Anyone who teaches at reform or conserv. religious schools?

imabima

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 7:40 pm

I teach at a reform after school school and I'm looking to connect with other frum teachers in my position. Is anyone out there? I'd love to chat about ideas/issues we have.

amother

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 8:07 pm

I don't just teach there, I run them.

Right now on staff, out of 14 teachers about half are frum.
One of the things that I do when I hire a frum teacher is "prepare" them for what it will be like working with this population.

amother

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 8:14 pm

I used to. Taught in both reform and conservative day schools and after-school programs for many years. I continued to work in those environments while becoming frum, but eventually got fired when they decided I was simply way too religious and not representing their ideals to the students. It was just as well. I would have stuck around longer because the money was good, but I was getting very depressed there at the same time.

Houseofmen

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 8:18 pm

I went to a conservative school. Growing up, there was one or two orthodox teachers there. There were probably some cultural issues- like if the teacher wore a different legnthed sheitel every day- they didn't understand about wigs, etc...etc...

There was an Orthodox Rabbi who worked there who was told by his Rav: "Ata Taaseh Kiruv"
In other words, speak softly and make a kiddush Hashem- you never know who will be affected by your demeanor. In todays job market, people need to go where there's money and a job

chocolate moose

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 8:23 pm

Not in a loooong time !

Peanut2

Mon, Sep 13 2010, 9:02 pm

I've taught at a Conservative Hebrew school (x3 a week program), at a high school "community" program, where most kids were Reform, a few Conservative, and 3 Orthodox, and currently work full time in a non-frum Jewish educational setting.

Would love to discuss!

amother

Tue, Sep 14 2010, 6:46 am

I'm the imamother that runs a Conservative religious school. I've also run "community" (Conserv and Reform) schools in the past as well.

One thing that I recommend to my frum teachers is to research the history and philisophy of the movement (or movements) that they are working with, so as better to understand their population as well as the educational goals of the school.

Also, I prepare my teachers for working with "interfaith" families. The school I currently run has a VERY high interfaith rate...something like 80%, maybe more.

amother

Tue, Sep 14 2010, 8:52 am

My children go to a community day school where majority of families are conservative or reform (though there are sizeable minority of orthodox families). Most of limdei kodesh teachers are frum, and I think they are very good at presenting positive images of frum lifestyle. In our case, we're lucky that the school curriculum basically follows MO hashkafa (and the parents are aware of this and supportive).

OP's question brought me back an experience when I was helping out "Sunday school" at a reform shul. After spending some time about michig, parve, fleishig and asked the children to draw pictures of some foods they like divided into each categories, so many children drew pictures of shrimps under parve shock

I really didn't know whether to laugh or cry--it was so shocking I still remember it vividly.

Ruchel

Tue, Sep 14 2010, 9:03 am

Good luck to everyone and shkoyech. Working with frummer setting isn't easy, but neither is worker with lighter!
I was supposed to teach at a very light MO school (with a non shomer mitzvos majority among students and teachers) and they decided "someone like me" would breed a dozen of kids and always have to stay home to another sick kid, basically. Rolling Eyes

maofboys

Tue, Sep 14 2010, 10:38 am

I work at an orthodox based Hebrew school for unaffiliated jewish families. We also run into issues about how to teach certain things and not offend people always make a kiddush hashem, and so on. but I was reading the amother who wrote review interfaith backgrounds so you could teach them properly, I hope you don't mean teach them incorrectly. You can't make fake halchas just to make the family happy.
We have many intermarriages in the school I work in as well but I tell the kids you are jewish and these are your laws (one of which is respect your parents even if they are not jewish). Although in my experience the husbands of jewish moms are more respectful of judaism then some of the ffb fathers that have turned irreligious

amother

Tue, Sep 14 2010, 12:55 pm

maofboys wrote:

I'm the amother you are talking about, what I said was "One thing that I recommend to my frum teachers is to research the history and philisophy of the movement (or movements) that they are working with, so as better to understand their population as well as the educational goals of the school." In my opinion, at a Conservative school it is inappropriate to teach Orthodox hashkafa...this is VERY different than an ORTHODOX school that teaches secular kids. When it comes down to it, the Conservative approach to Shobbos and Kashrus is very similar to Orthodox (on paper at least..most people don't actually follow it) so we don't have issues where we would be "making up halachah." In fact I don't quite understand what you mean by this? That we would teach kids that it was ok to eat treif? That would never fly in Conservative.
I myself am quite versed in the halachic process of the Conservative movement, so there are no issues for me.

Now if you're talking about Reform that is a whole other matter. When I ran a Reform school you had to be very careful in how you discussed issues of halachah..in fact, you never really referred to any of it as "law" because its the Reform movement its all a choice.
And by the way, when you are the Director you do need to be careful in how you present certain things so as not to insult families who are, p.s. the ones who hire you and pay your salary. If I have kids coming home from my school and telling their intermarried parents that they are going to h*ll because they married a [gentile], I would probably not last very long. I don't tell my frum teachers to change halachah, I just push sensitivty!