Rabbi S replacing Mr G
IN a landmark overhaul, Yeshivah and Beth Rivkah Colleges will share a principal from January 2013 – with Yeshivah principal Rabbi Yehoshua Smukler to assume both posts.
IN a landmark overhaul, Yeshivah and Beth Rivkah Colleges will share a principal from January 2013 – with Yeshivah principal Rabbi Yehoshua Smukler to assume both posts.
Yeshivah Centre committee of management chair Don Wolf said that after the committee conducted a global search for a new principal of the school, it found with Rabbi Smukler, who has been Yeshivah College principal for two years, “that the best candidate was already in Melbourne”.
The switch heralds a new era after a marathon 42-year innings by Shmuel Gurewicz as Beth Rivkah’s principal.
Tasked with developing what he calls an “amalgamated” approach to running Yeshivah and Beth Rivkah, while at the same time retaining the separate identities of the two colleges, Rabbi Smukler explained that the two schools have experienced distinct but largely parallel development, due to effective leadership structures at both.
“We started a while ago to move the two schools forward together in key areas. A lot of it has been in curriculum development, a lot of the preparation for the national curriculum, adapting it to our own ethos. We looked across the campuses and developed a whole-school ICT [information/communication/technology] and e-learning plan, we’ve appointed
e-learning coaches in each school, and a lot of the coaches are cross-school and more will be,” he told The AJN.
“But where it comes to servicing the people, to somebody being there for the students and staff on the ground, on a day-to-day basis, obviously it doesn’t makes sense to amalgamate positions, and we’re going to keep that very distinct identity between the schools.”
Rabbi Smukler also committed himself to continuing his predecessor’s four-decade legacy. Affectionately known as “Mr G”, Gurewicz told The AJN he has presided over a more than tripling of student enrolments from some 200 to more than 700 at present, with about 21 VCE subjects to choose from. Beth Rivkah now has art, music and computer rooms, as well as a language centre and gym.
“The school has become suited to the 21st century. Parents have changed. Students have changed. Expectations have changed. When the school began, most of the parents were Holocaust survivors; they came from Europe, and their mentality was the school knows best and the teachers knew best. But we’ve produced educated students [who are today’s parents] and they challenge us and don’t necessarily believe teachers know best. We have to live up to this challenge.”
Gurewicz has assumed the mantle of head of special projects and will develop the Yeshivah Centre’s school facilities further.
PETER KOHN
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