MONTREAL — By nature, teacher Kidusha Roitman-Bamnolker shies away from publicity. But last week, visiting Montreal for the first time, she had no choice.
Kidusha Roitman-Bamnolker is the winner of Israel’s Teacher of the State Competition.
Roitman-Bamnolker, 48, is one of only six Israelis who has won the Jewish state’s second annual Teacher of the State Competition.
By doing that, she won a free trip to Montreal, whose Jewish community has been “twinned” for decades with Be’er Sheva – the city where she teaches. She spent her time here meeting with counterparts at Jewish schools and touring the Jewish community in the company of veteran Jewish educator Arlazar Eliashiv, who also heads Canadian Zionist Federation’s eastern region.
Sponsored by Israel’s popular daily, Yediot Achronot, Y-Net (which owns Yediot), the Jewish Agency, El Al and other groups, the Teacher of the State Competition, although still new, is already considered prestigious.
Roitman-Bamnolker was one of thousands of teachers from across Israel nominated for the prize. They were whittled down to the winning six through a layered, rigorous verification process that involved interviews with colleagues, former students, supporters and other factors.
The winners were announced in early September at a special event at Tel Aviv University.
“I was very surprised,” says Roitman-Bamnolker, who teaches first and second grade at Be’er Sheva’s Nisuyi Gavim School. “I always thought that my job is not to win prizes. I thought everyone else should win, not me.”
For Roitman-Bamnolker, teaching has always been more of a calling than a profession.
At age 12, she was already tutoring younger kids. After high school, Roitman-Bamnolker, who had been active in high school athletics, thought she might become a tour guide, but all that changed when she was in the Israeli army and oversaw a school for young recruits from challenged backgrounds.
“That taught me how to be a teacher,” she says. “Then I knew.”
Her first teaching job was in the Negev town of Yeruham, which is not far from Be’er Sheva, and was once twinned with Montreal. Her duties included working with kids from challenged families.
In her 26 years as an educator, she has come to discover that teaching involves much more than what happens just in the classroom.
“When I started, I thought what you see in children was the result of what happens at home,” she said, “but there are other factors – social issues, other influences.”
At the Nisuyi Gavim School, she said, which has more than 500 students, the family is an integral part of the educational dynamic. “We meet with parents every few months,” Roitman-Bamnolker said. “I am teaching in a special school that is experimental in the way it encourages excellence in all of life and to be good persons. We visit families and build connections – together.”
In Montreal, Roitman-Bamnolker met with staff and officials from Hebrew Academy, Solomon Schechter Academy, Akiva School, Jewish People’s and Peretz School and École Maïmonide, and was to meet with Jewish community officials at the Jewish community campus.
She was impressed. “There is a very nice atmosphere here,” she said. “Everyone is very dedicated.”
Then she was to be off to New York City for a three-day seminar with the five other winners who had been visiting U.S. cities. They include science teacher Yehudit Lewkowicz from Kfar Saba; history and art teacher Ruth Raveh of Ramleh and industrial mechanics teacher Rafi Sulam from Ashkelon.
Certainly, Roitman-Bamnolker says that she has not lost any of the love for teaching that she has had since entering her first classroom at age 22. And bearing witness to that are past students who drop by Be’er Sheva just to visit her and never fail to mention that her enthusiasm hasn’t flagged one bit.
But they are all now so tall, “I have to look up to see them,” she said.
