Nerya Cohen ’99

Posted on March 15, 2024

Lives in: Tel Aviv

Principal of the Amit Bar Ilan School in Petach Tikvah

“I didn’t call myself anything. I was more than a teacher. And less. In the high school classroom you are a drill sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother – father – brother – sister – uncle – aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw.” – Frank McCourt, Teacher Man

The long series of profound crises that we have faced in recent years has deepened the gap between the training that educators receive in Israel and the expectations of them in the field.
During the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, opening the educational system became the prerequisite for reopening the economy and the recovery of the financial market. As a result, educators in schools were required to be both epidemiologists and computer technicians for distance learning. During the political and legal crisis in Israel in 2023, we all became experts in constitutional law for the sake of our students, while at the same time becoming more and more polarized within the classrooms and teachers’ rooms.

In the current war, pedagogical goals became secondary as those of us in the educational system found ourselves negotiating between safety standards and requirements regarding the physical security of our buildings, and our mission of caring for the psychological resilience of our students and staff.

“Emergency routine” is the phrase (and the oxymoron) that has guided the educational system in the last five months, a period that really has combined elements of emergency with routine patterns. This emergency routine of war has created significant challenges for educators – both from a systemic-organizational perspective and from an essential-educational perspective.

From a systemic perspective, this war that was forced on us caused upheaval on the most basic level of the pyramid of needs, and it raised serious questions over every element without which there can be no learning process. Physical infrastructure was no longer taken for granted, as tens of thousands of students from the north and south of the country were evacuated from their homes and absorbed in temporary places around the country. In addition, schools in the center of the country found themselves unprotected and had to move to alternate sites (such that I found myself, as a principal, taking in and welcoming no fewer than five preschools to our building). This challenge raised the question: To what extent can schools send a message of “business as usual,” when at the same time students are anxious about the next siren and worried about their parents and siblings who are enlisted in the army?

Another systemic challenge was the teacher shortage. In the school where I am the principal, most of the homeroom teachers were enlisted to external fronts, precisely at the time that they were most needed on the classroom front. This challenge raised the question of how to keep in touch with staff and their families. These days, I am discovering how complex it is to help each teacher who returns to school reacclimate after long months of reserve military service – the complexity of reuniting with students; the dissonance between reality in the army on the front and life at school; and more. At the same time, necessity is the mother of invention, creating surprising solutions and revealing exceptional strengths and qualities among the staff who stayed at school and filled the roles of those enlisted.

The educational and ethical challenges that the war presented also have many different expressions. When I participated in a tour, for principals, of the kibbutzim and villages that suffered fatal attacks in the October 7th massacre, we were exposed to unthinkable atrocities. This exposure raised a question for us as principals: Do we communicate this to our students, and if so, what parts of it? On the one hand, we are constantly trying to protect them from difficult sights – to prevent them from seeing videos and pictures that expose them to the atrocities. On the other hand, escapism also has its price, in loss of empathy and social solidarity, and lack of understanding of the geopolitical context in which we live.

Nevertheless, this dissonance between the apparent routine in school, and the war that is going on only tens of kilometers from us, does not arise from cutting ourselves off, from complacency, or from disrespect. Rather, it arises from an understanding that this is the imperative of the soldiers who are fighting and risking their lives so that we can continue this routine.

Lastly, the war presents a substantial challenge for all those who seek to promote humanistic values in the educational system. All educational efforts are based on the optimistic belief regarding the choice that is given to each person and the potential for good that is hidden within them. The traumatic encounter with pure evil that we experienced on Simchat Torah put a spoke in our wheels, in a certain sense, and made it very difficult to educate according to these values.

In the first days of the war, I went to a funeral for a soldier that I know. Precisely in those difficult moments, the family chose to play the song “Between the Sounds” of Yonatan Razel, a song that strives to strengthen this optimism and belief in humanity. In the words of the song: “Yet I am full of hope, because people are created in the image of God.”

From the perspective of this past year, the reality in Israel on October 6th, the evening of Simchat Torah, was very distressing. The deep political polarization, the disputes regarding the judicial system, and conflicts around issues of religion and state, were becoming worse and worse, especially in Tel Aviv, where I live. October 7th created a new educational agenda, an agenda that promotes unity, that prioritizes between what is urgent and what is important, what is crucial and what is inessential. As an educator and a principal, the complexities entailed by this war as described here continue, but so too do the efforts to ensure that the great strengths that have been revealed during this time period – among the students, staff, and all of Israeli society – are here to stay.