By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
It was a disaster. The new teacher at the Rishon Lezion Chabad Day School could not control his class. Rabbi Bentzion Lipskar, the Judaic principal, felt that all the work he had invested in the children was being wasted.
Rishon Lezion was an early stop for many new immigrants to Israel, and the principal spent much of his time and energy helping the students acclimate to their new life. Knowing that the children often didn’t get hot, nutritious meals at home, he would go several times a week, at 6 a.m., to pick up chickens for lunch.
Many of the children had a love for Judaism that they brought with them from their homes, but lacked a basic Jewish education. Rabbi Lipskar’s job was made even harder by parents who pulled their children out of school and had them work menial jobs or help out at home to ease the family’s financial burdens.
Despite all these challenges, he had succeeded in creating a functioning school, only to have his work jeopardized by an incompetent teacher.
Rabbi Shmuel Chaim Frankel, another teacher in the school, would travel daily from Nachlat Har Chabad to Rishon Lezion with Rabbi Lipskar. The two had many discussions about education, and one day, Rabbi Lipskar told Rabbi Frankel that he planned to fire the struggling teacher. Rabbi Frankel was against the idea. “He is in a grave financial situation. If you fire him, he won’t be able to put bread on his table.”
The principal dismissed this argument, however. The needs cannot be mixed up, he said. “Education is education, and livelihood is livelihood. I would be the first one to raise funds to assist him and his family. But someone who educates young children has to be capable of doing the job.”
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Unbelievable insight. I really love this and I am a teacher. Very profound
an art, a science, a skill, a talent, a gift. If someone in a teaching position is not effective, he/she must receive appropriate guidance and self improvement. It is never ok to prolong the inevitable until hundreds of children are ineffectively educated. It’s time for a real look.
This happened maybe 50 years ago. The were no teaching degrees to be had. There were no resource rooms and no PARAs. Teachers had to teach and discipline at the same time. And if they couldn’t. do it, they sold apples!
We have truly become a generation of ” those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach”
The result is a failed school system where teachers can’t teach, students don’t learn to love Torah, and kids end up on the streets.R”L
Imagine you had an employee at a business who kept breaking the computer every other week.
BS”D
wonder if he first guided and advised the teacher how to improve
giving the teacher tools and working with the teacher (having the teacher observe a capable teacher) there is no improvement, then it might be the right thing to fire. The training ideally should be done before school starts.
That if you post in agreement, at least you yourself should be a teacher to know how challenging and thankless a teachers job is.
to #4 a teaching degree doesnt make a good teacher. there are many amazimg teachers who dont have a degree and many with degrees who are terrible teachers.
Its also the schools responsibility to either offer programs which will give the teachers tools and methods to teach or request before hiring, a teacher must have a teaching certificate. Even though a person knows how to learn it doesn’t mean he knows how to teach. DZ.
Good education is very important.
I wish some of the Yeshivas would follow in there philosophy,
Education is Education, and a person needing a livelihood is 2 separate things. Our Yeshivos would Greatly improve if the administration would let go of the weak and incompetent teachers
Happy to hear that education was put first..