Leading With Deference 

Rabbi Shlomo Kolko

I often recall the proverbial cold showers of my professional youth. In those heady days, as I approached my principalship, invigoration, passion, and determination outpaced experience and wisdom. I was ready to make my mark. The sign by my office could have read: “Beware: Overeager Principal!” In retrospect, it was the voices of reason and the reality checks that kept me from doing too much damage, albeit well-intentioned.  

“The only people who want to be changed are newborns.”  

Thus advised a retired school principal, whose counsel I often sought. He warned me, “You are an upstart coming in with wonderful ideas, expecting people to adjust to your way of thinking. Expect resistance.”  

I had been aware that the team I would be leading had more school tenure than me, some of them edging me out by a few decades. It was obvious that guns blazing would not be my best introduction. I needed to earn trust.  

At the same time, I was confident that with time I’d win them all over, using a combination of strategy, charm, and smarts. I naively assumed that the same teacher-student dynamic that I’d mastered in the classroom, where I had students largely eating out of my hands, could be superimposed at the principal-teacher level, the teachers becoming my eager disciples. After all, someone had chosen me to be the principal; didn’t that mean that I had a vision worth following?  

It didn’t take long to encounter resistance, especially in areas where we tried strong-arming the teachers.  

I discovered that we could get further by promoting a growth culture and encouraging teachers to discover new and better methodologies themselves, without being authoritarian about it. If I could get them to feel like my new idea wastheir choice, teachers would be keener to adopt it. Collaborative analysis, mutually respectful processes, and inclusive discussions became part of my leadership style and remain so to this day. Some might call me conflict-averse, but I find this far more practical and less unpleasant than recurring power struggles.  

But still, what if we could somehow bypass the reticence? In other words, if there were a magical ingredient we could surreptitiously slip into the water cooler that would fully align all our teachers with broadly accepted, data-informed best practices, shouldn’t we do just that? Let’s explore. 

Variety 

In many cases, I have come to see opposing voices less as “resistance” and more as a healthy difference of opinions or styles. The Torah itself—the ultimate Truth—has שבעים פנים, seventy facets, all of them valid. Opposing ideas can be simultaneously deemed אלו ואלו דברי אלוקים חיים, all the word of G-d.  

Beyond the benefits of vigorous debate and the positive buy-in that we can garner by giving our teachers a voice, one-size-fits-all teaching might not even be a desirable goal. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, while not unchallenged, has left a deep imprint on educational thinking. In acknowledging different learning styles, it encourages us to “teach to” those differences in order to engage and reach more kids.   

Notably, all the focus has been on the varied natural aptitudes of learners. As it turns out, teachers are of the same human race as students, and the maxim of כשם שאין פרצופיהם שוות כך אין דעותיהם שוות, that same divinely granted uniqueness, applies. Teachers will naturally be as diverse as their students in our classrooms. 

So how does institutionalized education relate to teachers’ multiple intelligences, their unique proficiencies? Imagine the rebbi who has a gift for creating a rich auditory learning experience, even if visuals are not his strong point, or the morah who can flip the room and create immersive first-person learning experiences for her students, even if methodical textual work is not “her thing.”  

The slave labor of Egypt was grueling, but it didn’t break the Yidden. The עבודת פרך that crushed their spirit, according to Chazal, was the imposition of men’s work on the women and vice versa. Being forced to become something that isagainst our very nature is soul-destroying.  

Can this have implications for our teachers and our managerial relationship with their respective areas of talent and limitations? We pursue a vaunted, universal best practice in our classrooms. Perhaps it’s equally important for schools togive teachers space and support to employ their non-uniform “best selves.” That popular jargon reflects a variegated vision that schools apply readily to their pupils, so why not to teachers? On the other hand, one might argue that our ultimate responsibility is to the students. As such, we must spare no effort to train, inspire, and coach to get all our teachers to tick all the boxes. Besides being unrealistic, I believe such a quest can be misguided. 

Misalignment 

I used to muse with my head of school about the elusive “Mr. Potato Head” teacher. Instead of attaching the perfect nose and ears, we’d plug in teaching savvy. Into our potato-head we would insert this one’s lesson planning, that one’s classroom management, package it with Mr. Ploni’s dynamism, and round it out with Mrs. Plonit’s communication skills. We’d end up with the ideal teacher, an obliging pedagogic rockstar, with a perfectly curated and well-proportioned set of educationally correct “features.” And imagine if we could then clone him! 

Beyond such fantastical musings, it’s worthwhile to explore whether we should even want that. In Make It Stick (2014), Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel challenge the learning-styles movement and argue that durable learning often comes through effortful, varied, and sometimes uncomfortable modes of practice. Based on that, it would seem that a healthy mix of teachers with their own varying teaching styles is likely to serve up a pedagogical smorgasbord that can, counterintuitively, enhance learning, specifically through misalignment.  

Beyond the instructional aspect of teachers’ uniqueness, one often sees a “shidduch,” or chemistry, that seems to have a surprising effect on how different students engage with different teachers, regarding motivation, respect, mutual interests, or simply feeling good and open to learning in their presence. I never cease to marvel at how the same teacher who is uninspiring (or worse) to one student can be a lifesaver for another. A wide range of teaching styles and personalities seems to increase the odds of students and teachers meeting positively on one plane or another. Even if we aspire to shape our teachers, it would be profoundly unwise to carbon-copy them. The texture of personality, the strengths and shortcomings, the delightful quirks and foibles, the charm and the not-so-charming—this is the stuff that makes the classroom experience human and authentic, even if flawed. 

The same way I challenge teachers to consider if they would really want to be teaching rooms full of perfect student-droids, I encourage leaders to introspect if subconsciously our staff-training seeks to recreate our teachers in our own image, if our best practice fixations amount to an institutionalized attempt to flatten teachers’ varied styles, natural proclivities, and uniqueness. Attempting to create a real-life “Mr. Potato Head” is not merely an exercise in futility. As fun as he is, Mr. Potato Head is grotesque, and not only because of his spud-shaped head; it’s just plain weird to cobble together a being. 

We should honestly ask whether the picture-perfect classroom we seek contains elements that are dehumanizing and sterile, and whether that elusive “edutopia” might be somewhat dystopian for teachers and students alike. (And, lest anyone think that whittling teachers to a perfect shape and size could be a good thing, let’s be honest: If we strip away the gritty, human element, there are armies of lifeless AI bots waiting in the wings that can do a far better job in any case.) 

Moreover, if we can agree that our educational mandate goes well beyond academics into the “school of life,” shouldn’t a valuable part of that life training be intentionally exposing our learners to the different experiences they will have with different people?  

Over-Management And Motivation 

Another wise voice from my freshman days said that “top-down management is a thing of the past.” This advice came from a successful businessman in our community who was a friend and mentor. He supplied anecdotes from his own business experience as well as from the corporate world, where highly successful companies like Apple and Google were making waves by embracing less hierarchical, more collaborative work structures. He said, “If you think you’re going to get anywhere by pulling rank with your team, think again. They’ll nod their heads in agreement and most likely carry on doing whatever they feel like doing.” While I accepted his advice, it felt as though he were describing a childishresistance to authority. I attributed this modern independence orientation to laziness, a ירידת הדורות of sorts.  

Then, I came across Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, which explores the science of motivation and analyzes what drives people to perform at their best. The book turns a lot of conventional dogma on its head. (For example, Pink cites research proving that increasing financial incentives, beyond a solid baseline, is likely to lead to decreased performance.) Pink builds a thesis that people are driven far more by an inner sense of purpose and self-actualization than by extrinsicfactors. In fact, external influence can be counterproductive.  

Asserting strong leverage over people’s work, even by way of positive rewards, can stifle their inner spark rather than elicit better outcomes. Additionally, and important for our conversation, narrowing the scope for individuality in the workplace edges out personal connection with one’s work. Suppressing individual expression can replace inspiration with drudgery, leading to decreased job satisfaction and worse staff retention rates. Pink thus makes a very compelling case for why businesses should not merely accommodate their employees’ push for autonomy but should genuinely welcome and even cultivate it. Giving space for individuality in the process will lead to better morale and richer outcomes.  

Here’s the kicker, though, a caveat whose relevance for the field of education cannot be overstated. Pink illustrates that the downsides of control and limited autonomy, while not necessarily significant in low-cognitive assembly-line-type labor, are eminently pronounced in the creative realm. If you offer bonuses to factory workers for banging out widgets more quickly, it may accelerate output. By stark contrast, upping the incentives for an artist to draw, or for a poet to write poetry, almost guarantees that the quality of their output will drop commensurately. By externalizing the experience, the inner spirit, which is the very essence of creative work, is stunted. 

Teachers are the Curriculum  

I argue that for many of our precious educators, teaching is as much an art of the soul as a professional skill. Their students are the canvases upon which these good men and women wield their brushes, applying careful layers and deft strokes with creativity, subtlety, intuition, and occasional whimsy. The pictures they paint are a reflection of their very selves.  

Of course, we can and must help our artists continue to develop and improve. Effective educational leaders will motivate teachers to self-reflect, cultivate professional growth cultures, promote awareness of best practices in education, and coach teachers in their implementation. But let’s also respect teaching as an art, the realm of the spirit. Few careers are chosen with the same sense of idealism, purpose, and mission as teaching. It lives within. The teacher’s role in shaping young lives makes education a meaningful and deeply personal pursuit. And this makes the whole endeavor susceptible to losing its soul if it becomes, dare I say, too professionalized or too externalized. 

When we impose tight curricula and strive toward standardized classroom experiences, is it possible that we are unwittingly constricting the same teachers we are hoping to inspire? Is it possible that when we pressure teachers to get creative and adopt practices that are not “them,” we might actually be sapping their creative spirit? In pursuit of professional practices, might we be turning what was once idealism into a chore? 

Perhaps this is at the core of an offhand comment Rabbi Yaakov Bender made when I queried him in my early days about the curriculum at his school. “My rebbeim are my curriculum.”  

This is most pertinent when we discuss לימודי קדש. As transmitters of the mesorah, teachers of Torah become part of the living תורה שבעל פה, that unbroken chain that goes back to Sinai. Rather than just inert links, authentic Torah is taught specifically through the vehicle of their distinct personalities, minds and hearts, their precious and unique חלק בתורתך. While curricular alignment and cohesion are a cornerstone of an effective educational trajectory, an equallyimportant element is rebbeim and moros, who are passionate about their subject and their lessons.  

There was once a דין תורה that took place over a staff-management dispute (at the high-school level) about which פרק of Gemara to learn. While the principal had a clearer birdseye view of the students’ broader educational needs, the ruling still favored the rebbi, based on the following logic: Chazal say אין אדם לומד תורה אלא ממקום שלבו חפץ, meaning that a person can only truly learn that which his heart desires.  It is not a stretch to paraphrase and sayאין אדם מלמד…. Our teachers can only effectively teach content that they enjoy. 

Lessons Learned 

To be sure, schools should not abandon healthy curriculum design, staff training, or responsible and robust processes for ensuring the quality of learning. Leaders must never shy away from those difficult conversations when staff members are underperforming. But an ounce or two of humility in the process can make all the difference.  

Over the years, these thoughts and many personal experiences have taught me a thing or two.  

I try to avoid heavy-handedness. I’ve seen that creating space for professional peer-sharing validates and benefits everyone. I try to “catch the positive” and cross-pollinate good practice internally.  

I’ve learned that teaching with passion trumps teaching with perfection. I’ve learned that passion cannot be taught, but with care it can be preserved. On the other hand, it can be robbed. 

I’ve come to respect that teachers are slogging away hours a day in the classroom while I stroll the corridors and read educational journals in my office. 

I’ve seen teachers coming under ever-increasing scrutiny and criticism from parents. If we want to continue attracting people to this field, it might be more important to have their back than to be down their neck.  

I’ve learned that well-placed compliments can enhance the quality of instruction as much as lesson observations.  

I’ve learned to listen. 

And perhaps, most of all, I’ve come to see the beauty and wisdom of Rav Uri Brandwein, a close disciple of Rav Wolbe and principal of the renowned Chavos Daas school in Yerushalayim, who shared with me his self-defined mandate as the head of the school:  אַנִי הָעוֹזֵר שֶׁל הָרֶבֶּ’ס—I am my teachers’ assistant.   

Rabbi Shlomo Kolko is the principal of Shaarei Torah Primary School in Johannesburg, South Africa.  He is passionate about fostering thoughtful school culture, facilitating immersive Torah experiences, and promoting learning that balancesstructure and creativity.  

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