Preparing for inevitable uncertainty : Collaborative sensemaking of assets and barriers to becoming a Jewish supplementary school educator.

While teacher shortages are a shared national challenge, responses are shaped by local nuances (McHenry-Sorber et al., 2019). This research explored how community-identified assets might address teacher recruitment challenges in supplementary Jewish education programs, a microcosm of public education. Many Jewish supplementary schools are investigating curricular and programmatic approaches to attract students and families without commensurate inquiry into attracting teachers to the field. The disproportionate focus has occurred amidst a shrinking pool of candidates (Rosov Consulting, 2021b). In this study, I asked: What do supplementary Jewish education school community members see as assets/barriers to recruiting educators in their school community? How might community members make sense of the potential interplay between assets and barriers to invite more people into educator roles in their community? How, if at all, might collaborative sensemaking (Maitlis, 2005) of assets/barriers and subsequent actions shape approaches to recruitment and hiring practices? Through asset-based community development (Mathie & Cunningham, 2003) and photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1997), members of three school communities were invited to collaboratively identify local assets and employ those assets to address barriers to teaching in Jewish education. The community careholders, terminology used throughout instead of the power-over term stakeholder (Ogden, 2022), were interviewed to explore how they made sense of the process and the collaborative work. After inductive coding of transcripts and artifacts and deductive coding relative to sensemaking, five asset-barrier interplays were identified, showcasing how collaborative sensemaking was used to activate assets to address teacher shortages and hiring challenges. The process and findings suggest an asset-based approach to recruitment can help school communities involve multiple careholders across roles and support the rediscovery of assets to offset barriers to teacher recruitment.