"I would invite him to go try to fill his gas tank up with gas and pay with passion." This is a quote from Rabbi Pesach Sommer explaining why focusing on Jewish day school teachers having passion/ a sense of mission is not enough. This was in response to a line in the Jewish Action article ‘The Great Teacher Shortage,’ where Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb stated
“One must have a mission. It must be his or her life passion. You can’t be motivated by money to be in this field. Unfortunately, many in today’s generation are focused on materialism and acquiring wealth. I’m not sure what can be done to redirect young people to think about pursuing careers in Jewish education. No matter how much we try to fill the financial gap, there will always be a gap. The sense of mission is key.”
As Rabbi Sommer explains, wanting to be able to pay one’s bills and live with a modicum of dignity (for example, able to pay for your kids to go to camp) can hardly be called a focus “on materialism.”
I was one of the panelists on this Orthodox Conundrum podcast episode, titled ‘The Crisis of Orthodox Teacher Retention: A Panel Discussion.’ Click here to listen.
We discuss:
Salary transparency
Tuition remission
Possible reasons teachers leave (and how it differs - people are not all leaving for the same reason)
The importance of being known, and school culture
Women and their leadership roles (or lack thereof)
Would appreciate it if you give this a listen and leave a comment below! (Otherwise, feel free to follow up with me by email.)
I don’t think there’s a problem of competence vs. charisma when hiring administrators. For such a community-facing role, you need charisma to be competent. However, I’d say there’s sometimes a problem of competence vs prestige. You can hire someone with competence and charisma, or you can hire someone with a fancy degree. In modox schools, the doctorate usually wins.