Rachel Pototsky is the early childhood director at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation’s E.B. Hirsh Early Childhood Center, but that title doesn’t fully tell the story of what she means to the synagogue or what the synagogue means to her.
Not only is Pototsky a graduate of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation’s preschool, but she is also someone who has always known that she wanted to be a teacher.
“[I knew I wanted] to be a preschool teacher my entire life. My mom was a preschool director, my brother is also a preschool teacher,” Pototsky said. “The ongoing joke is that early childhood runs in the family, it’s what my family was put on this Earth to do.”
Pototsky always thought about coming back to the synagogue where her own education started, and when she saw the job opening become available in 2025, she said she felt “drawn” to it.
For Pototsky, the job is an incredibly rewarding one, even if it isn’t always as simple as just teaching the curriculum.
“These are little minds that don’t have the language or the tools yet to really express what they need, what they’re thinking. There’s big feelings and there’s big emotions across the spectrum — there’s big, happy, joyful moments, and there’s big, bad, angry moments. It’s fun to help guide those emotions with the kiddos, to help them learn what they’re feeling, how to express it and go through their day with their little minds exploring a big world,” she said.
Teaching such young children has unique elements that make it different from teaching other ages, and some of those elements are wonderful, Pototsky said.
“I think my favorite is walking into every classroom and being greeted with the biggest hugs and the biggest smiles and the yelling and arms up in the air,” she said. “‘Morah Rachel!’ and everybody running and hugging. It makes me feel so special to feel so welcomed by these little friends.”
Pototsky is the director of the school, but that doesn’t mean she is in her office doing administrative and leadership tasks all day. She said that, in fact, she spends much of her time where she wants to be the most — with the students.
“I’m very much in the classroom every day, as much as I can be. I’m on the playground, I’m pushing the swings, digging in the sandbox, hands deep in the Play-Doh — I am in the classroom as much as I possibly can be,” Pototsky said.
Part of what makes Baltimore Hebrew Congregation so special for Pototsky is the fact that the curriculum is so child-driven. The attention span of a preschooler can be hard to wrangle. At BHC, they don’t work against that — in a sense, they acknowledge it and let it guide them.
“We really want the children to be invested in what they’re learning about. We don’t sit here and come up with the curriculum for say, April or May in November, because their interests change. What they want to explore changes, and we can’t anticipate that without really spending the time and getting to know what the kids are interested in,” Pototsky said.
Earlier this spring, current events helped guide what students studied.
“So, a few weeks ago, when the astronauts were up in space, everybody was really invested in that and wanted to know more about space and planets and the stars, so we spent a lot of time talking about that, which might not have been the plan, say, in September, but we pivot with what the children are interested in,” Pototsky said.
Jewish holidays are, of course, also huge at the school. Each year, students get to partake in a variety of activities that include traditional learning, as well as more tactile activities. For Passover this year, the kids got to take their shoes off and walk across a long piece of paper with red paint, simulating crossing through the parted Red Sea.
“It gives you a sense of the whole body,” Pototsky said.
Perhaps no anecdote better exemplifies her hands-on approach or the approach of BHC than one in which she and a student went to play in the rain.
“A little boy came up to me and said, ‘Morah Rachel, I want to show you the rains.’ We went over to the window, and we’re looking outside and he said he wanted to go outside in the rain,” Pototsky said. “We went outside, and we were jumping in puddles and he’s getting wet, but he’s using gross motor skills and fine motor skills and getting down and feeling the water. He’s working his whole body.”
At Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, Pototsky is helping forge a place that people love to go.
“My big plan is I want this to be a home away from home,” she said. “I really want this to be a place that people want to come and spend time at and know that we’re building these connections for children, for families and for the whole community.”
