How can relationships help amplify school marketing?

In our science labs and maker spaces, during tefillah and on our sports fields, marketing opportunities abound at Jewish day schools. Illustrations of the joy experienced while learning in a Jewish setting are seemingly endless, making the task of elevating this work  simpler yet, simultaneously, more challenging. How can you, the marketing or admissions director (or other lead professional), capture and convey such an abundance of publicity-worthy stories? And when this is not possible, how do you choose among them?

An impactful answer can be found in building the right relationships. Fundamental to developing meaningful school marketing campaigns and distilling meaningful stories is having the right relationships, internally and externally.

Establish “Team Marketing”

In order to best recount the vivid stories that capture the value of your school, internal stakeholders, including teachers, educational leaders and administrators should all consider themselves as part of the extended marketing team. Marketing professionals must forge strong, collaborative relationships and develop the explicit understanding that when everyone is on “Team Marketing,” the school will succeed and thrive.

Make Educators Your Partners

Our most significant newsbreakers and makers are our teachers, and they are always “the room where it happens.” Significant classroom engagements and experiential learning opportunities provide the most powerful marketing stories—and teachers and educators should be the marketing team’s best friends.

Tips

Each year, identify a handful of teachers who can be true partners. They may be aspiring marketers, photographers or excellent storytellers themselves, and they are ready, willing and able to keep you in the loop about important story opportunities. These teachers truly understand that your mission is to tell the world about the work they are doing in their classrooms and the lasting impact they are having on their students. 

Work with educational leaders over the summer to create an editorial calendar for covering key academic events, and make special note of those that illustrate the special value of your school and/or the “theme” for the school year. Ensure directors, deans and principals consider you an integral part of their extended team, and ask to be included in regular academic department meetings. Volunteer to present at a staff meeting to share key marketing information and successes. 

Develop an internal content hub for sharing photos and stories, and create templates to guide teachers regarding content needed for social media or news stories. 

Show appreciation. Be sure to send around monthly thank you notes and call out all of your partners on the educational team.

Cultivate Internal Collaboration

Together, marketing, development and admissions form the triumvirate of Jewish day school advancement. Establishing a symbiotic and collaborative relationship between these teams will help achieve annual recruitment and fundraising goals.

Tips

Band together from the beginning. Coordinate annual plans so that admissions, development and marketing efforts are complementary and synergistic.

Create an annual communications plan that demarcates pivotal events and ensures timely outreach to target audiences.

Ensure all teams are in alignment with the designated annual theme and/or key message(s), and create programming, events and collateral that reinforce that messaging. 

Establish monthly meetups to enable knowledge sharing, cooperation and leverage incremental advancement opportunities throughout the year. 

Let your colleagues know you value their partnership, and outwardly acknowledge how your teamwork benefits the school. Send an internal memo of recognition and accolades.

 

Engage Student Marketers

Today’s students are naturally savvy marketers. Many are already skilled purveyors of their own online presence, and some also have additional experience and expertise in social media marketing, graphic design, videography and photography. Tap into these burgeoning promotional minds and sign them up for “Team Marketing” at your school.

Tips

Look for the helpers. Students who have a natural proclivity for marketing tend to find you. Think creatively about how they could augment your efforts, as well as how you can mentor and guide them. 

Create an official Marketing Internship program (during the academic year and over the summer), enabling students to utilize their skills in photography, videography, graphic design, etc., to create social media content for recruitment. Students intuitively know how kids consume content and what they are looking for. Offer samples and templates so students have responsibilities and deliverables;  an internship may even count toward chesed / community service or business course requirements. 

Lead a business, graphic design or video/photography club, providing a forum for students with interest in and passion for marketing to share their interests and hone their skills. Enlist these students in marketing projects for the school.

Be sure to recognize your students’ efforts and progress. Give students a shoutout for videos they create and other projects they own. Offer to write letters of recommendation for college, employment or other internship programs.

Leverage Parent Advocates 

Grateful parents are a school’s most fervent advocates. Developing relationships with these satisfied parents enables them to become excellent promoters as well.

Tips 

Create a Marketing Advisory Committee. Select key parent advocates and influencers who can help create a plan of action for spreading the word about your school. 

Designate parent supporters as Social Media Ambassadors, who can reshare school social media posts and news and create posts about upcoming admissions and community events. 

Harness the power of parent advocacy by creating testimonial videos featuring appreciative parents focusing on the unique benefits of your school, your school community and the value of Jewish day school education.

Thank parent partners for their invaluable contributions. Consider honoring and acknowledging them at an end of year awards ceremony or board meeting.

Developing strong partnerships with educators, administrators, students and parents can yield big results for Jewish day school marketing. Creating and cultivating relationships internally and externally will help enrich promotional content, extend outreach to target audiences, extend your ability to capture and tell meaningful stories, expand outreach efforts, distill key messages and differentiate and market your school. Happy relationship building!

From Daniel Miller’s first job as a CPA, he observed the commandment of tithing meticulously, opening a second checking account where he separated and invested 10% of his salary into local nonprofits. He recalls 9th grade at YULA High School in Los Angeles, “The rabbis explained in Ta’anit 9a through use of a pun that the Torah commandment of tithing, עַשֵּׂר תְּעַשֵּׂר aser te-aser, means that by tithing, one earns the reward of wealth, עַשֵּׂר בִּשְׁבִיל שֶׁתִּתְעַשֵּׁר aser b’shvil shetitasher. I took the lesson to heart and looked forward to my working career when I could finally put the lesson into action.”

Miller learned about cryptocurrency in 2013 and began investing. After receiving an MBA in finance from Northwestern-Kellogg he continued diligently giving, now 20% (chomesh, a fifth), and watched his portfolio grow. Facing a cryptocurrency liquidity event in 2021, his philanthropy budget outgrew the capacity of his traditional nonprofit partners. “I put on my consultant hat to consider the largest problem that my tzedakah could impact. I arrived at addressing yeshiva and day school affordability,” Miller said. “This is a very expensive problem that I’ve seen drive people away from the faith and break families apart. It puts the biggest financial burden on the youngest people, which for some is too great to bear.”

With the partnership of the local federation, Miller was able to make major investments in several Jewish day schools in Bergen County to support tuition assistance, capital campaigns and endowments. “Receiving gifts in cryptocurrency is still something new for many nonprofits, though it is getting easier thanks to third-party processors. Partnering with the federation greatly helped with the timeline that we needed,” he said.

Miller connected to Prizmah through his federation partners, and had the opportunity to speak at Prizmah’s 2022 Investor Summit. “The event was a place to inspire people to dream bigger,” he said. “I was exposed to North America’s leaders in Jewish day school education and, enabled by Prizmah’s national reach, I got to see impact I didn’t know was possible.” Miller was proud to have made Prizmah’s first cryptocurrency gift just this year.

As a parent with young children in daycare, Miller credits the determination of people decades ago who founded and funded yeshivas and day schools, and he sees his role as building on those visionary actions to keep schools strong for the next generation. “One lay leader told me his story. His grandfather benefited from financial assistance to make it possible for him to receive a yeshiva education. That person is now the grandfather of day schoolers. It’s incredible that an initial investment in Jewish day schools almost a century ago yielded returns across five generations and will continue deep into the future.”

Reflecting back on the lesson he learned from the Talmud, Miller remains faithful to the wisdom of the rabbis. “What may have started for selfish reasons—making sure to tithe so that I could gain wealth— created deep meaning in my life and changed me in profound ways. Giving is truly the best investment I can ever make.”

The question of average head of school tenure comes up time and time again, and its answer is relied upon as an indicator on school stability and strength. There is even evidence to suggest head of school tenure affects student outcomes (see “Contextual Factors Related to Elementary Principal Turnover,” “The Cascading Effects of Principal Turnover on Students and Schools” and “Learning from Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning”). It’s often seen as a statement of the sustainability of the headship and validation on job satisfaction.

For Jewish day schools and yeshivas, length of headship is often lamented as too low. A 2015 RAVSAK study about heads of Community day schools found that “many of our heads are novice or relatively new to their school. 39% of heads of school have been in their positions for 2 years or less, 20% for less than 1 year.” Two recent data collections have given us new insight on head of school tenure for the 2022-23 school year.

Prizmah recently collected data from 68 Orthodox schools and from 50 Community, Conservative and Reform schools about the number of years their current head of school has been employed at their current school in their current role. The results change the narrative about head of school longevity. As not all schools have someone who holds the title head of school, the data reported herein uses the National Association of Independent Schools definition for the head of school role: the person in the school who is responsible for all internal operations and, in most cases, external operations of the school.

For the 2022-2023 school year, the average head of Orthodox school tenure is 6.5 years, and the average for head of Community, Conservative and Reform schools is 7.5 years. The median tenure for all schools is 5 years. 

Median Tenure at Jewish Schools Aligns with Independent Schools

At times, key day school metrics align with independent school trends. The average head of school tenure for National Association of Independent School members is 7.7 years, similar to Jewish day schools and yeshivas. The median is 5 years, the same as Jewish schools.. 

Most Heads Have Served Under Five Years

A deeper look into the data tells another story, that over 60% of heads of Orthodox schools have been at their current schools for five years or under. The same is true of 57% of heads of Community, Conservative and Reform schools. Five years or under likely means that they are in their first or second contract term with the school. While many heads have led their schools for 10, 15 and 20 years, still the majority are not breaking the significant five-year mark.

Looking at these findings, I think we need to ask some important questions.

1. The stress of being a school leader and the stress of being a board member during the pandemic led some heads of school to leave and also contributed to boards making decisions to continue contracts with their heads. How did the pandemic affect head of school tenure?

2. Is there a length of tenure that is considered good or desirable? How long would we expect school leaders to stay in their current positions, given how frequently organizational leaders in general society change jobs? According to Bloomberg News, in 2022, “the average tenure of CEOs on the S&P 500 Industrial Index will drop to just 4.9 years... That’s down from 5.5 years at the end of 2019 and about six years as of five years ago in mid-2017". 

3. Over the last decade there has been a change in attitude around head of school coaching. Fifteen to 20 years ago, there were a handful of heads who had a professional coach; now it is commonplace. Hiring a coach can be a statement from the board that they acknowledge their lead professional needs support, that they are willing to invest in their head as proof of a long-term commitment. 

In 2018, Prizmah launched a coaching institute so that we could better support field leaders and help increase their effectiveness in their role.  Since then, Prizmah has seen the demand for coaches increase. Another effort over the last five years that has the potential to contribute to head of school tenure is the effort by Prizmah and other organizations, through programs such as the Leading Edge Jewish Non-Profit Board Member Institute in partnership with Kellogg School of Management and Prizmah’s Board Fitness, to impact, train and support board leaders. How have supports such as coaching and programs for board leaders impacted head of school tenure?

We may not have the answers to all the questions. Even so, having data and knowledge about the landscape of current day school leadership can help organizations, funders and policy makers creatively deploy strategies to support head of school job satisfaction and performance and to address head of school tenure head on.

My Zaidy’s Library

Rabbi Elisha Paul, Head of School, Rudlin Torah Academy, Richmond, Virginia

A Wrestler with God

Rabbi Rebecca Ben-Gideon, Rabbi-in-Residence, B'nai Shalom Day School, Greensboro, North Carolina

Word of the Day, Lesson of Life

Erin Lehrer, Judaic Studies Teacher, Les Écoles Azrieli Herzliah High School, Montreal

My Two Role Models

Brian Cohen, Head of School, MetroWest Jewish Day School, Framingham, Massachusetts

The Little School That Inspired Me to Switch Careers

Sindy Udell, Director of Admission, Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the Nation’s Capital

“To pull a friend out of the mire, don’t hesitate to get dirty.”

Baal Shem Tov

Contemporary literature on education is awash with articles touting the benefits of strong relationships. According to one recent academic study, “Substantial research literature indicates that positive teacher-student relationships (TSRs) promote students’ academic achievement.” The authors even coined an initialism just for these relationships (TSR). Experts disagree over the cause of the achievement, whether its student responsiveness or teacher motivation, though I think they're trying to tease out inseparables. Positive TSRs create a “virtuous cycle” that inspires both students and teachers to do their best work, and to strive to do better.

A 2019 report put out by the organization Transforming Education stressed the importance of teacher-administrator relationships: “A key factor in creating an environment conducive to student academic growth and social-emotional development is the cultivation of positive relationships between school leaders and staff.” It propounds three ways that these relationships support student outcomes: by enabling teacher growth; by increasing teacher retention (as they put it, mitigating teacher turnover); and by modeling positive relationships for students.

Relationships are surely at the heart of the enterprise of Jewish schools. At the center is the “TSR”: the tremendous caring and thought that teachers bring to the classroom, to leverage the dynamics among students, to support each student and account for each student in all of their unique complexity. Today’s teachers are attuned less to grades than to the person behind the grades; their concern is student intellectual and spiritual growth and social and emotional well-being, of which grades provide only one very rough index. All teachers, and especially Judaics teachers, train their vision on their students’ relationships bein adam le-chaveiro, among themselves, and bein adam la-Makom, with their Creator.

The relationship between parents and teachers can be fraught with sensitivities: demands and expectations on one side, anxieties and distancing on the other. And yet that relationship can be critical for student success. Teachers also can play a vital role in mediating the relationship between parents and the larger community that the school seeks to create; they are the first touchpoints for the families’ interactions with the school more broadly.

As noted, relationships between administrators and teachers play a key role in ensuring academic success. They also help maintain focus on the school’s vision, mission and goals, infusing all of the professionals’ work with the messages that can inspire everyone to row in the same direction. Additionally, administrators are the custodians of the school’s culture, constantly watching for potential outbreaks of toxicity and averting them into opportunities for healthy growth and collaboration.

These and other relationships that shape the larger community of Jewish schools are the subject of this issue of HaYidion. The first section looks at perspectives and programs that shape leadership and relationships within and beyond the school. Three Prizmah colleagues describe how fostering relationships is strategically built into all of our work with the field. Kislowicz writes of changing the paradigm from a transactional to a relationship-based model of leadership, across the range of school stakeholders. The next two articles present large, ongoing initiatives for multischool collaboration: Erlitz shows how a foundation can bring together school leaders within a community, and Ergas & Vorspan how a nonprofit agency can spark change and form synergies throughout a region. Levitt digs into the differences between a professional and relational culture within a school, considers their pros and cons and suggests a compromise.

The next section focuses on relationships between administrators and teachers. Pasek advocates for implementing a system of teacher leaders as a way to empower and retain teachers, alleviate administrative overload and bring the two sides closer. Novogroder & Moche offer guidance for success and potential pitfalls for teachers who become administrators, while Kligman recounts his personal journey on that path. Parkes, Elias & Kress show how the principles behind SEL can inform administrative work on creating a supportive culture for teachers to thrive. Brown argues for the importance of breaking bread, or bagels, to overcome teacher isolation and enhance faculty cohesion and camaraderie. 

In this issue’s school feature, contributors reflect upon someone who exerted a pivotal influence on their work in Jewish education. The last group of articles looks mostly at TSR, relationships between teachers and students. We start with a piece about parents, whose presence can help or hinder those relationships: Lipsky presents a Parent Advisory Committee as a way to channel parent concern and initiative for the good of the school. Cook & Kent offer a set of questions that can help teachers reflect on and strengthen the web of relationships within the classroom. Levingston explores the ways that teachers in different day schools establish a moral character through their questions, behavior and attitude. Levine reveals how his school’s PBL program encourages students to forge relationships with people in the wider community. Weiner writes of the formative role that a school’s GSA can have on student identity and sense of belonging. As a coda to the issue, Hoffman & Gordon, the founders of JEDLAB, the pioneering Facebook group with thousands of Jewish educators, converse about the nature of relationships formed and fostered online–a basic aspect of life for many if not most students today.

May the relationships in your school community continue to blossom and grow, strengthen and deepen, through the planning of you and your colleagues and the thousands of serendipitous exchanges that take place every day. Hinei mah tov u-mah na’im, shevet achim gam yachad!

Though not an educator by training, I subscribe to the concept that all learning starts by recognizing differences. You see this in very young children who quickly figure out variations in voices and respond accordingly. Preschool games such as pattern-making and memory build from the same ability. When we recognize that some things are the same—and even more, that most things are different—we open ourselves to the space where learning happens. This is the basis for how we learn languages and ultimately, how we learn to engage with the large world around us. Some things are the same, and most are at least a little bit different.

As a network, Prizmah is defined by a belief that there are commonalities throughout the diverse day school and yeshiva field. We start from a place where shared challenges exist, alongside significant differences. Being able to recognize those differences and embracing the learning that can still happen across difference is a great part of what Prizmah offers day school leaders. The term that captures this dynamic is relationship—being able to truly engage with someone who is inevitably different, and to leverage the learning that comes from these interactions.

I observed this firsthand soon after I became Prizmah’s CEO, at a gathering of admission professionals from diverse schools, crossing geographies and denominations. The first presenter, from a small school in a small community, contemplated the challenges to maintain their culture after integrating mission-appropriate non-Jewish children into their school—a choice made as a means for the school to survive. 

Hearing this, and conscious of the sensitivities of different denominations working side by side, I feared that this might alienate other schools, for whom admitting non-Jewish students was anathema. However, immediately following this presentation, a professional from an Orthodox school talked passionately about the impact on the hashkafah (guiding philosophy) of their school, when they welcomed large numbers of Latin American Jewish families from Spanish-speaking homes. The source of the challenge and each school’s way of expressing their issues were markedly different, yet they engaged in rich discussion and helped each other address questions fundamental to each school’s being. This kind of dialogue was only possible because the professionals considered themselves in a state of relationship where diversity itself becomes a learning opportunity.

What I witnessed early in our growth has become commonplace during Prizmah programs and at our gatherings, notably the recent Prizmah Conference in Denver. Entering a room of a thousand people, the natural tendency is to find those whom we know, who look, dress and act like oneself, and to gravitate to them. How do you embrace difference when your brain is absorbing signals that draw you to the familiar? We saw in Denver, and see it over and over, that once people “get” how much there is to learn, when they bring their authentic selves and are ready to engage, those biases can be overcome. Yes, we celebrated the reunions and connections among old friends and long-lost acquaintances, and we also created space for new relationships to take root across differences. The sharing of vulnerabilities we observed—for those in just about every role in a school—was dramatic.

Three years ago, when Covid forced us to rethink the ways we nurture relationships, many of us found new opportunities to build trust. The online environments that were our lifeline to others exposed new ways to interact with people across communities, time zones and many more differences. Whether in a Zoom breakout room or via a chat, we tried new strategies that broadened our ability to connect. We may consider how we can take that skillset with us beyond the pandemic.

Just as we can admire the rapidly growing minds of young children for whom learning seems to come naturally, we also can look to older children for insight into relationships. The teenage years are marked by deep peer connections and the roller coaster of friendships of all kinds. As I think of my own children negotiating relationships with their peers and the world around them, I recognize that it is relationship skills, especially with those who may seem different from them, that will set them up for success in college and beyond.

Our Jewish day schools do a phenomenal job of strengthening our children’s strong sense of identity within their own “cohort” of the Jewish People and equipping them with the relationship-building tools that will serve them—and the Jewish People—for a lifetime. As the network for Jewish day schools and yeshivas, Prizmah is honored to follow their lead.

As an attorney, I dedicated my career to giving people advice. This has actually made me more receptive than ever in my retirement to listening when someone has a suggestion for me.

Several months ago, I was given a great piece of advice relevant to my role as Prizmah’s board chair. Through Prizmah’s participation in Preside, an exceptional program focused on the confluence of governance and leadership through a Jewish lens, run by a prominent national foundation, I am part of a cohort of board chairs and professionals in Jewish nonprofit organizations. As part of Preside’s leadership support, our coach suggested that I schedule annual calls with each member of the board.

The benefit of making these calls was easy to understand, even if logistically it took considerable effort. By connecting one-on-one with my fellow board members, I got to know them personally instead of as a face around a table or a box on a crowded Zoom screen. I learned what made my colleagues tick and what it would take for them to contribute even more. This also gave me a leg up for the times when I have had to reach out for support. Once a real relationship exists, it is much easier to hear, ask and respond.

We know that, for day school professionals, the value of relationship-based learning is second nature both within the day-to-day functioning of their school and beyond the school itself to the broader day school field. During the worst of the pandemic, when school leaders were determined to keep students learning and maintain their school community, connecting with peers throughout the network proved even more valuable, and those lines of communication and connection remained active. Whether it is as part of a cohort program, through in-person gatherings or in online formats like Prizmah’s networks, many day school professionals make it a regular habit to invest in learning with their peers—and they are cultivating deep relationships in the process.

I am delighted that 120 lay leaders followed in the footsteps of their professionals and attended the Prizmah Conference in Denver this past January. In casual hallway or elevator chats, at meals or in relevant sessions, I made it a point to get to know a number of these lay leaders and saw firsthand how energized they were from being together and discussing the latest ideas in the day school field.

The lay leaders who attended the conference learned about ways to address challenges their schools face, like affordability, and opportunities within the broader field, such as how to amplify the day school value proposition. They also explored how to be a more effective board leader, including how board chairs can engage their board and the principles of a successful board/head of school partnership. Spending two to three days away from home and their occupations was a significant sacrifice, and I am so pleased to have heard how much they valued the gathering.  

Prizmah is committed to helping lay leaders build on these relationships and continue to learn, through initiatives like the recently launched Level Up Your Lay Leadership series of three webinars designed especially for lay leaders. Topics include: From Obligatory to Obvious: Designing your Board to Attract the Right Lay Talent; Building a Strong Board-Admission Professional Partnership; and Leading Effective and Engaging Board Meetings.

Our strength comes from our track record in creating a network among schools to share ideas, provide a forum for discussions, and offer support and confidence in implementations. What thousands of professionals already know should be shared more widely with lay leaders.

I specifically want to encourage heads of schools to reach out to their lay leaders, and for already involved lay leaders to reach out to other lay leaders, to help them take advantage of cohort-based learning with other board chairs and lay leaders. The lay leadership series has sessions taking place in May and June 2023. This involvement is easy and fun, with a lot to be gained. Just think: Board chairs will no longer be alone. They now can have an experienced team to count on for support and shared learning. 

Prizmah intends to continue to nourish the network with opportunities to open lines of connection and develop relationships. We welcome suggestions from lay leaders for how Prizmah can help them leverage the network and develop the relationships that will sustain them and their schools for many years to come. 

It is also not too soon to look ahead to the next Prizmah Conference in Boston in February 2025, when I hope we will see a significant increase in the number of lay leaders in attendance. Let us all mark our calendars to save the dates. I, and my colleagues at Prizmah, look forward to seeing everyone there.

Professional Learning

Daniel Infeld, Director, Conference and Gatherings

I have lost count of how many coaching conversations have started out like this: 

“Hi, how are you doing today?”

“[Sigh,] There’s just so much going on. I still have to talk to the teacher we discussed last week, prep with my chair for the board meeting coming up and find time to deal with the angry parent(s) emailing me about our math program…”

The combination of time pressure and emotional stress can make it hard for school leaders to get through the day. Many heads (and coaches) focus on time management strategies, including prioritization and delegation, to improve their chances of success. Indeed, the multiple demands on a leader’s time necessitate such techniques. At the same time, the focus on improved efficiency often drives heads and principals toward a transactional paradigm of leadership. 

Such an approach may help achieve the coveted “zero inbox,” but in the ultimate analysis it will cause us to fall short of our potential. In contrast, if leaders can uncover the system of relationships at the heart of their schools, and if they develop the skills for growing those relationships, they can achieve a qualitative transformation in themselves and in the communities they serve.

The power of a relationship-based approach to leadership has been documented across sectors. In Building Community in Schools, Thomas Sergiovanni has argued that schools must move from seeing themselves as organizations to seeing themselves as communities. The key to such a transformation is moving from transactional interactions based on pragmatic need to community relationships based on shared understanding, common values and connection. 

The quality of relationships within an organization has been shown to impact not only values but performance as well. Experts such as Patrick Lencioni and Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey have highlighted organizational culture as the single most determinative factor in organizational growth, development and success. Daniel Coyle shows that the essence of culture is “a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal.” 

The leaders we encounter tend to share this perspective. As educators, they have long believed in growth. Most started their careers in the classroom, where they placed a strong emphasis on building relationships. Many invest time and energy in team-building sessions, leadership retreats and the like to shape school culture. Yet despite these worthwhile activities, the same leaders often struggle to uncover the relational aspects hidden within their daily interactions. It is precisely this day-to-day application that is most challenging, but can make the greatest impact. 

Consider how the following scenarios, pulled anonymously from our coaching practice, illustrate key differences between transactional and relationship-based approaches.

Scenario 1: The Angry Parent

Every school leader remembers that first time when a parent started the conversation yelling at them. Most parents, of course, do not act this way. Most are appreciative and kind. And yet the impact of multiple negative interactions adds up quickly and pushes school leaders to protect themselves by reverting into a transactional rather than a relational approach. 

When a parent calls upset about a teacher, the principal’s question will likely be, “Have you spoken with the teacher about this?” Yet this question can be asked in one of two ways. When some principals respond this way, parents understand that what is at issue is the chain of command—and perhaps limiting the number of issues on the principal’s desk as well. Indeed, preserving organizational structure and managing the principal’s workload are valid goals, but they fall short of what can be accomplished in this exchange. 

Other principals may also ask if the parent has spoken with the teacher, but it will be clear that they are doing so with relationship-building in mind. If the parent answers no, the principal will ask about the parent’s relationship with the teacher, gently trying to uncover why they have not made a direct approach. The principal also may share with the parent that the teacher enjoys hearing from parents, and that the conversation would contribute to a relationship that would support the child. 

By responding with an inquisitive rather than a protective tone, the principal can use this conversation to strengthen their own relationship with the parent. From our experience, most parents will respond in kind. Additionally, by explicitly highlighting the focus on the relationship, the principal will shift the parent away from a focus on this single issue and toward a year(s)-long connection with the teacher. This emphasis, reiterated over time in individual conversations and broad messaging, deeply impacts school culture. Ultimately, it can alter parents’ self-perception as they move from consumer to community member.

This second approach takes a few more minutes of conversation, but this is time well spent. By strengthening parent-teacher relationships and the parent-principal relationship, the leader will reduce the number of direct complaints and, more importantly, enhance school culture in a way that improves educational outcomes and staff/principal morale.

Scenario 2: The Challenging Staff Member

When we begin working with schools, we often find that there is no system in place for teacher supervision and evaluation. When there is a system, it is too often a formality, with boxes being checked but minimal impact on student learning. 

Moreover, we noticed a pattern that repeated itself across many schools. During leadership meetings, certain staff names kept coming up. These might be the names of teachers, finance staff, junior or senior school leaders. In every case, the pattern was the same. The same name kept coming up—and of course that individual was not in the room. Frustrations were noted, complaints shared, and the sense of hopelessness was palpable. 

This is not to say that the group never took action. In some cases, the individual was shifted to another position, in others they were let go. However, what did not happen in the vast majority of cases was a direct and transparent conversation. Yes, there were reprimands, but a reprimand is different from a conversation. 

The kind of conversation we are referring to is what Kegan and Lahey term “deconstructive feedback.” It is a conversation that the leader enters not from a position of all-knowing authority but from one of curiosity and inquiry. The leader believes there is a problem but understands that they do not have the sole perspective on this problem. Moreover, the leader understands that in order to facilitate professional growth, both the problem and the solution must be co-modeled rather than handed down from on high. 

The challenge with such a conversation, of course, is that it generates a deep sense of vulnerability in the leader. Leaders, even in 2023, feel that we need to know more, be more, see more and do more to justify our position. Acknowledging that we may not fully understand the problem, and that we in fact need the struggling staff member to help us comprehend it, can seem like an admission of failure. 

Seeing relationships at the center of our leadership practice turns this perception on its head. If the school leader is the “chief relationship officer,” then they must seek out opportunities to show vulnerability. As Coyle powerfully demonstrates, authentic relationships cannot be formed without the leader initiating a “vulnerability loop.” 

Seen in this light, deconstructive feedback conversations move us toward two crucial goals. First, approaching the conversation from a stance of vulnerability, the leader opens the door to strengthening relationships. Second, the leader enables the staff member to confront their own vulnerability—a vital step in any meaningful growth process.

Scenario 3: The Head, the Board and the Leadership Team

Given the turnover in professional leadership, and the planned rotation of board chairs, heads and chairs find themselves adapting to a new partner more often than not. The first weeks and months of each of these new pairings are a crucial time for relationship building. Yet if school leaders are reluctant to show vulnerability to their staff members, they are all the more reluctant to do so with their board chair—and the chair, for their part, may not be jumping into an open relationship, either. 

As a result, we typically see these relationships begin, and continue, as a game of competing agendas. The head and chair understand that they must cooperate, but they see this cooperation as a means to the end of accomplishing their own predetermined goals. In the best case, this approach leads to an ongoing dynamic of give-and-take, with each individual compromising in some areas to achieve their goals in others. Leaders involved in these dynamics often convince themselves that they are “partnering” while in truth they are engaged in an ongoing negotiation process. 

Contrast this approach with the vulnerability loop described above. If head and chair are to build a relationship, each needs to enter the partnership with tentative ideas rather than fully formed goals. The beginning of their work together, and its continuation over the years, can then be marked by a humble attempt to co-define the problems and allow the solutions to emerge from the joint thinking of the relationship. 

Sound pollyannaish? Perhaps, but we have seen countless heads and chairs who take this approach succeed in building true relationships, particularly when they do so from the beginning of their work together. 

A version of this scenario applies to the professional leadership team. Often each member of the team comes to the work with their own agenda—not a personal agenda, but one that represents their division or department. The lower school principal watches out for their students’ needs, finance keeps an eye on the budget, and so on. While it is true that each leader bears responsibility for their division, once they enter the framework of the leadership team they are in a new web of relationship. Teams that can engage in true co-leadership, rather than serving as a committee of individual leaders, will achieve qualitatively different results (Lencioni, 2012).

These scenarios reveal principles of relationship-based leadership that can be applied across our interactions with parents, staff, lay leadership and community stakeholders.

1. Lean in to a relational rather than transactional approach to our interactions wherever possible. 
2. Talk to—not about—others in the school community. 
3. Muster the courage to show vulnerability in our conversations.
4. Maintain the humility to co-model both the problem and the solution with others.

With the demands these roles place on our time and our emotions, this approach can be difficult to maintain. However, the investment is well worth it. By applying these principles to every aspect of school life, we can ultimately build the resilient relationships that unlock a qualitatively healthier, happier and more successful world of school leadership.

As the leading funders of Jewish day school education in Seattle, we at the Samis Foundation take the challenge of enrollment very seriously, especially because our community has experienced some of the lowest per capita enrollment rates in the country in recent years. In 2020, we embarked on a research initiative to understand declining enrollment better and learn new strategies from schools and communities that have successfully turned their enrollment rates around. 

Along with the two well-documented success strategies of improving quality and increasing affordability, there is a third strategy that is showing great promise. That strategy is one of collaboration and relationship-building among schools, even ones that think of themselves as competing for the same students. In this article, I will explain what we learned about this collaboration as a key part of our day school enrollment strategy, how we are implementing it in the Seattle area and what preliminary results have been achieved.

Collaboration as a driver of enrollment

Collaboration is not an obvious strategy for driving enrollment. So why and how does it work? The research we conducted uncovered data showing that schools that successfully turned around declining enrollment trends did it by taking a multipart approach, with quality and affordability being two key factors, but with collaboration being an important third part of the puzzle for some communities. Departing families frequently cite lack of critical mass as a key reason for leaving day schools. Collaboration among schools creates the critical mass and vitality families want through shared resources and programming.

The impact of collaboration was particularly profound in Europe, where school communities took a communitywide approach to building strong day schools. We were fortunate to connect with Rabbi Josh Spinner, the executive vice president and CEO of The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, and Kate Goldberg, the CEO of the Maurice and Vivienne Wohl Legacy Foundation based in London, to learn about the approach of Educating for Impact in Europe, which is supported by a number of foundations. Spinner and Goldberg explained that in Jewish day schools from Finland to Spain, engaging community leaders in developing vision and strategy for creating a healthy Jewish education ecosystem was a powerful catalyst to vitality and growth.

Collaboration at the community level 

In the past, Samis focused on increasing collaboration by supporting relationship-building activities among heads of schools. This wasn’t wrong, but it wasn't enough. So, beginning in 2021, we established a forum to bring together heads of schools and lay leaders with the goal of sharing our communal responsibility and crowdsourcing solutions to issues of declining enrollment along with other challenges schools commonly face. 

This forum facilitated discussion and served to overcome obstacles and promote the power of working collaboratively to solve problems and reach objectives. Instead of making ourselves and the school leadership solely responsible for figuring out how to create educational vitality and sustainable enrollment, we gathered the minds of the community and gave them a forum for ideation and action planning. 

This forum, called Let’s Grow Enrollment, brought together lay and professional leaders from across the Seattle area to break down the silos among schools and develop dynamic approaches.

A day of magic

An entire day was set aside at a beautiful local retreat center. All the local day schools participated, and Rabbi Josh Spinner gave the charge: small community, big opportunity, and work together to double day school enrollment in Seattle in five years. It was an “If you dream it, they will come” moment. The day was carefully scripted to mix the day school participants with a facilitator to identify and remove obstacles, promote opportunity and report back to the whole group.

Not long ago, Hebrew at the Center (HATC) leadership conducted a series of conversations with Hebrew teachers, Judaic studies coordinators and heads of schools at several schools in the Pacific Northwest, and then shared what was heard with community leaders and funders. Out of those conversations, and the relationships and idea-sharing that resulted from those meetings, a new idea emerged that can become a revolutionary model inspiring the advancement of Hebrew language learning in Jewish day schools across North America: Think regionally, leverage resources communally, and act locally.

On average, just 13% of day school staff are Hebrew teachers, and four hours a week are spent on Hebrew language instruction. Many of these teachers have limited access to high-quality professional learning and may not have the academic credentials or training in the 10 competency areas needed to be an effective Hebrew language instructor. This is particularly true for smaller schools or schools located outside of major Jewish communities, centers more likely to host academic or communal institutions that can provide this type of training or support in Hebrew language instruction.

Despite being committed to their students and the students’ learning, Hebrew teachers often report feelings of isolation and aren’t certain to whom they can turn. School leaders echo this feeling, knowing where to send teachers of math or social science for professional learning and mentoring, but being less certain how to support Hebrew instructors. Central to professional growth of Hebrew teachers and, in turn, to improved student outcomes in Hebrew, is being a part of a meaningful community of practice, the ability to grow their instructional expertise, and a well-articulated pathway for personal and professional advancement. The absence of these fundamental frameworks of support lead to teacher attrition at a time when talent pipeline issues are already critically challenging.

Forging a Regional Hebrew Hub

When HATC leadership visited the communities of Portland, Seattle and Vancouver as part of a regional “listening tour,” teachers and school leaders repeatedly surfaced that the Hebrew faculty often are underserved when it comes to advancing their pedagogic expertise or elevating student outcomes. School leaders also raised significant concerns related to the talent pipeline for Hebrew educators in these communities, mirroring concerns throughout the field. However, each school and each community understood the limits to solving this issue on their own, whether the solution was finding Hebrew speakers and training them to become Hebrew teachers, or supporting existing staff with local professional learning opportunities to encourage growth and strong teacher retention.

In response, arising from requests made by Hebrew teachers themselves, a regional professional learning was envisioned that would serve the day schools of Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. Titled Cascadia in recognition of the mountain range running through the region, the goal of the project is to strengthen Hebrew programs and advance student outcomes and teacher professionalization through a partnership among the participating Jewish day schools and local funders. This initiative also will create dynamic connections across the community of teachers and, by extension, the way in which their students and families see themselves as part of a greater whole. 

Having day school teachers and leaders from each of these three cities working both together and in parallel reinforces a sense of belonging to a more robust, dynamic community. As shared by Marc Blattner, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, “We believe this effort will not only help us locally, but also bring the Pacific Northwest Jewish educational initiatives closer together for the first time.” In total, a dozen schools from an array of religious and communal affiliations have joined the initiative, including Seattle’s Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle, MMSC Day School, Northwest Yeshiva High School, Seattle Hebrew Academy and Seattle Jewish Community School; Portland’s Maayan Torah Day School, Portland Jewish Academy and the Tamim Academy of Portland; and Vancouver’s King David High School, Richmond Jewish Day School, Vancouver Hebrew Academy and Vancouver Talmud Torah.

Thanks to grant requests organized in partnership with Hebrew at the Center and submitted by these schools, more than $365,000 has been pledged for the two-year initiative through funding from the Samis Foundation, Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, the Oregon Jewish Community Foundation, the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, professional learning grants from Hebrew at the Center and financial contributions from each of the schools.

Project Launch

Framing

“Dear (name of school) Family,”

Do you ever send or receive school communications using that language? What is your immediate reaction? Does it make you feel connected and cared for, or cynical and uncomfortable?

Several years ago, I had a conversation that has stuck with me. I had mentioned that as a principal I was trying to cultivate a school culture where everyone cares about each other, like a family. My head of school turned to me and said, “We are not a family. We are a group of professionals with a shared mission.” At the time, I had a hard time understanding why anyone would not want to build a close-knit culture. After all, do we want the students, teachers and parents in our building to think of school as somewhere they have to be or somewhere they want to be?

Fast forward to the challenging last few years of the Covid pandemic, when the lines between work and family were sometimes blurry. Teaching from home over zoom. WhatsApp chats and faculty meetings at all hours. The burnout and stress that educators often feel on a good day was multiplied tenfold. And now, as we begin, please God, to emerge from the pandemic and return to “normalcy,” the challenges of teacher retention and of mental health, which were really there all along, are even more acute.

The Question

Which brings me back to this question that I have been thinking about for years: What are the pros and cons of describing school staff as a family? Is this language helpful, or does it cause challenges? How should schools balance professionalism with caring? Are there boundaries that should or should not be crossed?

I posted this question on social media and received many strong opinions. One person wrote, “It screams toxic work environment that expects too much and delivers too little.” Others preferred terms like “staff,” “team” or “community,” rather than “family,” which may not even have positive associations for all people.

There is research on this topic. Several models of organizational culture have been described, among them “relational,” “tribe” or “clan culture” models. Proponents of those models point to research about the importance of belonging and of feeling connected, appreciated and accepted. Others have taken a very different approach. A 2021 Harvard Business Review article described “The Toxic Effects of Branding Your Workplace a Family.

Potential Challenges

So let’s dig a little deeper. What are the potential downsides of “family culture”? The main issues that are often raised are boundaries, accountability and self-advocacy.

Boundaries. Talking about staff as a family runs the risk of blurring important boundaries and upsetting work-life balance. If a teacher is not just an employee or colleague but a family member, then maybe it’s not such a big deal for me to ask them to go above and beyond their job description or hours. Wouldn’t you do that for a family member? And if we are family, does that mean we have to socialize on Shabbat and be friends outside of work? Or that our kids must have play dates?

Accountability. If we are a family, it may be harder for a supervisor to give honest feedback, to hold staff accountable, and in some cases, to let staff go. You would never “fire” your brother or sister from the family, even if their conduct left something to be desired. Taking a more personal rather than professional approach runs the risk of tolerating low standards.

Self-Advocacy. If staff are expected to feel like family, then it might be harder for them to complain, to ask for a promotion or a raise, or even to decide to pursue other professional opportunities elsewhere. Because families look out for each other. Families don’t put one person over the group. Instead, staff may feel they have to tolerate unreasonable expectations or sacrifice their own needs for the team.

Potential Benefits

Given all those challenges, what is the other perspective? What might be some of the benefits of using the language of “family”? Here the main approach seems to center on caring and community.

Caring. The flip side of too much acceptance is the benefit of knowing that your supervisor truly cares for you as a person, not just as an employee. They know that you are human, that you are not perfect, that you have bad days, and that you make mistakes. And they still believe in you, support you and encourage you.

This builds safety and trust. You’re not just another name on a list. You matter individually. Your voice is valued. Your growth is important. Even more than that, your relationship is not transactional. You matter to them not only as an employee, but as a person. They care as much about your 5-9 as they do about your 9-5. As one person responded to my post on social media,

I want them to know that I am invested in them beyond just the three hours a week they work for me, i.e., for mentoring, or writing graduate school references. I can see the downsides, but what I want to convey is that a “job” is a place you only go because they pay you (driving an Uber, Target cashier) but a vocation/calling/team is a job you do because the work itself and the people you do it with are important to you in addition to the paycheck.

Community. As a family, we are part of something bigger than ourselves. And we look out for each other. I am willing to share materials with you or cover for you because I know you would do the same thing for me. We don’t compete with each other but celebrate each other. We work to integrate and welcome new colleagues and develop rituals to sustain camaraderie and morale. We are here not because we need a job, but because we have a shared purpose based on shared values. Perhaps most importantly, as a family our deepest held value is maintaining community even when we disagree.

A Compromise

As with most issues, there is no one approach to school culture that fits all. And it may depend on the environment of an individual school. Some schools may build a more “professional” culture, whereas others might lean in more to a “relational” one. To me, the approach and the language are not what matter the most; it’s the conversations around those choices. School leaders can say a lot of things, but the real culture will emerge over time by what they do and how they make people feel.

As we have seen, family and professionalism are two ends of a spectrum; there are potential benefits and challenges to either side. The art and heart of this really comes down to naming the issues, being intentional about the kind of culture we want to create and the kind we want to avoid, and making the conversation a regular part of the dialogue between all levels of staff.

Having said all that, there are many specific things school leaders can do to build the positive elements of trust, support, caring and community we have described, even if they don’t frame it as a “family.” What might it look like to build a school culture that authentically and sincerely values its staff and seeks to build collaboration, connection and community? Here are some suggestions.

• Schedule time in your calendar to proactively check in on your colleagues and teachers to see how they are doing and what’s on their mind. This includes part-time and substitute teachers. No staff member should come to school and leave feeling that no one was happy to see them.
• Show interest in people’s family and personal lives while honoring their choice to share as much or as little as they want.
• Express sincere gratitude for your colleagues, not only for the work they do and the impact they have, but for being the person that they are.
• Remind teachers that it is OK to make mistakes, to try new things that may not work out and to ask for help. Model this for them by asking them for help and demonstrate your own growth mindset by taking risks as well.
• Share with teachers the decisions you are thinking about, and ask for their perspectives.
• Develop protocols and norms for healthy debate and disagreement.
• Create common spaces and schedules where teachers can spend time together.
• Make sure that every staff member knows every other staff member’s name and role in the school.
• Invest in your teachers by helping them create growth plans and recognizing their progress. Develop leadership capacities, and offer opportunities to take on greater responsibility.
• Encourage work-life balance by not calling, texting or emailing about school matters at night or on weekends. And by supporting them when they need to take a mental health day to recharge.
• Develop rituals and traditions to celebrate and recognize staff when they depart.

These are just a few examples; there are many more amazing things happening in each of our schools. The challenge (like many things) is not a lack of desire but time. We are often juggling so many responsibilities and putting out so many fires that it can be hard to find the time or headspace to make this a priority. But if you think about organizations with healthy supportive cultures, you will realize that this is not icing on the cake; it is the cake. We are in the business of nurturing people, and that includes not only students, but parents and colleagues as well.

So, after thinking this all through a bit, maybe my head of school was right. Maybe we’re not exactly a family. But maybe I was also right. We’re more than just colleagues—we’re a kehillah, a community. We are people who have a passion for helping children learn and grow, and for building a better tomorrow. Education is not a job for us, but a calling.  We care and, because we care, we are connected to each other. We have our own families and lives outside of school, but we also have a community at school where we belong and are cared for as well.

The scene is all too familiar: Jewish day schools often rely on traditional hierarchical relationships with respect to teacher roles. An administrative team makes the majority of decisions. Teachers are expected to comply. There are few opportunities for expert teachers to advance in their careers, which handcuffs teacher talent and limits Jewish education from fully realizing its potential to educate children and support them as they develop their Jewish identity. 

This hierarchical model can have a negative impact on the professional relationships in a school. Teachers might feel like they don’t have agency in the governance of the school or a say in the decisions that impact them. Often, teachers complain that administrators implement initiatives from the top down, rather than authentic efforts that arise from within the teaching ranks. 

Imagine a more collaborative context, in which a group of teachers meets regularly to share and discuss student writing with the goal of strengthening their writing program. The teachers ask probing questions such as, “I wonder what the student intends as the climax?” The group meets to discuss the writing, facilitated by a teacher leader who serves as the school’s writing coordinator. These teachers deepen their professional relationships through supporting and challenging one another in their craft. They elevate the writing program in their school. They find trends that need addressing and bring those issues to the wider teaching community and administration. 

Many teachers have so much more to offer; they are hungry for broader roles within the school to grow their leadership skills and improve instructional practices. They love teaching, and they are driven by a deep belief that they can better the field of education from within and beyond the classroom. Imagine what day school education could be like if we created systems in our schools to support teacher leadership and enable this type of critical colleagueship. 

I participated in a teacher leadership program at Brandeis University. Together with others in my cohort, we formed bonds based on our mutual passion for leadership from within the craft. We leaned into the organizational structures of schools, examined their micropolitics, and evaluated types of authority and their effects on collegial relationships. We worked within our schools to develop and implement change initiatives. We designed professional development that promoted “co-thinking” among the staff, in which coaching and mentoring are based on thoughtful analysis of problems of practice—not simply offering tips and advice. We discovered that school improvement often requires wholesale shifts in the culture of a school.

Making a successful cultural shift depends, in part, on teacher leaders. Teacher leaders have their boots in the classrooms and on teams. They live and breathe the day-to-day operations of classroom teaching. They work hard to develop relationships with their colleagues that move beyond congeniality; their work depends on the relationships they develop, which involve supporting, challenging, observation, mentorship and examining issues of practice.

How Teacher Leadership Work

Navigating relationships can be complicated at times, but never more so than when faculty members change roles within a school. Suddenly, relationships shift, and all those involved need to readjust. This phenomenon is perhaps particularly complex (and potentially fraught) in Jewish day school settings, where professional and personal lives are often intertwined. 

At the Jewish New Teacher Project (JNTP) of New Teacher Center (NTC), for over 20 years we have worked closely with teachers as they transition into new leadership roles—mentor, department chair, division head or principal—and we have helped them navigate both the practical and emotional implications of the transition. In this article, we will give some language to the process of relationship change for emerging school leaders, identify common pitfalls and offer ideas on how to navigate these changes successfully. 

How do changing leadership roles affect relationships?

A new leadership role requires changes in behavior, priorities and mindsets. The impact of these changes is not only on the individual but on the people and the systems around them. Following are some of the changes, and challenges, new leaders face and the ways those changes can impact relationships. Many of these are relevant to all types of leadership roles, while others are particular to administrators. 

Acquiring new skills

Most new roles require learning new skills. Becoming a mentor requires developing new skills such as active listening, mentoring language, classroom observations, delivering effective feedback, and analyzing teacher and student data to inform teaching practice and charting professional growth. Taking on a new administrative role such as department head or principal can require attaining or honing leadership skills such as effective meeting facilitation, supervision, having hard conversations, shaping culture, operations, budgeting, scheduling and time management. 

Developing new skills takes time and effort and puts the mentor or administrator in a vulnerable position as they go from being an expert to a novice—and they do so publicly. This can affect feelings of competence and self-worth. Rabbi Sam Pearlson, middle school Judaic studies teacher at SAR Academy, shares about becoming a mentor: 

The hardest part of transitioning into a mentoring position was confronting my “imposter syndrome.” How could I possibly mentor another teacher when I'm constantly rethinking my own curricula and classroom practices? How can I help someone else navigate the struggles that I am working through in my own classroom?

In fact, emerging school leaders often mention “imposter syndrome” as a challenge. 

Setting boundaries

In the post-Covid world, it can feel like boundaries between teachers, students, parents and administrators have been eliminated. Heightened expectations have been made in all directions around time, availability and the amount of work to be done. Teachers and administrators must establish and assert boundaries to be able to stay focused, but doing so may upset some relationships. Educators benefit from setting boundaries regarding being approached by parents when outside of the school building as well as evening and weekend communications. Students and parents who might have enjoyed unlimited access to their teachers during the pandemic may be upset and frustrated by the reassertion of limits on availability.

In addition to negotiating pandemic-era patterns, new mentors and administrators need other types of boundaries as well. Mentors have to set boundaries with their administrators in maintaining their mentee’s confidentiality. New administrators may have to set boundaries with friends within and outside of school who want “the inside scoop.” Setting boundaries can lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness for administrators, who feel they cannot fully share with former peers, current supervisees, upper level administrators, parents and friends in the wider community. Setting boundaries is crucial for the mental health and productivity of emerging school leaders, though the impact on relationships may add stress. 

New hierarchy

Moving from a peer relationship to one involving supervision certainly impacts that relationship. This change doesn’t necessarily have to negatively impact the relationship, but adding a feedback or supervisory element will inevitably change it. For teachers who become mentors or coaches to junior teachers, there is a power dynamic involved with classroom observations. Not everyone likes being watched while they do their job—fearing judgment and not wanting to show weakness—and having a peer observe one’s work in action may make a teacher feel uncomfortable or vulnerable. 

Those with new evaluative responsibilities may find themselves having to give critical feedback to friends, former co-teachers or even their own former teachers. Aliza Strassman, director of student services at Ben Porat Yosef and incoming director of Sinai at Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy, shares: 

One of the most challenging aspects of changing roles within the school (I had been a teacher there for seven years before becoming an administrator) was navigating new relationships. For me, this included both supervising former peers and finding my voice and place within the administrative team.

Giving honest feedback, as well as receiving it, can be one of the hardest tasks for new school leaders, and they may hesitate to do so for fear of damaging collegial relationships and personal friendships. Yet providing clear feedback is essential to creating a healthy work environment.

Avoiding pitfalls

In making the change to a new position, sometimes emerging leaders fall into mindset traps that can impact relationships. We encourage emerging leaders to be vigilant about avoiding these pitfalls.

Desire to be liked

This is especially true for new administrators, but is also relevant for mentors. Those in new leadership positions often don’t want to do anything to change the status quo or be considered “the bad guy.” For instance, mentors may hesitate to fully embrace their role for fear of being perceived as judgmental or critical to a peer. When it comes to administrators, we remind the JNTP Administrator Support Program participants that “administration is not a popularity contest.” Leaders often need to make hard decisions and have hard conversations. Falling into the trap of wanting to be liked means emerging leaders may resist executing crucial parts of their job. 

Getting stuck in emotions 

Emerging leaders must avoid getting drawn into others’ emotions. For mentors of beginning teachers, this can be particularly challenging, as the first 6-12 months might be spent largely on emotional support as new teachers struggle to find their “sea legs.” Mentors should help guide new teachers through their feelings of being overwhelmed and not become entangled with them. Both mentors and new teachers benefit from maintaining focus on setting and achieving goals and recognizing the incremental growth that is happening.

Power vs. authority

New administrators are chosen for their positions based on expertise, skills and other leadership qualities. In their new roles, they are imbued with both power and authority, and learning to find the balance between the two is crucial. We define “power” as implementing rules, regulations and accountability, and “authority” as possessing the knowledge, skills and compassion that build credibility and respect. 

New, insecure leaders can get caught up in focusing exclusively on such details as lateness to davening or complying with dress code, trying to control others’ behavior in order to assert their power. This can create tension in a school and lead to breakdowns in relationships with students, faculty and parents. On the other hand, without accountability, a school becomes a free-for-all, which can negatively impact relationships inside and outside of the building. The key to good leadership is finding a balance between implementing accountability and leading through authority and compassion.

Having to do it all

New administrators often fall into this trap. They want to show that they are worthy of their promotion, so they try to do all the tasks that fall under their purview. The reality is that nobody can do it “all” successfully, and relationships may suffer when an administrator can’t accomplish what they need to. An administrator may feel so overwhelmed by administrative tasks that they don’t make time to observe classrooms and give feedback. They may never leave their office to walk around the building and talk to students and teachers. Administrators must learn how to balance their administrative and educational leadership responsibilities. 

During a live podcast at the 2023 Prizmah conference, Solomon Schechter Day School of Boston presented how their organizational restructuring drove institutional alignment and change. One of their key changes was moving to a distributed leadership model, where faculty from across the school were empowered to take on certain administrative tasks. As Dr. Jonah Hassenfeld, Schechter Boston’s director of learning and teaching, explains, 

When you look at a principal who has 25 direct reports, there’s just no way that person can be providing the kind of coaching and mentorship and supervision [that is necessary] and scheduling the fire drill and making sure the buses are there on time and figuring out what happens when the lunch tables aren’t set up.

Balancing administrative and educational leadership tasks is crucial for the relationships in the building and within the wider school community.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the namesake of my school (Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School in Northridge, California), said, “What we need more than anything else is not textbooks, but textpeople.” When I discuss this beautiful quote with our community, I ask, What did Heschel mean? Time and time again, what comes out of our discussions is that the desired outcome of learning, through textbooks or other means, is to establish positive relationships with others. Heschel emphasizes the relevance of personal connection.

I am blessed to have had many roles at my school for four decades. I am a proud alumnus, and right out of college I started working at Heschel as a Judaic studies and physical education teacher and coach. Knowing that I hoped to become an administrator, I asked our school rabbi and middle school director what advice they had for me if I wanted to serve as a leader of the school in the future. From the numerous anecdotes they shared with me, one theme stood out: relationship-building.

Jewish day schools are increasingly embracing efforts in social and emotional learning (SEL), with the pandemic and associated mental health concerns strengthening the urgency of this trend. Through SEL, values such as kehillah (community), kavod (honor or respect) and the like become woven into the fabric of interactions in a school. And while the focus is often on how to build trusting and positive relationships between teacher and student, an SEL approach emphasizes the importance of all relationships in a school. This means that the quality of the relationships between colleagues and among those in leadership and the staff are of paramount concern. 

When teachers experience positive relationships with their peers and supervisors, they feel better about the work they do, report reduced stress, and have a greater commitment to their own and their peers’ productivity and professional growth and success. This comes as no surprise. Think about your own journey as an educator. Are you able to identify principals, supervisors or colleagues who helped you achieve your full potential not only in the classroom, but also contributed to your overall sense of well-being? We suspect, based on having asked this question countless times, that your answer is “yes.”

Business and political settings have embraced relationship-oriented leadership. A 2018 Forbes article concludes that “relational leadership can be incredibly successful, particularly when it is authentic, empathetic, reinforced through gestures of friendship and embedded in the culture of a team.”

As such, principals’ and educators’ social and emotional competencies can profoundly impact everyone's experience, as well as the school climate, and to a large extent, determine how relationships develop among the staff. While all social and emotional competencies play a significant role in the development of relationships and school climate, self- and social awareness seem particularly important. Leaders and teachers who possess these competencies have an increased awareness of the effect their emotions have on others, as well as a deepened understanding of their colleagues’ and staffs’ emotions. Equally important, socially and emotionally competent principals and teachers can manage their emotions under challenging situations and understand that their handling of these situations affects their relationships with others and directly influences classroom and school climate. 

When positive relationships exist, teachers feel safe to share their struggles and concerns. In these kinds of trusting relationships, principals validate the emotions and issues shared, and they respond to them. Teachers feel accepted and appreciated, leading to more open communication and trust. When teachers perceive their principals as supportive and caring, they are also more likely to seek counsel when confronting difficult situations and feel sufficiently brave to try new things and ask questions. 

School Climate

It has been recognized for some time that school climate affects everyone in the building and influences teacher and student performance as well as mental and physical health. School climate refers to the quality and consistency of interpersonal interactions within the school community, which influence the children’s and staffs’ cognitive, social and psychological development. A positive school climate begins with the social and emotional competencies of the principal. Principals are at the forefront of constructing and shaping the context in which their teachers teach and students learn and, therefore, have a direct influence on the school climate. 

Principals who have strong social and emotional competencies are able to bring these competencies into the school, resulting in an environment that supports the development of positive relationships with their staff. They are more likely to design professional learning that is collaborative in nature. They also recognize and develop their staffs’ strengths and guide them through solving conflicts constructively and successfully. This creates an optimal school climate in which everyone benefits. Teachers like to be in a working environment built on cooperation, respectful communication and trust, where expressions and sharing of emotions are welcomed and acknowledged, and principals are supportive and responsive to each individual teacher’s needs. As a result, in such environments, teachers report feeling safe emotionally and physically, and are able to thrive. And they are less likely to leave.

Sense of Purpose, Source of Strength

One of the most important steps that school leaders can take to strengthen school climate for staff and students is to establish the core values of the school. All members of the school community should be able to find commonalities among their answers to questions such as, Why are we here? What is our purpose?

Educators acknowledge that trauma and stress accompany students and staff into school with them every day. This creates added tension in relationships and can drain motivation and focus. 

Yet as Viktor Frankl found under the most extreme conditions and William Damon and others have found more normatively, possessing a sense of constructive purpose can offset many other difficulties. It can galvanize positive energies and organize and focus actions in ways that improve and deepen relationships. When students and educators come together in common cause, great accomplishments can take place. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has said, “If you believe you are here for a purpose, your energies will be focused. A sense of mission will give you strength. You will do remarkable things.”

One distinctive feature of a Jewish school is that the students are not there only for themselves and their own advancement. They are there for one another and to foster accomplishments that will make the lives of their classmates, schoolmates, community and the world better. Tikkun Olam is not something abstract; it’s a part of everyday life, an expectation for everyone to fulfill. When skills are not linked to virtues, these skills can be deployed in various ways, not necessarily constructively. Nor is a school climate helped by having cliques and hierarchies. The strongest path to an optimal school climate is when every student (and staff member) feels like a genuine shareholder in an entity that is bigger than any one person or group within the school.

Making Meetings Matter

Many of us have feelings about meetings. And oftentimes those feelings are negative. A quick search of quotes on the internet turned up gems such as these: “Your meeting is a high priority if there’s free food.” “Any simple problem can be made worse if enough meetings are held to discuss it.” “The longer the meeting, the less is accomplished.” (The latter attributed to Tim Cook of Apple.) However, when properly designed, meetings can provide opportunities for relationship building and can contribute toward a positive school climate.

Start the meeting with emotional intelligence. Begin with a welcome and by letting everyone know why they are there and what you hope will be accomplished as a result of this meeting. Open with a fun question to set a tone of congeniality. Take time to build relationships among staff; to build empathy; to teach and practice SE skills. With limited time for meetings, we often rush to “get down to business.” Instead, provide time for participants to listen to one another without always trying to problem-solve and offer time for staff to get to know each other. 

Provide opportunities to share emotions. Checking in with educators sends a message of caring. Just like athletes huddle before a game, principals can offer time for educators to come together and share their heart and head space at the beginning of the day. This also can be a time for educators to pause, check in with themselves and breathe before entering the classroom. Transitions can be hard for educators, too.

Create collaborative norms. Many educators set up classroom rules so that optimal learning can take place. Articulating what each student needs in order to do their best learning builds self- and social awareness and a classroom climate in which everyone can thrive. Why, then, do we not do this for our educators, as well? Whether it is during a staff meeting, team project or a causal interaction in the hallway, educators can benefit from reflecting on their own needs as well as the needs of their colleagues. Working together and articulating norms of engagement as a group recognizes that people’s needs and actions matter in creating a safe and brave space for everyone. This also builds a sense of caring and trust that leads to a positive working environment where everyone can do their best work. 

Create opportunities for staff to share expertise. While outside experts and “top-down” instruction have their places, staff members benefit from being able to contribute to and draw from the collective wisdom of practice. Ask teachers to showcase their innovative work. Provide opportunities for peer-to-peer consultations when someone gets stuck. 

There is much that can be done to enhance the school climate as perceived by staff members. For a leader, caring doesn’t need to be costly in terms of time or resources. The little things matter: a quick check-in at the beginning and/or end of the day, an expression of support for challenges both personal and professional, frequent reminders about the community’s common purpose. Together, these add up to a place where teachers thrive.

A few weeks ago, a new Bible teacher confessed that, although she spent her whole first year immersed in teaching, she felt like she hadn’t forged any enduring relationships at the school. She experienced what David Tyack, in his 1974 historical accounting of American schools, describes as the “egg crate” phenomena. Teachers operate in isolated classrooms that resemble egg crates—each operating on their own, focused on their own students and with minimal contact with their colleagues. This default phenomenon is urgently worth unpacking, especially as workplaces regear in the great reshuffling and as schools struggle to keep and attract talent.

From a teacher’s workplace perspective, school can be both a highly sociable and a highly isolating place. Unlike so many workers at cubicles or remote work, teachers see dozens and dozens of people daily. Teaching is, by its nature, an exercise in collaboration. But schools are architecturally compartmentalized, faculty divided by subject matter, and the school day segmented by bells. Part-time teachers come and go, while full-time teachers have little time for small talk. Prep periods are scattered throughout the day. Teachers certainly see each other, but they rarely interact meaningfully. Few have time to chat, let alone eat and spend time together as a community of educators.

Teachers need it. Administrators want it. Everyone works better with it. Yet our collective sense of a workplace “community” has become trite and overhyped. Missives with “Dear X community” does not a community make. Cordiality is not community. Ditto for full faculty meetings. 

What does make community is not a secret: food. Research suggests that shared time over shared food is an essential ingredient for workplace happiness and productivity. Jewish tradition also places emphasis on shared meals as a means of creating a sense of community. At a time when teachers are being pulled farther apart from one another, can bringing in the bagels alleviate teacher isolation?

Food as Social Glue

As we enter this new age of working, we know what workers need from their workplaces. A 2021 McKinsey Quarterly survey across five countries and over 5,500 managers and workers found a disconnect between what employers and employees valued in their work communities. While employers thought employees valued compensation and work-life balance above all factors, employees placed a sense of being valued by their organization and a sense of belonging as their top values, far above compensation. The study suggested a reprioritization for businesses, especially those in people-facing roles, to build a sense of belonging and community. People need relationships, not transactions, to feel grounded in their work. One of their top recommendations to engage people in community? Food.

Plenty of workplace research supports this assertion. My favorite is a study by Cornell University’s Kevin Kniffin and colleagues of more than a dozen fire stations in one American city. After more than a year of study, one topline trend emerged: Firefighters who ate together fought better together—twice as well, in fact, as firefighters whose stations had more isolated social interactions. Kniffin found that individual eating among firefighters was a signal of deeper dysfunction at the station, with potential life-and-death consequences. Kniffin argued that daily spaghetti dinners (the firefighter food of choice) served as the glue that bound the first responders in teamwork and personal mutual friendships.

Jews are no strangers to eating as a community. Are you eating with someone else? Best to talk Torah to elevate the meal, according to Pirkei Avot. Are you eating a meal with three people? Say a special preamble to Birkat Hamazon, grace after meals. Eating with more than 10? Add a special insertion to the preamble to acknowledge the moment. Celebrating a life event? Eat. Our tradition identifies a meal as a time for caring, camaraderie, elevated conversation. Most Jewish social programming revolves around or someway includes food (when was the last time you joined a synagogue event without food besides for Yom Kippur?). Like Kniffin’s firefighters, Jewish rituals around eating discourage eating alone.

Two personal anecdotes, both about French fries, tease out this tension. At the conclusion of my first year teaching in an urban charter school as part of Teach or America, our administrators took us on a faculty bowling trip. We all piled into a yellow bus and divided into teams. Here were colleagues I had spent dozens of hours within professional development and grade-level meetings. 

Yet socially were strangers. As we (or rather, everyone else as I keep Kosher) ate lots of French fries, we talked about—what else?—students. We all got to school before seven and left after five. We put in the time together. But we had little else in common. All those hours eating at our desks and running into the teacher workroom to photocopy class materials translated into workplace solidarity but not workplace community (despite all the emails insisting that, in fact, we were one).

That isolation contrasts with my first job as a school administrator. Our yeshiva served dinner nightly, because the school day ended past eight in the evening. I tried to stay for dinner as often as I could, because I saw the comradery among the students and, for that matter, among the other teachers and administrators who stayed. As we ate French fries and chicken (French fries were always on the menu), we would disconnect from the school day and whatever dramas had ensued. We would talk about family, Torah and personal interests. I felt more knowledgeable about my colleagues in a month than in two years at my previous school.

Think back to the most memorable moments of collegiality at your own school. They most likely involve a shared meal. At Ida Crown Jewish Academy, my current school, one big highlight of the year for teachers is a shared meal before our big open house event. One teacher cooks up a storm; everyone sits at a communal table and enjoys each other’s company. It is a Shabbat meal on a Tuesday evening. The most common comment at the meal? “We should do this more often!”

The Pedagogy of Partnership (PoP) is a method of learning Jewishly that understands relationships as the very heart of teaching and learning. Underlying this approach are PoP’s Core Relational Building Blocks (CRBB), which serve as a foundational tool for creating educational programs and learning environments that foster relationships between students and teachers, among students and their peers, and importantly, between students and Torah. PoP holds that the teacher, each individual student and the text itself are all partners in learning. 

The Core Relational Building Blocks

The CRBB framework constitutes a set of questions the educator asks themselves to address two fundamental elements to relationship-building: the work of helping the learning partners become present and available for relationship and the work of connecting all the partners. When educators consider each of these questions, they open worlds of possibility for the skillful use of strategies and interventions to deepen the quality of learning and strengthen the learning community that makes this learning possible. These are the questions:

How am I connecting to learners and building relationships with them?

How am I inviting in and helping each individual learner be present?

How am I connecting learners to one another?

How am I inviting in and helping the text (content) be present and available for partnership?

How am I connecting learners and texts (content) to one another?

In this article, we explore this framework through a case of one teacher and her classroom. We illustrate how an educator might use this matrix of relational questions to see the potential she has to move her class to joyful, deep and connected learning.

When we teachers and administrators guide students every day, our unstated tone and subtle body language may contribute more to our relationships with our students than what we actually say out loud. When we look directly at students, wave hello in the halls and ask how they are doing with the intention of listening to their response, we build trust. Conversely, when we turn our backs, ask students to send us an email, put them off somehow, or offer sarcasm and irony, we put distance between our students and us. We may even get a laugh sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that we have earned their trust.

Our students don’t always earn our trust because they test us: They speak out of turn and claim not to have remembered a due date or an element of an assignment; they ask to use the restroom and take their phones with them; they pretend a need to visit the nurse.

We have to remember, though, that just as it’s in our blood and in our job description to guide students, it’s in their blood to test their adults’ patience, subject matter knowledge and moral fiber. It is our role to take the high moral road even when they test us so that they can take us seriously when we make a moral claim and so that they can take our relationships seriously.

Over the course of research that I conducted at several Prizmah schools and at other independent non-sectarian, all boys, all girls, Roman Catholic and Quaker schools in connection with the Sylvia and Moshe Ettenberg Research Grant from the Network for Research in Jewish Education, I saw trust-building and strong relationships emerging in classrooms, and, most profoundly, I observed teachers leveraging a moral relationship with their students in a variety of contexts, from math and social studies classes to physical education and a prayer group sitting under a tree.

Stop me if you have heard this one before in a classroom setting: 

         “You know, in the real world, you won’t be able to….” 

         “When you get to the real world, you will see…” 

         “School is a bubble—you aren’t in the real world until you graduate.” 

This line of thinking brings up several questions. 

• If the students aren’t in the so-called real world, where are they? 
• What message does it send to students that their world is somehow fake, make-believe or inauthentic?
• What does this say about the world of education that we openly admit to operating in some kind of fantasy land? 

I cannot count how many times I have heard the expression “the real world” come out of the mouth of a teacher or even the students themselves. To me, this is not only inaccurate but also wildly destructive. By separating the students from reality or somehow suggesting that they are not actual functioning members of society, we are stripping them of both power and agency. By implying the students’ current words and actions don’t count, that they are in some kind of trial run for the real thing, we are truly doing them a great disservice. 

One of our primary goals should actually be to help the students understand that they are currently living in “the real world.” They should be engaged in their own communities, passionate about what is happening around them and empowered to make a difference. Educators often remark that one of the primary functions of a school is to cultivate the citizens of the future. If this belief is put into practice, we must allow them to practice their citizenship in a legitimate fashion. 

One way we achieve this ever-important goal is through the power of Integrated Project Based Learning. IPBL is an innovative educational approach to learning that empowers students to see the value in their own learning, motivates students to make cross-curricular connections, and ensures that the students are developing relationships and engaging in the community in order to make a difference.

MetroWest Jewish Day School (MWJDS), a K-8 school in Framingham, Massachusetts, began offering a GSA (Gender Sexuality Alliance) during the 2021-2022 school year due to growing interest expressed by middle schoolers (grades 6-8), many of whom were struggling with their gender and/or sexual identity. The students were in need of a safe space where they could ask questions and feel supported as they navigated complex questions about their lives and their identities in the context of a political environment that was becoming both increasingly welcoming and hostile toward them. 

The MWJDS students are not alone in their struggles. According to a study by the Human Rights Campaign, most LGBTQ+ youth are aware of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity by adolescence. A 2020 nationwide study conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA’s School of Law found that approximately 300,000 youth aged 13-17 identified as transgender, and 1,994,000 as LGB. Given that identity is always in flux, so too are these concepts, and the meanings people ascribe to them. While some people have questioned whether LGBTQ+ identification is on the rise among youth, others attribute this shift to the comfort young people feel in expressing their identities. This is due in part to the brave and courageous work accomplished by countless LGBTQ+ activists and allies, Jewish and non-Jewish. 

The Jewish community is fortunate to have access to many wonderful resources, including Keshet, which works for the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ Jews and their families in Jewish life, and JQY (Jewish Queer Youth), which supports LGBTQ+ youth and young adults from Orthodox, Chassidic and Sephardi/Mizrahi communities. Both organizations offer training and education to help Jewish day schools build awareness around the needs of LGBTQ+ individuals and develop strategies to create inclusive environments. Keshet emphasizes that “even in communities where there seems to be agreement that inclusion of LGBTQ+ Jews is essential, it is still important to state this explicitly.” 

Young people who are able to openly share their sexual and gender identities and receive support have better mental health outcomes and report greater life satisfaction, according to a study by the Trevor Project. At the same time, some LGBTQ+ day school students do not feel that their day schools have created an environment where they can openly share their gender and/or sexual identities. That is not to say that people are close-minded, but rather, there is no precedent for them to rely upon. 

In a blog post for The Jewish Women’s Archive, Rising Voices Fellow Nina Baran, who led the GSA at her day school, noted that “some students from our school graduate and then come out as queer a year or two later.” This is a common practice among many day school students. She conducted the Gay and Lesbian Student and Educator Network’s (GLSEN) climate survey at her school, which measures challenges experienced by LGBTQ+ students at their schools and resources that support their well-being. Baran discovered that many students felt that their school’s LGBTQ+ resources were lacking. For example, their library had few books that featured LGBTQ+ identities, and staff with training in LGBTQ+ inclusivity. Keshet cautions that “inclusion is a journey, not a destination,” which means that equality is ongoing work that should involve all stakeholders, rather than a one-off effort.

MWJDS’ GSA, which is now in its second year, is led by school social worker Mike Schneider-Tran, one of the article’s authors. Schneider-Tran’s pre-existing relationships with middle schoolers—he leads the student council, teaches wellness and offers therapeutic support when needed—and his lived experience as a bisexual man made him an appropriate choice for leading the group. The students’ unfaltering trust in him provided an easy entry point for those who were interested in participating. Sixteen middle schoolers, many of whom were exploring their gender and/or sexual identities, joined during the 2022-2023 academic year, and the group is now in its second year of operation. 

Members also included allies who wanted to understand what their peers were experiencing. They became better educated and connected to their peers’ personal journeys. The in-school meeting format—the group met during lunch and recess—signified that this was a priority for the school, and also meant that all students who were interested would be able to attend. Parents were also informed about the group. In fact, a few requested it, and they were excited to see it take form. This reaffirmed the school’s commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion among its faculty, students and families.

During the weekly GSA meetings, students discussed topics such as sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. In addition to exploring these concepts, they talked about their own personal experiences and current events they wanted to respond to and mobilize around. They also expressed concerns about state, national and local politics that could threaten their safety and livelihoods, such as anti-trans legislation and discrimination. They discussed how some of these issues intersected with their Jewish practice and identity.

Having access to a GSA during a critical stage in identity development can be growth-fostering for students, faculty and families, and lead to transformative change. Findings from the Trevor Project’s national study among 35,000 LGBTQ+ youth revealed that only 50% perceived their learning environments as identity-affirming spaces. Having access to affirming spaces at school, online and at home, are critical to helping them feel validated and supported. In 2018, more than one-quarter of LGBTQ+ youth experienced alienation at school. This underscores the need for friends, family, and mentors who can understand them and support them.

Cole (a pseudonym), who transferred to MWJDS from a large public school in the sixth grade, recalls how they were one of few students who attended the GSA at their former school. This made them feel alienated and alone, and they were bullied for their gender-expansive identity. At MWJDS, they were elated to find a warm environment where they could safely discuss their identity and meet other friends with whom to share their experiences.

Having a strong sense of self was critical for graduating students as they headed off to larger high schools. Many have since joined GSAs at their new schools. Cole is now part of a GSA at their new school. They were recently elected as a freshman officer, and they helped to organize a panel on religion and queerness for a Pride Day event. They credit the MWJDS GSA for giving them the skills they needed to advocate for themselves and their beliefs. 

The GSA at MWJDS allows students to explore topics they might not have otherwise been able to at one of the most vital points in their lives. These conversations led to building confidence in themselves and their abilities to communicate with their peers, school personnel and, most importantly, their families. Certainly, Mike’s ability to form open and caring relationships with the students, and their ability to trust in him and one another, allowed student-participants to become vulnerable and reflective in the group setting. It is imperative that a GSA is accessible for youth to continue showing a growing support from educational institutions and their communities toward the LGBTQ+ community.

It’s been 10 years since Yechiel Hoffman and Ken Gordon launched JEDLAB at five in the morning at the 2013 National Jewish Day School Conference in Washington, DC. We decided to mark the anniversary by nudging the co-founders into kibitzing about the lessons of JEDLAB—now 12,000 members strong—and how today’s educators can apply them to their own work and careers.

Covid Walls

Hoffman: In the beginning, JEDLAB encouraged educators to seek colleagues beyond the people in their schools, classrooms and hallways. To consider the hallways that existed in the virtual spaces as real. We pushed it even further saying, “Online, you can find people all over the place who are asking the big questions about education and offering you new approaches and strategies.” I’m curious if nowadays people still feel that same level of openness. Or did the pandemic put up walls for people, because they were dealing with so much stuff, and interfere with the ability to find people in unexpected places to learn from or to work with?

Gordon: Yep. JEDLAB was Hebrew school teachers talking to Jewish studies professors, talking to development professionals, talking to people in communications (like me!). It was an unusual and welcoming community. As for the pandemic: It did rebuild some of those demolished silos. We need to knock ’em down again. It’s a challenge because we’re much more aware of how social media operates now. A lot of us avoid broadcasting, avoid putting ourselves into the big social machine that aims to monetize every last bit of our attention. Many people have intentionally contracted their social circles smaller because they want a different kind of digital culture. 

Group Size

Hoffman: I’ve always been an advocate for the importance of self-care and identifying mental health as being part of the holistic piece of a professional educator’s life. Lately I’ve been asking: Do online communal spaces, even online learning spaces, reinforce a kind of positive mental health?

JEDLAB became a very large group pretty quickly. When we were thinking about JEDLAB originally, we wanted it to have what Martin Buber might have called the I-You mentality. We wanted to build as many one-on-one connections as we could. I feel like that model can actually reinforce a healthy sort of support. But when you enter into a very large group… what could that do for you, other than summon the worst of what the Internet provides, trolling and yelling and such?

Gordon: I-You doesn’t scale. Authentic conversations, authentic relationships, are very difficult to maintain in groups of 200–and impossible in groups of 3,000 or 12,000. So what do we say to people who are hoping to capture some of the energizing spirit of JEDLAB’s early days?

Hoffman: I appreciate the fact that we started as a one-on-one relationship before we expanded it, even in the original circle, to 10, 15, 20 people. All those relationships were built on a sense of mutual support and asking, “How can we help each other fill the gaps of what we weren’t getting on our own from our jobs or from our immediate colleagues?”

I would encourage HaYidion readers to start their new communities with groups of twos or fives. My friend Josh Feldman, of R&R, talks about this a lot. With twos, you can really get an honest, informal relationship going. With five, you can create a dynamic that provides more dimensionality and more resources. And differing perspectives. Sometimes in one-on-one situations, you get locked into a certain biased, or even oppositional, way of seeing things. With five, you can kind of soften the curves.

I’m curious about the ways you can identify and cultivate those relationships, whether it’s in-person at the next conference you go to or whether it’s online, through, let’s say, LinkedIn. 

Connecting

Gordon: Look for people who aren’t like you. (I’ve had good luck with doctors and designers.) Hang with those who might require you to learn something new. And find a common text that you can share. The JEDLAB book club model is a useful here. Throwing a book such as The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices by Frank Moss of the MIT Media Lab out there, offering your opinion and seeing who else responds, is a great way to find your people. 

I never told myself, “I’m gonna converse with a dude named Yechiel who lives in LA and has (1) a Chabad background, (2) a doctorate, and (3) a rabbinical certification”–but there we were, online, talking feverishly about Sorcerers. Our conversations were relational because there was no transactional element. We immediately saw we had complementary ideas, and we built on that. 

Hoffman: I want to ask educators: How do you see the commonalities between people? Can you draw Venn diagrams illustrating what you share with others rather than looking at the things that separate you? They should try to find people who are opening up conversations and not be turned off if they don’t share your exact identifiers or they’re not working in the same sector or have a different role than yours. Look for the things that you have in common so that those conversations are open up.

Gordon: Get past the superficial markers of your professional and digital identities. 

Hoffman: When at professional conferences, pay attention to what people are saying and not what their name tag says.

Gordon: One of the things that annoyed us about the conference was that they had the experts on the stage … and the rest of us idiots in the audience. The separation inhibited dialogue. We wanted to enable more dialogue. Better dialogue. Real dialogue. 

Part of this is not suffering through a lot of superficial conversations. We want to encourage people to use honesty and curiosity to bust through superficial conversations. This can be tough to do, and it won’t always work, but eventually you may just find someone who’ll respond with something truly meaningful.

Hoffman: Say you’re going to a gathering, whether it’s an in-person conference or in a digital community, and people are talking about interesting things. You know, it’s good to listen. I’ve been finding there’s a lot of small, cohort-based groups that have been started either officially or more informally, and they’re usually friends of friends. And I’ve been meeting people through these things, people I’ve never met before. And I’m finding those to be extremely rewarding. People are just emerging into their social lives again and small, cohort-based environments make it easy to allow us to find those commonalities.

Gordon: Have enough confidence in yourself to reach out to anybody who says something interesting. The world is so connected now that if an author puts something out there that is interesting, you can probably have a conversation with them about it. 

Books

Hoffman: Are you finding people are still (a) reading and (b) willing to make new connections around the things that they’re passionate about reading?

Gordon: One thing is 100% true: People who spend two years writing a book are filled to the brim with their subject, and if someone asks them a good, thoughtful question, they’ll answer. Doing so is basically raising your hand and saying, “I want to be your student.” And that is irresistible to the natural pedagogue, to someone who is a legitimate expert.

With our digitally connected communities, you can actually see the conversations happening after a new book is released. The public nature and the speed is new. We’re talking about the era of mobile agile hevrutah.

So many of our professional relationships are transactional. Transaction is, in fact, what a career is in many ways. This goes in the other direction. Getting relational allows you to transcend your job and your field. Give yourself permission to think beyond “What can I get from the person I’m talking with?”

Relationships

Hoffman: Let’s talk about the long-term relationships that were fostered in early days of JEDLAB and how creating something new without the expectation of what it would become was a fertile ground for creating relationships that last. 

Gordon: Since JEDLAB, both of us have gone off and done a bunch of different kinds of things separately. But we keep periodically getting together, on video chat or phone. You even visited me in Boston. We’re always recapping the most recent thing … and there’s always this potential for our next collaboration to appear. Attention HaYidion-sters: Being in conversation in relation with a sympathetic creator-pal is endlessly energizing, and it helps you care about what you’re currently cooking up.

Hoffman: What would you want to say to Ken Gordon of 2013? 

Gordon: I would tell that guy not to worry about what other people are going to say or do about JEDLAB. We knew that nobody asked for JEDLAB, and so, in the back of my mind, I was always concerned that it would be “taken away” because it was an extracurricular adventure. You?

Hoffman: I would tell my 2013 self to chill. It will work out. It’s gonna work out the way it needs to. And the most important thing that will come out of it are the relationships you’ve built through the process.

JEDLAB was really atypical. Educators who work in schools together collaborate closely, but if one of them leaves to go to another school, then it’s suddenly the end. 

Gordon: Digital communities give you a chance to create colleagues of choice. 

Hoffman: The evolving professional friendship that transcends a particular project is something worth cultivating.

Gordon: I imagine that with our youngest Jewish educators, that sort of continual, longitudinal communication will be part of their professional lives. My young-adult kids are almost never not talking to their friends on one platform or another. 

Community

Hoffman: Can you talk about the ways that you build community now?

Gordon: Honestly, it’s still very similar to the way it was in JEDLAB. I am by nature a reader, writer, teacher, learner. I’m pretty much always engaged in those activities simultaneously. I brought that into JEDLAB. I’m still doing that now, but in the world of innovation and design. I read books, connect with authors and experts—via email, via LinkedIn—and bring them onto the podcasts I produce or interview them for articles. Sometimes we co-write. What about you? 

Hoffman: What’s really important to me right now is building mini-communities, anywhere between five and 25 people who share some kind of affinity, but with enough difference to make it interesting. I’m just enjoying learning different ways to cultivate and intensify those communities. Most of these groups happen to be primarily living within a virtual environment and communicating digitally. So we can be geographically dispersed. 

In some ways it’s what we tried to do 10 years ago, but the technology was so fast and agile at that moment that we had no choice but to scale up to a place where it wasn’t within our original vision. I’m not letting the technology dictate the way I think it dictated the growth of our group in 2013.