloom says, “We see both sides. Schools come to us looking for candidates, candidates come to us looking for jobs, and we match them. But these days, many highly qualified women are leaving the field, and not as many are going into it.”
Even as schools try to become more competitive, with some raising salaries or offering benefits such as tuition discounts and childcare, the industry faces an increase in student enrollment and a decrease in teacher applications.
In the past, there have been efforts, on local levels and on a broader scale, to create community endowment funds to support chinuch. For example, in 1997, a Chicago businessman, George Hanus, came up with a five percent solution to alleviate the budget deficits in yeshivos and day schools in the US. He proposed that American Jews should be encouraged, when writing their wills, to bequeath five percent of their estate to an endowment fund for a school of their choice. Initially, the plan received some attention from askanim, but little progress was made.
Last summer, a group of mothers and morahs gathered in Lakewood to discuss this issue and to start a campaign in which balebatim would be asked to donate matching funds for teacher raises. At the meeting, one principal shared that her school had 11 open teaching positions. She had received ten applications but held off on hiring because none of the applicants met her standards. As the end of the summer neared, it was crunch time, and she had no choice but to hire all ten.
One mother says, “You can’t just put your child on the bus in the morning and leave her in the hands of the school. You have to know what’s going on behind the scenes. Does your child have a good teacher? Is the teacher being compensated properly?”
“It’s not that the girls don’t want to teach,” Mrs. Debbie Selengut, assistant principal at Bnos Bracha in Passaic, explains. “One of my teachers just had her last day. She’s getting married and moving to Israel, where she’ll do remote office work. She cried about how much she’ll miss her students. Another girl is marrying a learner, and she’ll be the breadwinner. She already knows that she won’t be able to buy a house on a teacher’s salary.
“Some girls teach for a short time while earning a degree. As soon as they have the degree, they’re out.”
Mrs. Selengut describes the school where she has worked for 27 years as “phenomenal.” She says, “Bnos Bracha will do anything for its teachers. The goodwill is there.” But is that enough?
Although the current issue of teacher salaries may be more challenging, it’s hardly a new story. Mrs. Tress, Rebbetzin Zoberman’s daughter, remembers a strike in Bais Yaakov in the 1970s, when her mother and other teachers refused to return to work until the school paid their outstanding salary, which was long overdue.
Mrs. Tress has also experienced such issues. “I taught for very low pay when I was straight out of seminary,” she says. “At the end of my first year, when I asked for a raise, I was told I could get five dollars more. Today, teachers aren’t managing. By the time they pay the babysitter, they’re left with nothing. Will our teachers only be rich girls or girls whose parents are rich? Is that our new norm?”
We Have Turned Them into Schnorrers!
In 2015, at the Agudath Israel convention and, a few weeks later, at the Torah Umesorah convention, Rabbi Dovid Ozeri, rav of Yad Yosef in Brooklyn, spoke passionately about the communal responsibility to every Jew in need, to ※provide whatever he is lacking.” He focused on the unmet needs of melamdim, the Torah teachers who keep the world going. Rabbi Ozeri cried out, ※We cannot afford to lose our rebbeim. Are we providing what they are lacking?”
To read more, subscribe to Ami
