Math Teacher Celebrates 50 Years in Education
For many parents and students, the opening of the school year is a particularly exciting event, but there is one person in the education system who will take a very significant step tomorrow (Friday), his name is Eli Cooper, he is 71 years old and he will begin his 50th year as a math teacher. In an interview with Kipa News, Cooper shares how he came to teach math, what he thinks about today’s youth, and how it turned out that for fifty years he never took a single day off.
This year Cooper will begin his 18th year at the BA yeshiva in Givat Shmuel and at the same time his 47th year at the BA Tsfira studio, having previously also taught for 37 years at the Kfar HaRa’a yeshiva.
“When I wanted to advance, I did it during the year or during the summer vacation” he says, “I really like teaching, it revives me and keeps me young and fresh, so I never took a sabbatical year” Cooper explains.
To date, Cooper has submitted over 8,000 male and female students to matriculation and he is considered the teacher who submitted the most students to 5 units since the establishment of the state. “I have the patience of an iron, they ask me when I’m retiring and I answer that the first student will tell me that he feels that I’ve lost my patience or I don’t answer the question with fun, I’m retiring the next day” he says, “But I feel that I’m only at the beginning of the road, I see This is holy work, a real mission. In short, I was born to be a teacher.”
Where did Cooper’s love for math come from? “From my teacher at the midrash in Pardes Hana” he says. “I really liked the math classes and I was connected to my teacher even though today I work in a completely opposite way.”
When talking to Cooper about his educational method, he says in advance that the absolute majority of teachers will not necessarily agree with his method, but he explains that “if anyone wants to know if the method is good, you can call any of my 8,000 students or their parents.”
“Mathematics is a very stressful subject, but when a child is good at math, it affects the other subjects as well,” states Cooper and explains his lesson: “I take the pressure off them. I tell the students every year on the first day of school: ‘Guys, I’m not going to do exams , I don’t have the concept of a surprise exam. I don’t want a male or female student to wake up at 4 in the morning with a stomach ache.”
“I never put a student on the board,” he continues, “it’s a waste of time and I won’t learn anything about the student from it. I inform them about each test two or three weeks in advance, I tell them what the test will look like and what it’s made of and I also tell them where I’m taking it from the questions”. At the same time, he adds: “Every teacher should teach in the method he believes in, if he believes in the method he teaches, then it is the best.”
Cooper shares that his oldest son was a student of his at the Kfar HaRa yeshiva and made the choice to drop down to 4 units. His other two sons opted for 3 units. “Sometimes at parents’ parties, parents of students, especially female students, come to me and beg me, as the subject coordinator at the studio, to move to a higher group, and then while I’m explaining to them, I also tell them about my son. It’s happened many times, they told me, ‘If Cooper’s son finished with three units, so it’s not bad that my daughter will also finish with three units.”
“It’s a different generation, everything has changed. When I started teaching the students didn’t have calculators, we worked with a logarithm table until 1982. This is one of the problems today, that students don’t know arithmetic. They do very well with math but they don’t know simple arithmetic operations because they get calculators already in first grade,” says Cooper.
At the same time, he believes that the youth of today do not fall from the youth of the past despite all the stigmas: “Then the youth were great, and today they are great too, great guys, there are a lot of activities and volunteering. They are talented, intelligent” says Cooper, “many claim that today’s youth is not the youth of 40-50 years ago, I say that is not true,” he states.
“How do you feel in the fiftieth year?” Cooper describes the days before going back to school: I’m already looking forward to entering the classroom and teaching my students. Every year, the night before the start of the school year, I hardly manage to close an eye.”
As Eli Cooper embarks on his 50th year as a math teacher, his dedication and passion for the profession continue to inspire students and fellow educators alike. With his unique teaching method and unwavering commitment to his students’ success, Cooper has truly left a lasting impact on the education system.