For many educators today, teaching about Israel in the classroom has never been so daunting. With attitudes on Israel dovetailing with political affiliation, the emotionally intense tone of the conversation, and educators’ reluctance to address difficult conversations due to potential repercussions among the parent body and community, there are no shortage of reasons why educators hesitate to bring Israel into the classroom. 

All of this has become even more challenging with the seemingly never-ending headlines coming out of Israel over the last few months, from painful terrorist attacks and rocket fire, to riots in Huwara, and the polarizing judicial reforms and subsequent protests. These complicated events are difficult enough even for the expert educator to explain, and the emotional feelings on each side make that task more challenging.

How should we as educators approach teaching Israeli current events in the classroom? How can we authentically model nuance and balance when we may have strong feelings about the issues we are teaching about? 

Here, we explore four suggestions for how to lean into these challenges and successfully teach Israeli current events in the classroom.

Suggestion #1: Cultural Literacy 

Let’s start with the basics. As educators, we need to have a deep understanding of Jewish and Israeli history in order to impart and empower this deep knowledge to our students.

How many Jews in North America have heard of the Titanic yet never heard of the Altalena? How many of our students can tell you all of Lebron James’s statistics but have not heard the inspiring story of legendary American-Israeli basketball player Tal Brody? 

Let’s dive deeper. Do our students know about the moral complexities and historical narratives surrounding what took place back in 1948 in Deir Yassin? Can college-bound students speak intelligently about the deep Jewish connection to settlements and at the same time have empathy for the Palestinian experience in the West Bank?

In order for our young people to be able to have serious conversations about Israel, they need to know its history. If we are asking them to be Zionists, they need to know what Zionism represents. This is applicable whenever we are teaching about Israel, but it is especially true when engaging with current events.

With regard to the events in Huwara, students need to first know the facts. Where is Huwara located on the map? Why are Israeli Jews driving through this Palestinian village? What’s the history of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians in this area?

As for the judicial reform, let’s first ask why doesn’t Israel have a constitution? How does Israel’s political and judicial system work? What exactly is included in the proposed judicial reforms? 

Concerning the conflict surrounding the Temple Mount, students need to understand who controls the Temple Mount, what led to the current status quo, what’s led to the recent violence, and what is the significance of the Temple Mount to both Jews and Muslims.

Let’s teach these facts divorced from our various emotional reactions. Doing this allows our students to rise above the noise and have the cultural literacy necessary to understand these current events.

Suggestion #2: Diversity and Perspectives 

As Jewish educators, many of us naturally feel the pull to be activists with our students in order to have a positive Jewish influence on them. However, when we’re doing education, the focus should be education, not activism. That’s why we believe in using a Mikraot Gedolot approach to teaching Israeli current events, which models sharing a diversity of perspectives from different Zionist thinkers, much like the discussion and debate you will find between medieval Biblical commentators. 

Of course, each individual school and institution’s Mikraot Gedolot will look different, with each having their own red lines about which perspectives are included and which are left out. However, if we leave out the perspectives that challenge us, our students will not be prepared to engage in these difficult conversations at their high schools, colleges and workplaces. Creating an atmosphere where students can see a wide range of viewpoints on the current events will allow for nuanced and complex classroom discussions to take place, bringing the famous quote “Two Jews, three opinions” to life.

When it comes to the events in Huwara, let’s showcase the different Twitter responses to the violence along with commentary. When it comes to judicial reforms, let’s present the multiple perspectives on the various proposals and the various reactions within Israeli society. Only after presenting multiple perspectives on these issues can our students authentically grapple with the questions being debated and be able to form their own informed opinions.

Suggestion #3: Reflection and Empathy 

One of our most important mottos is that there is no learning without reflection. Creating time for student reflection is especially important when we are discussing complex current events that can raise difficult questions for students that in some cases can challenge their ethical and moral expectations for the State of Israel. Students need time to process their emotions, and educators can facilitate this through class discussions and prompts that encourage students to grapple with essential questions that these current events bring up. Educators should also set aside time for meetings outside the classroom, for students who need extra time for continued discussion as they work through these challenges. 

Furthermore, it is important to encourage students to consider alternative perspectives to their own, fostering empathy for those with whom they disagree. Let’s invite our students to put themselves in the shoes of the different people involved in each of the current events, whether that is pro- or anti-judicial reform protesters, the Palestinians, Haredim, secular Israelis, Jewish settlers, new immigrants to Israel, or another group. This reinforces for our students that debates over Israel do not need to be a zero-sum game, but one can hold a strong opinion while still having empathy for various parties involved.

Finally, it is also important to teach about the painful current events, as this provides an opportunity to emphasize the importance of Jewish peoplehood and what it means to be part of one nation. Learning about terror attacks and communities living under rocket fire can help students foster a deep sense of connection with their brothers and sisters in Israel and share in the pain felt all over Israel when multiple pairs of siblings were killed in terror attacks. Educators can share excerpts from Rabbi Leo Dee’s eulogies for his daughters Maia and Rina z”l, and the message of Esti Yaniv after the death of her sons Hallel and Yagel z”l. 

Students can discuss questions such as, What is the responsibility of Diaspora Jews when such terrible attacks occur in Israel? How can we share in Israel’s pain from afar? How might the strength and resilience of these bereaved families embody the spirit of the Jewish people

Suggestion #4: Practical Helpful Resources

Over the last several months, we at Unpacked for Educators have been hard at work creating video and podcast content along with accompanying educational resources based on the principles outlined above to assist you in teaching about Israeli current events. Our recently launched YouTube channel Today Unpacked helps students rise above the noise of current events in Israel and the Jewish world to provide history, context, diversity of perspectives and an opportunity for reflection through educational framing. Today Unpacked is released each week with an accompanying article and student prompts that you can use with your students in a timely fashion.

In addition to the timely content on current events, you can always use our content to do a deep dive into Israeli history, the history of Zionism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (amongst other topics). Through our partnership with Prizmah, our collaborative schools connect through our Unpacked for Educators Reshet, a space where they can process the news from Israel and share best practices on teaching current events with Israel educators from around the world. 

Often, teaching Israel can feel overwhelming, especially when we are striving to balance nuance and complexity with inspiring a meaningful connection to the State of Israel in our students. As it says in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 2:16, “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.” On one hand, you don’t need to solve every complex headline coming out of Israel for your students. Distilling the big questions and essential ideas from a current event allows us to have ongoing discussions with our students about the most important issues in Israel. This can include conversations on religion and state, Israel’s Jewish and democratic identities, and balancing Israel’s security with respect for rights of the Palestinians. At the same time, these conversations are too important to neglect, and we owe it to our students and ourselves to lean in to these topics and start the discussion.

Educators Speak: Addressing the Problem and Sharing Solutions 

• Teaching about the current political crises—plural—in Israel is extremely complicated, as one needs a strong background to even discuss the quick moving and multiple events. One of our tools is to return to various background videos and weekly letters from Unpacked, revisiting the structures and history of how we got here and why it matters to us. Dr. Neil Rubin, Beth Tfiloh Dahan High School, Baltimore, MD
   
• The challenges we are facing as Israel educators today are twofold. On the one hand, we want to approach Israeli history and current events with nuanced and sophisticated lenses, to help our students see all sides of a situation, whether it’s the religious-secular divide in Israeli society, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, or the proposed judicial reforms. On the other hand, we want to instill or continue to instill a meaningful attachment to and responsibility for the State of Israel and the Zionist project. Holding these two approaches requires sensitivity, investment, and a deep understanding of the issues. At the end of the day, cognitive and affective Israel education in Jewish day schools needs teachers who themselves are grappling with the challenges Israel faces today and also love Israel—and are invested in Israel’s wellbeing. Rebecca Wolf, SAR High School, RIverdale, NY
   
• One of the challenges has been that a lot of the major political leaders who have been very public (Yariv Levin, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich) are far less familiar to students than Benjamin Netanyahu, Aryeh Deri and Yair Lapid. We’ve spent some time unpacking the Israeli political system beyond the basics, including the historical relationship between the Coalition(s), the Knesset as a whole and the Supreme Court, and students have been able to make connections between aspects of the US political system and the Israeli one as a strong point of entry to begin conversations. This has allowed students to contextualize why Israelis are so actively engaged in this process as well as to how this will affect the relationship between Israel, Israelis and the rest of the world. Jeremy Yoskowitz, Frankel Jewish Academy, West Bloomfield, MI

Communities rely on their education systems to induct students into their literacy practices; they want children to read texts in certain ways and hope their schools will teach them to do so. This includes decoding skills as well as stances towards texts, such as a community’s understanding of a text’s authoritative status and openness to interpretation. One challenge in Jewish day schools is that the students in any particular classroom may represent a diversity of communities outside the classroom.

This tension makes Tanakh classrooms in American Jewish schools a particularly complicated space. How do teachers in these classrooms negotiate among the literacy practices they want to teach, the practices they are expected to teach, and the ways in which their students want to read? The answer (insofar as there is “one” answer) is that every classroom is a new interpretive community that students must be enlisted into. A teacher’s responsibility is to clearly articulate the interpretive rules for the classroom (what I call the “first conversation” that is, the textual conversation a teacher is hoping happens within her boundaries of interpretive expectations) while acknowledging that those rules may differ from other spaces and classrooms—and then making room for students to reflect on different interpretive rules they use elsewhere, outside of the classroom (what I call the “second conversation”).

What is “Wickedness?”

I want to bring this answer to life with a vignette from a K-1 classroom I taught in as part of a teacher research project. I focused my teaching and research on the question of how to establish a literacy practice in a Tanakh classroom. This vignette shows what it looks like to allow the second conversation. We were studying the flood story and discussing the following biblical verse:

“God said to Noah, “ I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is full of wickedness because of them: I am about to destroy them with the earth.” (Genesis 6:13)

As we read the verse, I asked the students a question: “What does the Torah mean when it says the 'earth is full of wickedness?' What exactly was happening in the world?” Two students, Dani and Miriam, offered their ideas. Their discussion illustrates the many methods of interpretation the students used in my classroom. 

Dani: Noah was a good man and Noah walked with God, but the earth was “full of wickedness.” So basically that means that there was all these bad people and they were trying to kill each other and everything. Like a wicked witch means that the witch was mean. The earth was like that. It was full of bad people and there were armies and there was like violence and it was loud. That’s what it means.

Ziva: And what were the people doing?

Dani: They were doing bad stuff like trying to kill each other and having armies. 

Ziva: What do you think Miriam? Do you think that the world was full of violence?

Miriam: They’re fighting with each other and they are pinching.

Dani: Yeah! That’s what I mean, like all those kinds of bad stuff and hurting each other and like saying mean things.

Miriam: And then when somebody is on their chair with his bother, he pushes the chair down and then he pushes him off the bed and he’s really bad.

Dani: Miriam?

Miriam: What?

Dani: I think you are ripping something off your own life. Does that happen to you?

Miriam: Um, I sometimes do it to my sister.

Dani: Okay, I get it, you are ripping it out of your own life.

Ziva: What do you guys think? Is that a good way to make sense of a text?

Miriam: I do not know.

Dani: I do not think so. 

The question up for discussion was the meaning of the phrase, “The earth is full of wickedness.” What does it mean for the earth to be wicked and full of violence? What sort of wickedness? What sort of violence? In answering this question, Miriam and Dani became engaged in a conversation over what resources to bring to the text to make sense of it. Dani believed “wicked” in this context meant that people were “trying to kill each other and having armies.” Miriam believed they were “fighting” and “pinching” and doing other bad things like pushing their brothers “off the chair.” As Dani then points out, Miriam “ripped off” examples from her own life to define what violence might mean. Miriam admitted that she was bringing in her own life experience of an instance in which she did something “bad” to serve as an example of what wickedness is (when you pinch or push your siblings). 

At that point I stepped in to ask whether this was a good way to make sense of the text. Miriam’s reaction was to throw up her hands, at least implicitly disavowing her previous stance of leaning into her lived experience to understand the ancient text. Dani’s interpretive inclination was stronger: she outright rejected Miriam’s inclination to rely on personal experience when interpreting. Was Dani’s skepticism valid? Should Miriam have defended her position?

Philosophical Questioning 

This was a moment of negotiation for Miriam and Dani, exemplifying the kind of dialogue that regularly occurred between students in my classroom. Bringing outside models of interpretation into the classroom and using them alongside those modeled by me, my students debated and experimented with the rules for understanding the text. 

Implicit in Miriam and Dani’s conversation are major questions of knowledge and understanding: When is drawing on life experience helpful for explicating the text and when is it limiting? Is it a matter of subject matter? The text itself? Who is doing the connecting? The kind of connection made? And hovering over those questions is the very real issue of who gets to say. While I certainly had my own views on the matter, by asking the question I was implicitly granting them room to utilize different sources of authority than what I had been providing.

The pedagogical challenge in these instances for me was to avoid putting my thumb on the scale in favor of one interpretation or the other. The right move was to just help my students enter the “second conversation”—the conversation that progresses beyond the meaning of the text to a discussion of how best to evaluate one another’s interpretations.

Educating for the Second Conversation 

As teachers, we need to both clearly state the interpretive rules at work in our classroom (the first conversation) and then make space for students to place our interpretive rules in conversation with other rules they follow in other interpretive contexts (the second conversation). Miriam and Dani were having that second conversation without my help, and on this occasion I had the good instinct to allow it. I only wish I had always created that space in all of my classrooms.

I’ll conclude with three concrete suggestions for Jewish studies teachers:

1. Spend time getting to know your students’ full literate identities: who is in their lives, whom do they read texts with, what multimodal literacies (literacies that focus on print texts but also literacies beyond the page) do they engage in outside of the classroom, etc.
    
2. Prioritize your role as facilitator. Decide which interpretive rules and boundaries you want for your classroom (name them explicitly for yourself). For example, do you want students to root interpretations in the words of the page or is it okay for them to draw solely from their lived experiences? Then be consistent in clarifying and articulating them to your students in a way that all of your students will understand. Remind your students that the interpretive rules you’ve set for your classroom community may be different than how they read the same text in other spaces outside your classroom.
    
3. Be ready for the second conversation as different interpretive rules emerge in classroom conversation (despite your attempt to define the rules). Invite those conversations to happen, helping students recognize that interpretation involves both articulating their reading of a passage as well as explaining how they came up with it.

For the past nine years, I have been the rabbi-in-residence at Heschel in Northridge, California, a community TK-8th grade school. My time is split between working with the administration and overseeing and teaching Judaic studies in the middle school. I also design our Shabbat tefillot and festival celebrations with a cohort of colleagues.

As a member of the administration, I attempt to bring Jewish life and wisdom to the forefront in the school whenever possible. I attempt to provide spiritual care for those who might need it within the school community, families and faculty included. I weigh in on the ways we teach and engage with Israel. I am proud that my role also lets me collaborate with professional and lay leaders to envision Heschel as a community center, where we are able to host Shabbat and holiday tefillot and programming for families. 

The primary role of a school rabbi is to connect with students in order to help them during the earliest years of their Jewish journeys. My rabbinate has shown me that our families are also looking for connection. I am grateful to be their rabbi, too.

Sparking Amazement in Kindergartners 

One of our school’s kindergarten programs is “Abraham’s Hospitality Tent,” where students get to sing and share about welcoming guests. It is a cute morning; our students dress up like they too are traveling through the desert, and our gym is decorated in Mesopotamia’s finest regalia. As the students sit in their tent, I walk in dressed as Avraham Avinu: robe, beard, walking staff, head covering like a kaffiyeh. I make a few puns, reference events in the Torah, and tell the students how wonderful it is to see them honoring “my legacy.” 

I race out to change back to my normal work clothes and return as just Rabbi Scott. The kindergarteners and I then go to their yard, where we affix 3D-printed mezuzot on the doors of their playhouse. I exclaimed how wonderful it was that we all just saw Abraham. Some five-year olds gave me the side eye, clearly not buying the ruse. Others are less sure; maybe, just maybe, they witnessed something truly wondrous. Who better than kindergarten students to embody our school namesake’s understanding of “radical amazement”?

Teaching Middle and Elementary Schoolers

I teach Judaic studies classes in our middle school. Along with the colleagues in my department, we have created a curriculum that speaks to the hearts, minds and souls of our students. We have incorporated Zionism, Israel and Shoah studies with classic text study, philosophy and parshanut. Our students grapple with ancient texts as well as modern ethical dilemmas. We look at our liturgies of siddurim, mahzorim and haggadot as we all attempt to make them freshly relevant again, each day. 

On Fridays, the entire middle school gathers for a Kabbalat Shabbat service. Sometimes I lead, and sometimes I merely facilitate student participation in song, story and dance. Our celebration of community and Shabbat seems to get better each and every week. Of course, middle school students can take their toll on you; how fortunate that we have a wonderful elementary school to once again raise spirits. Working in tandem with a Judaic music specialist and my elementary school Judaic coordinator, we create beautiful Friday Shabbat services for our younger students, sending them into the weekend with a song and a smile on their lips. During the rest of the week, I drop into elementary classes. I might teach Parshat HaShavua or Pirkei Avot. Sometimes, I lead discussions about kindness and friendship, steeped in Jewish values. I aim to help all our students see the joy and comfort in Jewish life.

Serving Families Beyond School Hours 

From the time I arrived at Heschel, I knew I wanted to be more than just a rabbi for the students. I have taught adult education to our parent and grandparent community. I have led Jewish rituals for birth, bnai mitzvah and death for Heschel families, alums and faculty. I have put on a brave face while I sat with students who lost a loved one, and then immediately after, cried with their parents. I celebrate my community’s successes and myriad victories, and I show up to be a shoulder on which to cry and a crutch to lean on when things head south. I make sure to remind my community that in both life’s highs and lows, we show up for one another. 

I take pride in redefining my role at Heschel as we grow together. I decided that I wanted to offer bar and bat mitzvah training and officiation to our families; many still belong to shuls, but those who don’t, and see Heschel as their Jewish home, understand what these relationships mean. For many, I am their only rabbi, and that is a role I take seriously. 

Recently, a mother of two alums (who both continued into Jewish high school) reached out to me when her mother got sick and passed away; despite them not being a current family in our school, I was still their rabbi. Connections like this reinforce for me why I happily dress up as Abraham for the kindergarteners. Like his journey, ours also begin with small steps, one after the other. 

Lovingly, I claim we have flipped the paradigm that is written about in the Ve’ahavta: here at Heschel, it is often Vishinantam lehorecha, and you shall teach this to your parents. Our students benefit from an immersive Jewish experience at the school; we are not a halachic institution, yet all our ways are imbued with the spirit of our tradition and people. Our students come home excited to share what they learn, do and experience at school; that love trickles up, inspiring families to take on more and deepen their own connections to Jewish wisdom, tradition and community.

My Torah at Sports Games 

I am often seen on the sidelines of our middle school’s sports games. I love being my students’ cheerleader. Pregame I encourage them to play their hardest, and I inquire how they did postgame. They default to a win or a loss, but I insist that is not what I actually asked. 

I also earn their ire, and do so with a smile on my face. I will congratulate the preteen on the other school’s basketball team who makes a free throw, or applaud a great play in soccer. My students (and sometimes our families) will get annoyed at me. “Rabbi! That’s our opponent!” I know, oh, I know. This too is my Torah.

Recently, I had the golden opportunity to take a plunge into the world of AI (Artificial Intelligence) at the JEP’s Jewish Futures Conference, whose theme was “Jewish Education and AI.” Until then, I had the luxury of ignoring this latest trend, and I admit, as a humanities major and a proud luddite, I am usually the last person in my family to show any interest in contemporary tech: cellphones, social media, Alexa, you name it. However, this avoidance came with a certain guilt. I read article after article with a shiver of dread, knowing that if I don’t learn about AI, AI will learn everything about me. Like it or not, we live in an AI world, and it’s good to know something about how it works.

A first exposure to modern AI is both exhilarating and uncanny. The power of these platforms is enormous and awe-inspiring. We watched ChatGPT write genuinely creative short stories with minimal cues, and compose an impressive sonnet on any subject given; an AI image generator create multiple pictures based on instructions (“boy chasing dog in Renaissance painting”); a voice generator inputting words into the mouths of famous people (super creepy), and more. On character.ai, I held a lengthy conversation with “Socrates” that was, frankly, entirely lifelike and believable–except that it writes back too quickly and has far more knowledge at its “fingertips” than us humans. It even picked up my dry humor, which my family and friends often don’t get!

The presenters helped us process what we were experiencing, and although they assured us that computers will never be able to do what people do, it does feel like the line between the two has become dangerously blurred. We’ve seen the powers of social media for mass manipulation and spreading propaganda; the powers of AI seem infinitely greater, existentially so. Indeed, a letter signed by more than 50,000 so far, including leaders in Silicon Valley, calls for a pause in AI development until some safe guidelines are put in place. In a recent blog, consultant Sarah Rubinson asks some probing questions about education in this brave new world. In this Pesach season, it’s appropriate that we search for the right questions with which to approach this powerful technology.

Research has shown that referrals are the best source of new students for Jewish day schools. But how do schools know if their parents are referrers? How can they judge their reputation within their parent body?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely used customer loyalty metric that was developed by Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix in 2003. It is based on a single question: “How likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?” Respondents are asked to rate their likelihood of recommending on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being “not at all likely” and 10 being “extremely likely.” Based on their responses, customers are categorized into three groups: Promoters (9-10), Passives (7-8), and Detractors (0-6).

To calculate the NPS score, the percentage of Detractors is subtracted from the percentage of Promoters. The resulting score can range from -100 to 100, with higher scores indicating higher levels of customer loyalty and satisfaction. NPS has become a popular metric in many industries because it is simple, easy to understand and provides a clear indicator of the reputational strength of the product or organization. For day schools, NPS provides an effective indicator of the strength of their reputation within their community.

NPS in JDS

While NPS was initially developed for use in business settings, it has become increasingly popular in other areas, including education. In the context of education, NPS is used to measure parent and student satisfaction and loyalty. By asking parents and students how likely they are to recommend the school to a friend or colleague, schools can get a clear picture of how their communities perceive them.

In addition to the NPS question, a parent survey will include a variety of questions about the full range of the school experience. This will allow schools to draw correlations between how parents rated individual aspects of the schools and how likely they were to recommend the school to others, giving schools a roadmap of areas to concentrate on to improve their scores.

A recent parent survey of nine elementary schools in Toronto, commissioned by UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education, sheds light on how parents viewed their school and the factors that most contributed to the overall likelihood of parents to recommend the school to others. The parent survey asked a broad range of questions, including the basic NPS question about likelihood to recommend.

The study found that the range of NPS scores across the nine elementary schools, three Orthodox and six non-Orthodox, was -17 to 54, with an average of 26. While this range may seem wide, it is not uncommon for NPS scores to vary widely among different organizations. There is no set standard for a good NPS score as it is highly dependent on the industry. Nobody likes their internet service provider, so the average score is only 2! According to ISM, school NPS scores above 40 are considered good while 15-39 is in the “needs improvement” category.

Drilling Down 

There were some notable differences in the NPS scores between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jewish day schools. Utilizing factor analysis, a statistical method for uncovering connections and patterns between responses, it was revealed that Orthodox schools had lower satisfaction scores with regards to how they handled Covid-19, which significantly affected their overall NPS scores. The parent survey was performed during significant Covid-19 restrictions in Canada. These restrictions were frustrating for parents, and this was an especially difficult issue for Orthodox schools to navigate.

Most importantly, the study found that higher NPS scores correlated with several key factors that are critical to the success of any school. Higher school scores correlated with parents who felt the school provided support for the needs of each student, their health and safety, and their social-emotional growth. Additionally, schools where the respondents trusted their school’s leadership, felt that communication was effective, and were satisfied with the overall school environment (both inside and outside the classroom) received higher NPS scores. Interestingly, higher NPS scores were not as closely correlated with responses to questions about satisfaction with general or Jewish school subjects such as math or Hebrew.

How-to

Simplicity is a key benefit of NPS. Any school can include the NPS question as part of a larger parent survey and immediately get a sense of the strength of their reputation within their school community. The next step is to conduct the regression analysis, correlating the responses to other questions within the survey to the NPS. While this takes some knowledge of statistics, a graduate student who relies on statistics can perform the analysis. This does not need to take a lot of time or cost a lot of money. When complete, a school will understand where they stand and the most important issues to focus on to improve their standing.

NPS is an important tool for measuring satisfaction and loyalty in Jewish day schools. By focusing on key areas such as student support, leadership and communication, and the overall school environment, schools can improve their NPS scores and create a better educational experience for their students and families. No matter the baseline score at any school, focusing on these key areas can help all schools improve their NPS scores and provide a better educational experience for their students and families.

On Shabbat mornings in many synagogues, just before we prepare to return the Torah to the ark, we recite a blessing for our community and leaders that celebrates some of the specific roles that our leaders play–providing lamps for illumination, wine for kiddush and havdalah, bread for guests, charity for the poor. In this prayer, we acknowledge that even acts such as keeping the lights on matter. Those who tend to communal needs merit our communal supplication for God’s support and protection. Our collective hope in reciting this prayer at this moment is to single out the people who provide services for the general good, to amplify the role of those who help facilitate Torah learning and inspire others to emulate their behaviors. Through these words, we acknowledge that the leadership of those in our community merits our collective energy, focus and blessing.

In this issue of Kaleidoscope, we have the opportunity to hear from leaders of our Jewish day schools and yeshivot. We thank these leaders for their vulnerability in sharing their experiences so that together as a community, we can learn more about what we can do to support, sustain and nourish our professionals in their roles. We are grateful for our ongoing partnership with DSLTI: Day School Leadership Training Institute and for their dedication to building and sustaining current and future heads of school. The conversation they convened at the Prizmah Conference in Denver about head of school sustainability served as a catalyst for this critical issue.

Carrying the weight of leadership in a Jewish day school is an enormous task. Through reading about the experiences of these heads, we gain a deeper understanding of our leaders, what our schools need to thrive, and what we can do to share the load and carry this sacred responsibility together.

The Critical Importance of the Head-Board Relationship

The work of a head of school is high-stakes. The job of head of school has expanded over the years; what used to be a primarily administrative role now includes financial management, fundraising, relationship-building, not to mention navigating pressure from various stakeholders and serving as a role model and hashkafic or ideological fit for the school and community. 

Some have likened the role to that of a college president. Heads need to possess a high level of self-awareness and commitment to the emotional side of the job, which usually takes an unseen toll. They need to know how to pace themselves, how to lead up to get support from their board. Heads need to stand in deep relationship with their board members in order to serve the school successfully.

Prizmah unpacked the dynamics and determinative nature of the relationship between lay leaders and heads of school in research published in 2020. These findings, as well as data from the broader independent school world, underscore the power of the relationship between heads and their boards. Prizmah’s work with hundreds of schools and leaders and our contributions to the head search processes at dozens of schools in recent years provides a clear perspective on the challenges inherent to the Jewish day school talent pipeline.

We know that the sustainability of heads is directly correlated with the strength of the relationship between lay leaders and heads and the efficacy of their boards. We believe strongly (and the research supports) that this relationship is a powerful lever—among others such as access to strong professional networks, coaching and mentoring, quality professional development and distributed leadership teams—to drive stronger schools and longer tenures for their heads.

Why does this matter so much? 

Through data and on-the-ground observation, we’re seeing just how difficult the endeavor of headship is, and how much the head’s wellbeing impacts the entire school community. The head bears responsibility for all the individuals in the school community–in all their beautiful complexity–and for the health of the institution, heaped with the mountain of expectations/responsibility/hopes/projections of so many. These are very hard roles to fill.

Supporting the head matters so much. First, it is our collective responsibility to protect our leaders as human beings. We must remember that they are people with families and feelings of their own. Second, heads of school are vital for ensuring student success. Effective heads help maintain a positive school climate and advocate for the school in the community. Their approach to recruiting faculty, financial management and strategic planning impacts, even in indirect ways, on the learning environment in the school. Lastly, the cost of head of school turnover for schools and communities is high, in financial terms as well as in the time and emotional energy that is a part of any search process.

The question of turnover itself requires deep consideration. Many board members recognize their responsibility to “hire and fire.” However “hiring and firing” (or, more optimistically, “hiring and honoring those retiring”) is meant to happen only periodically. The bulk of the ongoing job of board members should be about identifying ways they can strengthen the school through the current head’s leadership, not fantasizing over an imaginary better candidate. This is all the more important at a time when the talent pipeline is precarious and unpredictable. To be sure, not all turnover is bad. New leaders can bring a new vision and energize a school community, but instability in schools impacts everyone.

How can we make a difference?

No matter what role you play in a school community, you have the ability to support your school’s leadership and increase the likelihood that your head will actually thrive. Board members can especially influence a head’s ability to serve with success.

There is a critical power dynamic inherent in the board-head relationship. While the head is the only one in a position to manage up to the board directly, the head is also the only employee of the board. This dynamic is complicated by the reality that heads generally live in the same community as their school’s board members and share personal and social connections. Board members must be vigilant about their own competing priorities and mindful of their commitment to confidentiality, especially when they have children in the school and organic relationships with other school professionals and lay leaders. The same warmth and “heimishness” for which schools are famous can sometimes prevent the leadership, both lay and professional, from leaning in to hard conversations or difficult decisions. 

Board members can become more aware of this dynamic and more self-aware of their own leadership and help heads carry the weight in very specific ways. First, they can help the head to prioritize clear goals. There should be multiple opportunities throughout the year for board members to check in with their head through a support and evaluation committee. As unanticipated needs emerge and demand attention, the head can rely on board members for focus and support in prioritizing shifting needs. Second, board members can make it a practice to communicate directly with the head. Support does not mean exclusively cheerleading but instead involves clear and constructive feedback designed for growth. By investing in its own growth and demonstrating a willingness to be steadfast and strong in the face of changing priorities, the board stands beside the head. Finally, the board can understand and create space for the head to talk about vision.

Correspondingly, there are ways heads can articulate their own needs, manage up and help the board to be a strong partner. Heads can learn about what effective board function looks like and work to strengthen their board’s governance and leadership practices. Heads can communicate about areas in which they feel uncertain and seek feedback and support from all directions. This can be particularly challenging for brand new heads who are transitioning into the role. When a head needs to say no to some things, inevitably, the emotional weight of these decisions can feel heavy, especially decisions of great consequence related to admissions or hiring, for example.

What can be done right away?

Changing mindsets and long-established habits does not happen overnight. There are ways to make incremental progress in creating a headship model that is more sustainable. Prizmah’s workshop on what it means to be board chair is a great way for those new to the role to get off on the right foot. Similarly, Prizmah partnered with DSLTI to launch a cohort for new heads of school, including sessions for new heads and board chairs to work on alignment and setting norms for their working partnership. We have an upcoming series on collaboration through controversy that is designed to strengthen lay-head partnership and outlines how to set a foundation for success. Schools can think more seriously about the notion of sabbaticals, and the day school field can explore what apprenticeship models might look like for up-and-coming leaders. 

The board can play a critical role in ensuring the holistic wellbeing of heads, not merely job success. Research shows that leaders who thrive are ones who are provided with ongoing professional support (coaching/mentoring), spaces for open and honest discourse with people who understand the inherent challenges and opportunities of the role (new heads cohort group/other professional groups), and guidance if they are relocating to a new town, including support for their own family, ensuring that the head of school’s spouse and children, if applicable, have what they need. 

Developing a greater sense of empathy and understanding for what it takes to be a Jewish educational leader might help more leaders feel seen and understood and ultimately enable them to be more effective in their roles. It might also lead more young people to consider and commit to careers as school leaders. We want people to want the job as head of school, to stay in this job and to feel good about the job. 

Ultimately, our schools are our community’s biggest investment in our collective future. When all members hold a share of that enormous responsibility, we protect our investment and honor the vulnerability of those who will ensure its payoff.

I am no expert on sustainable headship, at least in terms of years. I began my tenure in July 2020, so I’m just getting ready to sign my second contract. But considering the intensity of my first couple of years (I count them in dog years), I had to quickly develop survival strategies. 

Sustaining my school, my team, my family and myself through that time was the hardest work I have ever done. That early experience helped me recognize the many levels on which the headship could yield a fight or flight response. Purely by necessity, I set out to build a sustainable system to survive the early years of my leadership—with the hopes of moving from survival into “thrival” mode in the next few years.

One of the most challenging parts of the role that can come as a surprise is the psychological weight that heads carry. The workload is heavy, the inbox always seems to refill, and the number of meetings packed into a day (or night) boggles the mind. But most people who are used to hard work are up for those challenges. It’s the mental load—the sense of ultimate responsibility—that weighs so heavily and, to my mind, accounts for the short tenure of most heads.

My approach to this has been an amplification of my general philosophy, which is to work with and hire extraordinary people and to truly empower and support them. Coming into a new workplace and culture mid-crisis made it challenging to demonstrate my commitment to empowerment at all levels of the organization, but it means that I can now more clearly articulate what needs to be true for this leadership approach to work. 
I believe there are at least four key elements to its success.

Shared Vision

First, there needs to be a shared vision between the head of school and members of her leadership team. I don’t mean that the head shares the vision and everyone listens, nods and takes notes. Rather, the vision needs to be shared on an elemental level—in our bones and kishkes—that develops organically through deep relationships and a shared orientation and philosophy. 

To be clear, this is about big picture vision, not the granular. In fact, if the head has a very detailed and exact picture of what they need their school and program to look like, this can be a major impediment. When you have a shared big vision, that still allows for many smaller choices and directions—but the leader has to be comfortable with any of those outcomes to have a truly empowered team.

Shared Standards of Excellence

The shared vision must be accompanied by shared standards and expectations of excellence. If you are aligned philosophically but not qualitatively, struggles and frustrations will develop on that front. Unlike shared vision, which is more innate or organic, these standards can be formulated and workshopped as long as the head and team have the ambition and stamina to consistently meet them. 

In order to authentically develop these communal norms and expectations, early on the head has to be prepared to allow some (lower stakes) things to not meet the highest expectations of excellence. Those programs can then be used to calmly reflect—with an individual or a team—on why they did not rise to the level they should have. The team will learn more and more quickly by doing, and falling short a few times, than by being told exactly how to execute every step of a perfect event. To be explicit, a leader of an empowered team cannot be punitive or angry about such low-grade missteps; it’s part of the deal.

Delegation vs. Empowerment

Intentionally allowing small mistakes requires the leader to exercise restraint strategically early on, not to always step in to fix and not to get upset if things don’t go perfectly. This is one of the many short-term vs. long-term trade-offs leaders need to make every day. A misstep in the short-term must be seen as an opportunity for reflective practice and growth, and for the evolution of shared standards of excellence in the long-term. It’s worth it! 

If heads can’t restrain themselves from intervening in everything and being punitive about mistakes, they run the risk of creating a culture of delegation, which is dramatically different from empowerment. With delegation, the leader continues to be accountable for every detail, even if they aren’t executing them. This has two major downsides. First, the team members don’t feel empowered, which is a hit to their sense of growth and trust (and therefore retention) in the workplace. Second, to my mind, delegation is also a major source of the mental load that so many leaders carry, and moving away from it is one of the keys to sustainable leadership. Trust your team—which shares a vision and high expectations—to figure out the details in their area of expertise.

Seeking Support

Knowing that your team members know when to seek support is a critical element of an empowerment culture. The leader can only comfortably and confidently let their team members fly if they know they won’t be shy about seeking advice and backing, or sharing when things aren’t going well. We all need that support, and being vulnerable enough to visibly model seeking it (from mentors, board members, and the team) communicates that this too is an essential part of the supported empowerment model. 

I try to live and lead authentically by this approach each day. Honestly, it’s the only way I know how to work and get the job done. To be fully transparent—and so my team doesn’t giggle behind my back about the exception that proves the rule—I simply cannot yet fully empower when it comes to the food we serve to our staff. This may come from being a vegetarian at one too many kosher events, being morally opposed to mayonnaise-based meals, or recognizing that this is a crucial way we can show appreciation to our team during tough times. In any case, I own (and joke about) that this this is a place where I struggle to hew to my own approach; I think it’s important that we know and share our empowerment weak spots. 

My plan now is to judge my own sustainability in this job not by the number of years served, but by the number of meals served—without my controlling the menu.

I love my school and adore our community. However, during my years of training for the headship, I had been warned that being a head of school was lonely. I heard it from mentors, friends who were already in the position, and colleagues. However, nothing could have prepared me for the experience of the beginning of my headship journey. I moved to Northern Virginia to begin my role as head of school at Gesher Jewish Day School in July 2020, leaving behind a bustling community of incredible colleagues and dear friends in Los Angeles. 

I was suddenly very alone. I am single and don’t have children of my own, and honestly, have been a fairly confident and fulfilled single person most of my adult life. However, I’ve also always lived in cities; I grew up in Seattle, spent my 20s living in New York City and most of my 30s in Los Angeles. I was used to running into people on the street, or seeing the neighbors from my apartment building heading to their cars in the morning or out for a walk. 

That first year of being a head of school, I didn’t feel like I was living my own life. I had to make enormous decisions with little information and without the opportunity to build trust with my team first. I was used to having tremendous expertise in my role, but there was no handbook for how to run and open a school during a pandemic. This only added to my sense of isolation. 

In a twist of fate, in April of 2020 just as I figured out that I wouldn’t be able to fly out to find somewhere to live, a local synagogue realized they didn’t have anyone lined up to live in their parsonage that year. And so, I ended up living in the house and I didn’t have to search any further. I felt incredibly grateful, but also somewhat isolated in a four-bedroom home in the suburbs of Northern Virginia. There were several weekends when I saw more deer than people. 

Even the friendships that had long sustained me felt strained as it was difficult for some to relate to the issues I was now managing on a daily basis. It was challenging, if near impossible, to make new friends because of COVID and the responsibility I felt to reduce my risk of exposure for the sake of our school community. It wasn’t only that the power structure within my role meant I couldn’t be my full self at work (someone I know called it being 80% friends), but the gap between the life I led in California and the one in Virginia felt cavernous.

Colleagues 

I have to admit that even as I type these words, it’s a little odd for me to write about the sustainability of the headship, as I’m only in my third year. I know we have incredible leaders in the field of Jewish education who have spent decades in their role, and I know I’ve learned more than I can describe from their words, work and example. However, the loneliness of the role is one of the reasons the job can be unsustainable, and my experience amplified those feelings considerably. I will be honest enough to share that there were a few moments I thought of giving it all up. 

Once I was settled, the question became, what can I do to make this position more sustainable? I worked hard to get into the role, the work was fulfilling and important, and I believe in the field of Jewish education and in the incredible work we do at Gesher for and with our community. The answer for me ended up finding and cultivating a community of colleagues and confidants. I found those colleagues in other heads of school through both Prizmah and our local independent school association (VAIS). As many organizations pivoted to Zoom meetings, those weekly or monthly check-ins made me feel far less lonely. In those colleagues, I found others who were managing some of the same challenges I was, including developing policies, building trust among new colleagues and managing self-care during a pandemic.

In a different way, I found colleagues in my executive board. It took some time, but I made the decision to be truly vulnerable and extend trust beyond what is probably typical of a head of school. I needed support, a group of people to bounce ideas off, and even to challenge my perceptions. The trust I placed in their hands ended up being well-deserved and jump started a productive and positive relationship, one that has sustained me and my leadership.

Confidants

However, what I found more difficult to develop was true confidants, people with whom I could share my doubts, my fears and with whom I could be 100% honest. And while I have an incredible coach and supportive therapist, I needed a peer. Someone who understood the weight and with whom I could share the burden. 

While it took time, I found my first confidant in another head of school who had also recently started her position and lived nearby, but served a different population. We developed a deep bond and will talk early in the morning on our way into school or send a text late at night to check in about how our board meeting went. Being close enough to share a meal, but far enough away so that we aren’t competitors, helped to facilitate the relationship even more. I’ve since developed a few more confidant relationships, but their rarity speaks volumes about how precious they can be to any head of school. 

Grappling with the notions of power and position, with the politics inherent in the role and with the weight or holding life-altering decisions, cannot be fully underestimated. It can and has made the role lonely. However, being vulnerable enough to develop a community of colleagues and confidants has made the lift far easier. I know I’m not alone in this work, even if I’m alone in the position within my particular school. I have the tools and relationships to sustain a long and healthy career as a head of school.

The conversation I had most frequently at this year’s Prizmah conference was about sustainability—or rather, the lack of sustainability—in the headship of Jewish day schools. During my first few years in this role, I would ask colleagues, How can I do this job for 20 years? It’s not possible! The most common response was about how expectations had changed, that they were now more and more unreasonable. While that may be true (I have no personal comparison), I think there are some deeper issues at play that are worth thinking through, that took me a long time to gain clarity about—and I’m still hardly out of the woods on this question.

One important framing: what I write below is about the psychological aspect of the headship, and the challenge it presents irrespective of circumstances. There are, of course, many contextual circumstances that can make the job harder: unrealistic expectations from, or bad behavior by, parents; unhelpful lay leaders; challenges to family life. All of these can be true, and are unfortunately common. And while I think these should be part of a larger conversation about sustainability, I’m going to limit myself to the psychological sphere, one I hear less about, and think deserves more attention and elucidation.

Being a Head: Man Nishtanah 

It’s worth starting at the beginning: there is a dramatic psychological difference between school leadership in general, and the headship in particular. Leading others in general comes with increased responsibility, the need to learn to say no and accept people’s frustration and disappointment, among other inter- and intra-personal skills. But being the CEO, the person who’s ultimately in charge, who is finally responsible, is an entirely different mindset, and it weighs much more heavily on the mind. This is not a difference in degree but kind, and it’s hard to explain this to someone who has not occupied this particular leadership seat. Knowing that the greatest part of what the institution becomes lies in your lap; that the problems of the greatest complexity end up on your plate; the volume of decisions—these realities sit differently, more heavily, than non-CEO leadership. 

This is compounded by a conflating factor in Jewish day schools, and possibly in education altogether, which is its inherent idealism. We do the work because it’s God’s work, because we want to help birth the better world that education is tasked with, because we are in it for the mission of our institutions. And when you do something with a mission in mind, boundaries are much harder to identify and draw. When is it enough for a child? When is it enough when you know that putting need x lower on the list of priorities means some child will not succeed and may ever suffer? When do you put the needs of others second to your own needs?

The Danger of Giving 

At the Prizmah conference, Harvard “happiness” psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar referenced a study Adam Grant shared in his book Give and Take. Grant identified three types of people: givers (who give without the expectation of getting something in return), takers (put their personal interests first) and matchers (who operate on the grounds of reciprocity). What he found was that givers were at the top of the professional food chain—good news! Their generosity bore fruit. In the middle—matchers and takers, and at the bottom—givers again! How were givers overrepresented at both the top and bottom of the success ladder? Givers who gave to themselves as well as others were at the top, while those who neglected themselves were at the bottom.

Givers are much like our educational idealists: They need to focus on themselves, but often do not, and when they do not, they burn out. More on what it might look like to give to one’s self in a moment.

Introverts and Extroverts 

Another factor which challenges some of us, though not others, is the degree to which we are introverts or extroverts. For the former, the headship presents unique challenges. In the headship, more than any other leadership position, people carefully read your every move, emotion, and interaction. Being “off” or not present is not a luxury we can afford. This is even more true in Orthodox schools, where the heads usually live in the community they work in. Even in the nicest communities (and I live in one!), where parents don’t talk to the head on Shabbat about school-related issues, there is no room to be inattentive to one’s presentation and persona. For introverts, this can be incredibly draining.

How to Give to Oneself 

So, in Grant’s terms, what does giving to yourself look like? At its simplest, the advice is unsurprising, even if it’s easier to say than do: exercise at least three times a week; sleep more than you probably are; take time to meditate or at least takes regular breaks; turn off your phone or put it on a shelf, whether it’s email or social media that draws you in; make sure to prioritize time for your most important relationships; actually don’t check email when you put on your vacation responder (!). And while all this is true and necessary, and I mean truly necessary, I think there’s another piece here that I’ve heard less discussed and which I think is tremendously important: the importance of creating boundaries, both psychological and social. 

I’m embarrassed when I think about (let alone share) this story, but I think it will serve my point well. At one of my lowest points in COVID, I was having a conversation with my coach and must have mentioned that I never closed my office door. She was incredulous and asked why. I said that I felt it was my responsibility as the leader to be present for anyone who needed me, so how could I close the door? Wouldn’t that send a message that I was unavailable to the people who worked for me? And isn’t that the wrong message? I was the worst kind of Adam Grant giver. That’s the voice of the idealist who has poor boundaries, who thinks the need to be responsible never ends. Perhaps it’s also the voice of someone who wants to be needed—but that would take us in another direction.

Ignoring Pink Elephants 

This began a long conversation about where my boundaries were. Not just the physical ones, like closing the door (which became part of a larger conversation about who has access to me and when, and who controls how my time is spent), but the psychological ones. I literally needed to give myself permission to create boundaries in my own mind. It’s not just about not checking email when I’m home or on vacation, but creating a new story in my mind. 

In that story, school is not present, or its importance is discounted. In that story I say “no” to being needed, to having responsibility when my wife or child are in front of me, or when I need to make sure I finish my learning seder that day rather than respond to yet another email. I had to do this because I could never just say that I wouldn’t think about school. That’s like when you tell someone not to think about pink elephants—all they can think about are pink elephants. I needed a different story, a story that created a boundary in my mind between school and home, work and davening, between not just the daily pressures of work and that last negative parent interaction, but the underlying responsibilities that I talked about above.

Having the Conversation 

Some of what I described above falls into that category of things that have to be lived to be understood, that words can’t quite address. That said, I think making these struggles public, and more heads thinking through this practice out loud, can only help our peers who are early in their careers and learning to adjust. I think lay leaders, board chairs in particular, need a deeper awareness of what their heads are facing, and the toll it takes. I think boards need to have a more explicit conversation, among themselves, about what they need to do to ensure that their heads are protected and sustainable. At the conference, a couple of heads mentioned that they took two- to five-month sabbaticals, and credited this to their longevity. Most of us could not imagine such a reality.

Where might we start? I have a few ideas, though I am quite sure there are many more possibilities. A colleague and friend shared a version of what I have written here with his head of school support and evaluation committee for discussion, thus making the conversation with his lay leadership public. A second could be more formal communities of practice amongst heads themselves. Some of us have informal relationships in which we share and support one another. Prizmah’s Head of School Conference last February was a great example of creating such a space for heads to speak with like-minded colleagues about what we need most. A third option may be placing this challenge on the agenda of leadership programs like YOU Lead or DSLTI. 

Although as in so many things, perhaps the first step is simply to ask the heads themselves.

A version of this article originally appeared on Cashman’s blog, Thinking Out Loud: Reflections on Leadership and Learning in Jewish Education and Torah Life.

Emotional labor is the unpaid part of the job, the invisible work we do to keep those around us comfortable and happy. When embarking on a headship, no one talks to you about the emotional labor. No one recognizes the amount of time, energy and bandwidth that goes into it.

What does emotional labor look like? Or rather, what does is feel like? Our brains are like machines, they need food and rest to function at high capacity during actual work hours. And although we may be feeding our bodies plenty of fuel for our brains to run on, unmanaged emotional labor is more like an untamed animal that does not allow proper rest of the brain.

As heads of school are reading this, they are feeling the physical pain and pressure in their necks, shoulders and guts. Although emotional labor can cause worry and anxiety, those do not define it. Emotional labor is the overly thoughtful work our brains do. Constantly reminding ourselves to check on A-G, check in with H-P, and close a loop with Q-Z; sometimes truly having 26 things on our minds at once! It’s the mental checklist that never ends.

According to classical economics, there are four types of labor: unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled and professional. In thinking about emotional labor in the context of these textbook categories, a new head is probably, at worst, unskilled at managing emotional labor, at best semi-skilled. Maybe after a first contract term a head could be considered skilled at managing emotional labor. And it is only the seasoned heads that have become true professionals.

But isn’t that true about most things in a headship? Many new heads are unskilled at fundraising, and as the years go on, they become fundraising professionals. Why is support for a head to gain the skills at fundraising so readily available, but help to manage the emotional labor not only not available, but often not even recognized?

Even having a conversation about emotional labor becomes emotional labor!

Stressors 

We have been conditioned our whole lives to think one step ahead, to anticipate the needs of those around us, and to care about them deeply. All this labor is happening in our heads and hearts and taking both a psychological and physical toll on us. It is the only type of labor that goes largely unnoticed by those it benefits most. The direct recipients of the job we’re doing in the realm of emotional labor are often clueless about this labor.

Successful heads are concerned about how our tone and demeanor affects our faculty and staff. We labor strenuously over conversations to be had, and then continue to labor over the conversations long after they’re finished.

We worry about our students and their families dealing with family illness, emergencies and losses. We agonize over difficult conversations with parents about their children and have multiple conversations just to prepare.

The Role of Mentors 

Our tumultuous feelings can be harnessed and channeled into a productive thought process through the mentoring relationship. A mentor provides a head with encouragement and support and gives useful feedback on behavior and decision making. A mentor can help guide the emotional laborer into becoming a strategic thinker, thereby making the emotional labor both valuable and productive.

Most importantly, by providing emotional support and guidance to a head, the mentor helps turn the burden of emotional labor into motivation to continue the rewarding and challenging work of the headship. The mentor-mentee relationship is most fruitful when the head can be fully vulnerable with, and open to the guidance and advice of, their mentor. 

An unexpected benefit of my mentor relationship has been the cheerleading. Having a mentor who believes in you, literally cheers you on, and whose only interest is to see you succeed has been key to my ability to tackle some of the most difficult situations of my career. Much of our emotional labor is providing this very kind of support to our faculty and staff, yet for those heads who don’t have mentors, who is doing it for them?

The Role of Lay Leaders 

Another important piece of support is a high functioning head of school support and evaluation committee. The members of the HOSSEC can and should own some of the emotional labor together with the head of school. Selecting the right members to serve on the HOSSEC has also been instrumental in sustaining me in the headship. My team of HOSSEC members allows me the space to articulate some of the emotional labor, and similar to the role of my mentor, they help shoulder some of it by understanding the challenges and concerns and formulating strategic actions for our community. Knowing that these committee members are fully supportive and receiving their honest feedback helps alleviate some of the emotional labor and overcome some of the loneliness of headship. 

As I’m rounding out my second year as a head of school, I am grateful to my school’s lay leadership for supporting the coaching and mentoring I am receiving on a regular basis through the Day School Leadership Training Institute (DSLTI) and for the formulation of a productive, high-functioning HOSSEC.

Having a mentor with regular meetings is like putting on our own oxygen masks before helping others—key to not only surviving but thriving in the headship.