Rebecca Gautieri Takes the Lead on Jewish Teaching, Early Childhood Education

Originally working as a nurse, Rebecca Gautieri realized she felt more comfortable as an educator: teaching “just felt right.”

She is now the preschool director at Berman Hebrew Academy. A Maryland native, Gautieri is active in the Jewish Federation’s Early Childhood Directors’ Council and is an alumna of the Jewish Early Childhood Education Leadership Institute. She co-facilitated the Mesorah Community of Practice, a group of Orthodox early childhood leaders from around the United States.

Gautieri lives in Olney and has three grown children who all attended Berman. She belongs to Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah.

Tell me about your Jewish upbringing and background.
My father was the rabbi at [Congregation] Beth El [of Montgomery County] in Bethesda for 32 years, so I grew up pretty enmeshed in the Jewish community here. My family’s been in Jewish education before that. My maternal grandfather was very active in Jewish education in New York; my older brother is a pulpit rabbi. When my husband and I got married and had children, we became even more religious [in how] we decided to raise our children and live our lives.

You hold a bachelor’s degree in nursing. How did you end up as a preschool director?
I was originally an education major, then I took a short hiatus from college. When I went back, I had been working in a medical office and decided I wanted to pursue a nursing degree. Then when I had my children, I wanted to get on their schedule and be involved in their education. So I came to work as an assistant in Berman[’s] Lower School originally and found that I was much more comfortable in my own skin as a teacher than a nurse. Part of what I loved about nursing was teaching patients, like new mothers, how to take care of their newborns, or women about women’s health. I always felt more comfortable as an educator.

After a year or two as an assistant, I was asked to be a lead teacher and that just felt right. I pursued some extra education over the years: [early childhood lead teacher training with the State of Maryland]. Then, unfortunately, the director before me, from whom I learned so much, passed, and [the administrators at Berman] asked me to try being the director. I did, and I pursued more leadership education opportunities [such as a Certificate of Early Childhood Leadership through the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Saul Saentz Early Education Initiative early childhood program] and here I am.

What are your responsibilities at Berman?
We have nine classes and 27 staff members and I’m responsible for overseeing pretty much everything: supervising the teachers, [developing] the programming and the curriculum, [providing] professional development for the teachers, and making sure we understand what brain research tells us about how people learn. I think it’s very important to have relationships with families wherever possible. I have relationships and work closely with my colleagues in the other divisions to make sure that the foundation we’re giving the children supports their later education and, at the same time, allowing them to be little children. Finding that balance is very important to us. I’m partially responsible for making sure our Jewish values are met in the preschool. Thank God, I have a lot of other people here to work with and to dream with and plan. It’s a wonderful place to be.

What are your goals for your students?
We want them, first and foremost, to feel loved and physically and psychologically safe here at school. We want them to love learning; we want them to have fun. We want them to have some foundational skills that all small children should have. We look at all aspects of development; we want to make sure they’re developing their gross and fine motor [skills]. Social-emotional development is extremely important to us. We want the children to have good self-esteem, good confidence. Jewish identity and cognitive development [are] very important.

How do you make the weekly Torah portion palatable and understandable for children as young as age 3?
It’s really storytelling. We try to help them through experiences [with] drama, songs, stories — those kinds of things. Sometimes it involves dressing up; sometimes it involves an art activity. It might involve a dance. There’s a lot of different ways we can teach them, but it comes back to stories. For example, the whole Book of Genesis is so much about family, so we might talk to [the students] more about characters who are in the story, what they are doing and where they are going, all in an appropriate way. The advantage to being in a school like ours is they’re going to learn it again. They don’t have to learn every single thing this minute; just one or two stories that are appropriate to their age each week.

What’s a piece of advice you’d give a new educator?
I think probably the most important thing is to really be present with the children, to observe them, to listen to them. They’re going to tell you or show you what they need. Every child is so unique. When you’re present and watching, it’s astonishing the rate of their development. I’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s fascinating how quickly they develop. If you’re present, you’ll see it, you’ll feel it. They’re developing a relationship; that’s really the most important thing children need: a relationship with the teachers. You build that by being present.

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