Career Envy: Elevating the Profile of Jewish Education Careers

Role models are important, but career choice requires more than simple exposure. A phenomenon that has been considered in career choice and leadership is the “tap on the shoulder,” the value of someone in the field specifically identifying your talent and steering you towards activities and choices that will enhance your skills. Schools are uniquely positioned to identify those students who demonstrate an interest in or affinity for learning, teaching and caring for others. However, unless schools can offer meaningful opportunities for such students to increase their teaching exposure and experience, tapping them on the shoulder is unlikely to result in more young people considering careers in education.

A third model of career cultivation emphasizes personal development, including self-awareness of potential, motivation to pursue the career and exposure to experiences that promote mastery of career-related skills. This model combines the “if you can see it, you can be it” approach of exposure to role models with the “tap on the shoulder” as a motivator. What it adds is the critical component of opportunities that allow those making career choices to experience their growing competence and potential in their chosen field. 

This multi-component model is consistent with our experience working with college students, who are closer to their career choices than middle or high school students. In our MafTeach Fellowship, we select students with teaching potential and combine exposure to mentors who are themselves inspiring educators with fellows’ own authentic experiences as teachers. MafTeach participants have reported shifts in their self-perception to include seeing themselves as Jewish educators and increased commitment to teaching limmudei kodesh as a profession.

Stoking Excitement in Teaching

Waiting until college may be too little too late to inspire future Jewish educators. We may be missing an important opportunity when our schools could be simultaneously elevating and celebrating their educators and cultivating our future professional teaching force. Leveraging existing programs such as career days and professionals’ classroom visits is one opportunity. 

I believe we can go further. We can create future teachers clubs as early as sixth grade. With a faculty advisor, sixth graders could plan a weekly lesson for a younger class, deliver the lesson with supervision, and receive feedback and mentoring. Such teaching clubs could also be expanded through middle and high school with increasing responsibilities afforded those who have demonstrated their skill and commitment. For those high school students who have required chesed hours, or internships, meaningful teaching “placements” in their local area or as a residency in other locales could be offered.

At the high school level, students are excited to add to experiences to their resume, and equally excited about competitions that allow them to showcase their talent amongst their peers and also afford them social opportunities to mingle with like-minded others. The Model UN sponsored by Yeshiva University and STEM hackathons are examples of highly popular programs that may begin with local, school-based “teams” and graduate to large-scale events that are highly energizing.