Chanukkah is about brave audacity, or holy chutzpah. We could have simply lit the Menorah in the Temple with whatever oil we found; according to Jewish law, in times of crisis we are allowed to use contaminated oil. But no, not us. We searched for the best: we wanted to start again with the highest level, with the best possible option. So we dared to dream that we could possibly find oil that was not contaminated. 

And then, when we lit the first night and there was not enough pure oil for more, we dared to dream more and, lo and behold, it lasted. One more night, and another and another… until we had time to make more pure oil after 8 days. This is, apparently, how we roll, and this holiday is a reminder to us that even when times are tough, we dare to dream of ways to do things not only better, but at the best possible level.

Recently, I was asked what schools are struggling with most, aside from Covid-related things (as if there is anything aside from that), and without hesitation, I said, “Teaching Hebrew.” It seems strange, I know, when our Torah is in Hebrew, we are so connected to our Jewish homeland in Israel where Hebrew is spoken, and when our prayers are written and uttered in Hebrew. Why would Hebrew be a weak link for us now? And yet, it is. We need to make Hebrew language accessible and fun and relevant even more now, especially for those with language-based learning challenges, and we need to do this at a time when there is such a need for great Hebrew teachers, and such a shortage in the pipeline.

So what can we do? The articles in this issue discuss the challenges we face and begin to help us crystalize the next steps. But most of all, I remind us to recall one of the core messages of this holiday season. We have the chutzpah to ask not only, What can we do so it is manageable, good or okay? We have the courage to demand, What can we do to make sure Hebrew is being taught in the best possible ways? 

As the Maccabees before us restored our appreciation of our heritage and tongue, let us take this opportunity to elevate the study and teaching of Hebrew in the most impactful, inspirational and useful ways so our next generations share identity and connection with our people, nation and language forever.

With a background in developmental psycholinguistics and as a Jewish day school parent, I have spent the last 40 years preoccupied with the state of Hebrew teaching and learning, especially in day schools, throughout North America and beyond. Anyone who knows me knows that I am meshuga ledavar, obsessed with Hebrew teaching and learning and unwilling to accept the mediocre results that characterize most of Jewish education when it comes to Hebrew.

Over the past few weeks, I have had the pleasure to discuss their commitment to Hebrew with various funders of Jewish education, all of whom have held leadership roles at Jewish day schools. Our conversations focused on two questions: 

• Why do we believe it is so important to invest in Hebrew?
• How should we leverage our investment in Hebrew?
   

Why Hebrew?

Hebrew is the language of the Jewish people. It is both a link across generations and the language of the State of Israel, the Jewish state. There have been many concerns expressed about the widening gap between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora; Hebrew is viewed as a key element to narrowing that gap and strengthening our connection to each other. In addition, Hebrew not only provides deep and direct access to our heritage, our texts and to meaningful engagement in prayer but has the added benefits associated with learning another language, a language that has personal meaning for all Jews.

According to Sara Bloom, board chair of Hebrew Public: Charter Schools for Global Citizens, “Hebrew creates a deep connection between Jews and non-Jews and Israel.” Evelyn Katz, past chair of Hebrew Academy (RASG) in Boca Raton, called Hebrew “the gateway to our culture and our heritage.” Speaking more than one language broadens our own world to include others. When we think about strengthening the connections between America and Israel, she points out that we can best relate to, understand, and enjoy a country, its people and culture when speaking their language. 

David Koschitzky, immediate past chair of the board of trustees of Keren Hayesod, expressed, “For us, the Hebrew language has been a defining part of Jewish culture through the centuries. It would be a shame to lose as an anchor and building block.”

Alisa Doctoroff, chair of the board of the Jim Joseph Foundation, said, “The story of Hebrew is compelling as a story. At one point in history, it was spoken by very few people and now it is the language of a whole country. It is exciting and is the bond between the past, present and future.”

Manette Mayberg, founder of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge, reflected, “As the language of the Jewish people, Hebrew provides the glue for Jews globally. Without shared language, there is no culture to attach to and ultimately no potential for lasting community.”

It is not possible to extract the deep meanings and wisdom embedded for us in our legacy as the Jewish people without access through Hebrew language.

How to Invest?

When asked how to most effectively invest in Hebrew education, one strong message is to invest in our educators. The recent CASJE research study of Jewish educators makes it clear that Jewish education will be strengthened when we provide deep, sustained professional development opportunities for our teachers and educational leaders. Al achat kamah vekhamah, all the more so for Hebrew. Even in many of our day schools where students might spend up to 13 years with anywhere from 3 to 5 hours a week in Hebrew class, students are graduating who don’t speak Hebrew or are unable to navigate Jewish texts in the original.

As Manette Mayberg pointed out, it’s crucial to dispel the notion that any Hebrew speaker can teach the language. Investing in organizations like Hebrew at the Center that prioritize training and coaching of Hebrew language professionals and take language transmission seriously, in other words, investing strategically in the human resources that are key to achieving the goals we set for our day school graduates, provides the most value.

In Sara Bloom’s view, the average day school gives very little thought to the outcomes of Hebrew education—whether their kids can navigate a Tanakh or buy a bus ticket. Day school leaders are not necessarily thinking intentionally about these outcomes, and many of the teachers don’t have the sophistication to realize articulated outcomes. She also points out that in order to realize the benefits of truly functioning in a language, we need to be encouraging and investing in truly immersive Hebrew learning as opposed to other pedagogic frameworks.

As parents, board members and funders, we can play a key role in calling attention to this deficiency by engaging our school leaders to focus more on their Hebrew programs and to set higher expectations. For example, the Koschitzky family ties its funding of Jewish education to requirements that schools include a certain amount of Hebrew, Tanakh and Israel education as part of the curriculum.

It is important not only that these elements are viewed as essential elements of a Jewish education but that they are coupled with an investment in assessment. There are effective tools available to language educators to help them set clear goals, measure student proficiency and adjust the teaching to ensure that students continue to progress. This is an essential element of effective education that holds us as educators accountable and fosters student growth.

If we are truly interested in giving our children a strong start, there are clear benefits to introducing Hebrew at an early age. In addition, we can expand access through the development and use of technological tools, online apps and programs that allow our students to enhance the language learning beyond the classroom.

English might be my mother tongue, but Hebrew is the language of my heart and heritage. It is our responsibility to pass this gift on from generation to generation.

In the words of Alisa Doctoroff, “Language has power. Hebrew has power for the Jewish People.”

Covid has brought many opportunities and challenges to Jewish day schools. We were able to stay open, for the most part, during Covid, and this has led to a new influx of students. The problem for the Hebrew departments in many schools during Covid has been learning how to adapt and adjust to the large addition of so many new students, a challenge Hebrew teachers could not have predicted.

Adapting to Educate New Students 

At our school, the Melvin J. Berman Academy in Silver Spring, Maryland, we have seen tremendous growth, receiving a number of lateral entry students. Some students moved into our school from public schools in our area, which remained shuttered until March 2021. Some moved into our school from other Jewish schools that focus more on Biblical Hebrew than modern Hebrew. Other students, recent transplants from different states, came from schools that did not use the same type of Hebrew curriculum as ours. We have also received a fair number of new students from Israel along with heritage speakers who live in the US.

In our school, all of these lateral entries created a new issue for our Hebrew department. In past years, we were really quite spoiled because most of our classes were relatively homogenous by level. There was always a certain range of students in all of our classes, but most of our students belonged at the levels in which they were placed. The lateral entry students have presented a new issue for our department, for the new students did not necessarily fit neatly into our already existing classes. Our classes were suddenly rather heterogeneous. In particular, we now have many novice learners in our beginner classes who are really not at the same level as the rest of the class. 

In an ideal world, we would have been able to open a mechinah or ulpan class for these new students so that we could try to catch them up to the beginner level before admitting them to these classes. However, we have an additional challenge: staffing. We have been struggling since the beginning of this year to find enough qualified Ivrit teachers to staff all of our regularly scheduled classes, and we certainly did not have the staff to open any new Hebrew classes for these new students. 

A separate issue arose at the honors level. New students who tested into the honors classes were sometimes above the level of the existing class because they are either heritage or native speakers. So challenges presented themselves at almost all of the levels in each grade. While we had more lateral entry students in 7th and 9th grades, almost all of the middle and upper school classes have encountered this issue.

Expanding our Differentiation Toolkit 

This has led to an interesting dilemma for our teachers to manage. 

All of our teachers have needed to be more flexible and begin differentiating the needs of their students in the classroom. This has required strategies like flexible grouping for students, and sometimes even different types of groups in one class. Sometimes we create groups where there are some stronger students who can help to guide some of the weaker students. At other times we place the weaker students in one group so that we can work with individual groups within the class. 

We have also needed to give students more choice and opportunity to learn at their own level and at their own pace, especially when it comes to vocabulary and grammar. For this reason, teachers sometimes have to prepare several versions of a worksheet for students in the same class. For the higher classes, teachers have acquired new materials for the heritage or native speakers so that they can progress at their own pace while the rest of the class learns the curriculum originally planned. 

Our teachers have been doing PBL (project-based learning) and PBLL (project-based language learning) in their classes in order to differentiate for students as well. Project-based language learning is an instructional approach that contextualizes learning by presenting the students with problems to solve or products to develop through the use of new lessons in the target language; students need to apply the new vocabulary and grammar acquired in the target language to the projects that they are researching. Using PBL and PBLL allows students to show proficiency in their vocabulary and grammar skills as they research a particular issue related to the unit of study. Students can be given a rubric with different options so that the needs of individual students are being considered in the area of assessment. 

Another area that needs quite a bit of flexibility is reading fluency and comprehension skills in Hebrew. Teachers often need to give flexible options through choice boards, so that students can tackle comprehension of texts at their own level and at their own pace. 

All of this has required teachers in the Hebrew language department to work much harder this year to prepare differentiated lessons for their classes. They need to concentrate on building basic vocabulary skills and creating games to test these new skills. They need to help guide the lateral entry students while continuing to challenge the other students in the class-not an easy balance at any time and especially during Covid.

Collaboration is very important under these circumstances because teachers need to find innovative ways to meet the new challenges of their classrooms. By working together as a cohesive unit, they are able to bounce ideas off of one another to determine the best way to meet the needs of all of the students in their classrooms.

Since Covid-19, schools have been shifting from face-to-face learning to hyflex models as well as technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Teachers are facing rapid change in their teaching methods and are often struggling to cope with increasing demands on their time. When it comes to Hebrew instruction, one of the major challenges is the lack of engaging, ready-to-use online Hebrew language resources and tools to cope with limited Hebrew hours in synchronous instruction. 

In order to understand teachers’ coping mechanisms in their teaching during the abrupt changes and adjustments needed during the Covid-19 pandemic, an extensive teachers’ survey was conducted in July 2021 by Dr. Shuli Gilutz for Jewish Interactive (Ji). Results showed a significant shift in digital instructional use for Jewish studies and Hebrew teaching. When teachers were asked whether they used the same digital content during the pandemic as they did before (website, apps, games, digital tools), 90% of the teachers, both novice and master teachers, replied “no.” Most teachers are exploring new ways of engaging students through technology.

Ready-made content is crucial in supporting and empowering teachers to use their professional knowledge, skills and expertise. Digital Hebrew resources also offer students material that can be accessed from home.

Core Questions when Considering Digital Hebrew Programs 

Having a digital ecosystem where Hebrew educators can find, create, and share resources and ideas is needed more than ever. In understanding these needs, we propose four questions to ask when evaluating digital Hebrew resources:

1. Does the resource reflect current approaches to Hebrew language acquisition? For example, does it incorporate the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach?

2. Does the resource empower teachers to have pedagogical freedom and the ability to deliver their Hebrew curriculum effectively?

3. Does the resource empower 21st-century learners who are creators and producers of content, and who are innovators using technological tools in myriad contexts?

4. Does the resource engage students in meaningful, comprehensible and authentic ways?

Unlike math, English, and other subjects, there are not many digital resources available for Hebrew instruction for non-native speakers. iTaLAM, Eyal, Ji Alef-Bet Series, Ulpan Or, Ivrit BeClick are some of the digital Hebrew resources used by teachers long before Covid changed the educational arena. These tools mainly target children who can read or are learning to read. Following Covid, there’s been unprecedented demand for digital Hebrew content and resources aimed at early childhood and young learners taking their first Hebrew steps.

Developing New Programs to Meet Classroom Needs Today

Funded by the Israeli Government, in collaboration with UnitEd, Ji collaborated with Hebrew language expert Margalit Kavenstock to create Ivrit Misaviv La’Olam (IML), a free curriculum that is the first of its kind, enabling schools to adapt a blended Hebrew curriculum for its youngest learners. IML is based on the communicative approach, which recognizes that skills are not used in isolation, and favors teaching language by enacting real-life situations addressing the changes affecting how children learn today. Interactive units designed to deliver an immersive Hebrew experience are paired with blended hands-on resources. Teachers can access an educators’ guide as well as many synchronous and asynchronous training opportunities with the curriculum creators, supporting teachers on their journeys to integrate new methodologies into their teaching as well as creating opportunities for community building around professional development.

Research has shown that digital Hebrew language resources need to be paired with support for teachers and should allow for flexibility and freedom in their implementation. The concept of curriculum should be adaptable and dynamic. Schools and teachers should be able to update and align the curriculum to reflect evolving societal requirements as well as individual learning needs.

Fostering Connectivity and Productive Screen Time 

In a world where both connectivity and student-centered digital learning are prized, the Hebrew classroom is transforming into a hybrid or blended playground of hands-on learning, short bursts of digital Hebrew tech time and interpersonal learning.

In an environment that is looking for bite-sized modules that can be plugged into lesson segments as needed, partnerships with leading Hebrew content and pedagogy experts, like HOP TV, Eizeh Kef, Ulpan-Or and Hebrew at the Center (HATC) have been essential.  The goal is not only to create content, but also, to provide training in implementation and strategy. Research shows that the prime obstacle to using technology in the classroom is inadequate professional development and training. It’s one thing to have a tool, it’s another to know how and when to use it. 

The balance between teacher, content and students has shifted; options for teaching skills, vocabulary and reading have expanded with the availability of digital tools that create one-on-one learning environments. The ability to give students a digital game to play and learn has also challenged the ideals of Ivrit be’Ivrit standards. While in-class efforts would be made to avoid the use of English, teachers might allow minimal English instruction to facilitate an independent learning experience at home or in the classroom. 

With students occupied in digital Hebrew learning, what is the role of the teacher in the Hebrew classroom? How often should digital learning be implemented? Is using digital content on the Smartboard as effective as assigning it on personal devices? Teachers are asking themselves how to use digital Hebrew resources to support their teaching. They are looking for digital support which would allow them to be more present with their students and enable them to reach the high levels of creativity that students have become accustomed to when using technology designed for general academic and personal use.

There isn’t one way to use digital Hebrew resources in the classroom. The goal is to feel comfortable learning how these tools can help teachers be better educators, create the opportunity for more time with each student, and maximize in-person interactions. Students are using apps and programs to create and express themselves by posting their ideas, thoughts and messages for the world. Creativity and expression in the digital realm shapes their identity and the way they communicate. Understanding this reality is influencing the way digital Hebrew tools are being built, helping educators and students use technology to forge a stronger connection with the Hebrew language.

As a student at Westchester Day School in the 1980s, learning Hebrew was simply part of my educational experience, no different than math or science. My school had several excellent educators who made sure I would become proficient in the language, utilizing my skills in the classroom, as a bar mitzvah and when visiting Israel. My cousins and I would compete at holidays to prove who could maintain a Hebrew-only conversation the longest. Most of my Hebrew teachers happened to be Israeli, and while I didn’t always enjoy their rigorous and structured approach, I grew as a learner, as a Jew. 

At Milwaukee Jewish Day School (MJDS), where I serve as head of school, Hebrew is required in every grade, 3K-8th. Over the last few years, we’ve focused on creating and implementing a scope and sequence backward mapped from graduation. We are attempting to align our curriculum to the ACTFL world readiness language standards; our teachers engage students in reading, writing, speaking and listening each day. We are improving in our capacity to meet the individual needs of all students, and the growth of our school over the last five years complicates our attempts at differentiation. Most lateral transfers are new to Hebrew, requiring additional high-quality Hebrew teachers to provide ability-level courses. Offering a virtual learning environment to support differentiated instruction is only effective if the educator in the room is able to build authentic relationships with students.

 A lot has changed since the 1980s. Recruiting and retaining high-quality Hebrew teachers has become a significant challenge for many day schools across the country. For many second-language learners, the key to growth is stepping outside of one’s comfort zone and speaking/hearing that new language as often as possible. Creating a classroom environment that allows students to feel safely vulnerable is an essential component of strong teaching. If we want the current and future generations to value modern Hebrew, we must create a sustainable pipeline of educators who love the language, love children, and can foster learning environments that support speaking and listening along with reading and writing.

At MJDS, we are fortunate to have incredible Hebrew educators on staff. Unfortunately, two of them will return to Israel in the near future, a reality we have been preparing for by researching how other day schools meet their families’ Hebrew education needs. In our discussions with more than twenty-five day schools, we’ve learned the following:

• Every school is providing some kind of Hebrew program, even if it is limited to a few grade levels.
• The majority of the Hebrew teachers today are 50+ and only 5% are under the age of 30; several teachers are nearing or at retirement age.
• Hebrew charter elementary schools are getting some of the strongest teachers; private day schools are often losing out.
• The most experienced teachers are in the high school programs because these programs have been around longer.
• The majority of Jewish day schools rely on people who are fluent Hebrew speakers, yet may not have any teaching experience.
• Outstanding Hebrew teachers do not need to be native speakers.
• Some schools are piloted virtual teachers/classrooms, with mixed results.

Recognizing that there is no simple solution to identifying, recruiting and retaining excellent Hebrew teachers, yet knowing that there are always ways forward, I connected with two incredible educators to help identify opportunities. Partnering with Vardit Ringvald, the director of the School of Hebrew at Middlebury College, and Yael Gal, a professor at UW-Milwaukee and the head of Hebrew at Nicolet High School in Milwaukee, we hosted more than a dozen day school leaders for an initial conversation last month.

Throughout our discussion of the Hebrew educator pipeline, a few themes emerged: 

• The goal of Hebrew is not necessarily the same at everyday school.
• Identifying/recruiting/retaining high-quality Hebrew teachers is a struggle, especially for smaller schools in mid-size cities.
• The impact of educational shlichim varies significantly.
• Providing a realistic path for interested educators towards emigration from Israel to the US is costly and inconsistent.
• Proficiency in Hebrew varies tremendously among students. Some students have little to no ability to decode, whereas students who are native speakers speak and read fluently.
• This diversity requires teachers to be experts in differentiation.

Although our initial meeting has not yet determined how to create or sustain a pipeline of Hebrew educators, we did begin to build community around this common challenge. Vardit, Yael and I reflected on our initial meeting and agreed that more information would be needed before reconvening. To capture additional information, we are drafting a brief survey to be shared with all heads of school via the Prizmah reshet. We will use this information to identify next steps in our pipeline development.

As a child, if I ever said I didn’t like something my mom made for dinner, she would reply, “That’s okay; you just don’t know what’s good,” and then point to the cereal cabinet. While one could argue whether the quality and taste of food could be objectively measured, her point was that I would eventually learn what was “good”- not just in food, but in other areas of life as well. (Full disclosure: the foods I hated back then, such as stuffed cabbage, are now my favorites!)

I’ve been thinking a lot about this concept and how it applies to schools. 

Here’s a common scenario: Teachers have just read the weekly staff memo and they are up in arms about something the administration decided on, without teacher input. They look at one another and, in unison, shout, “What were they thinking?!” or “Why did they think that was okay?!” The administrators, of course, think the teachers just don’t get it.

With such a polarity of views, it’s possible that each side (perhaps using other words) would say to the other, “You just don’t know what’s good.”

Do people in your school know what the best practices are for the various functions of school life? What good and timely communication means? What “collaboration” looks like? How to show respect to teachers? How to design and implement a good Kabbalat Shabbat program? How to onboard a new teacher? How to  adopt a new schoolwide program?

Do people in your school have a common understanding of what makes a school good (or great, or excellent?)

Proofs of Excellence 

Some schools think that the golden trilogy of test scores, money raised, and number of students is all you need to prove the school is great.

Other schools point to artifacts they believe are true indicators of a well-run school. For instance:

• Weekly memos between administration and faculty equal good communication;
• An up-to-date Personnel Handbook equals good HR practices;
• Minutes of monthly board meetings equal good governance.

One can certainly check these items off a “to do” list and be convinced that all is well. But a deep dive may uncover some problems. The weekly memo actually leaves teachers confused; in spite of the Handbook, teachers don’t feel safe or appreciated; the board is completely unaware of problems in the school. 

Whether it’s in curriculum, pedagogy, communication, school culture, or systems, there are parts of school functioning that need to be clearly described, clearly measurable, and constantly updated. A school needs to know, in detail, what “good” looks like.

Standards and Measurement 

One way of defining “good” is to use established standards. Here is one standard from the 37-page publication, Professionals Standards for Educational Leaders (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015): 

Develop and support open, productive, caring, and trusting working relationships among leaders, faculty, and staff to promote professional capacity and the improvement of practice. 

Though a mouthful, this is actually a great standard. But how do you make this standard come alive in your school? How do you know what to do? Here it is again, with the key words that can be defined and measured highlighted in bold.

Develop and support open, productive, caring, and trusting working relationships among leaders, faculty, and staff to promote professional capacity and the improvement of practice. 

These are the elements that show everyone what "good" looks like in a school. 

The 2017 MCIEA School Quality Framework also created standards (or “quality measures”), but they added survey questions that could be used to measure compliance. Here’s one measure with a sample of questions (out of 18) that teachers were asked:

Measure 1: Teachers and Leadership 

Are skilled teachers working together with supportive administrators?

• Are teachers supported in their development as professionals?
• How prepared are you for teaching the topics that you are expected to teach in your assignment?
• To what extent to you trust your principal at his or her word?
• At your school, how comfortable are you raising concerns with the principal?
• How much does your principal know about what's going on in the teacher's classrooms? 

As Douglas Reeves has pointed out, you measure the things you care about. Defining the elements of a standard, defining the “good,” is an exercise that helps a school clarify its mission, goals and values. It also creates consensus around various policies and practices in the school.

Setting Schoolwide Standards 

What does it take to create, follow and measure a set of standards in all areas of school operations? Step one is humility: If people are telling you something is broken, thank them for giving you the opportunity to take a fresh look at things. Step two is to acknowledge that doing so is part of fulfilling one’s professional responsibilities. Step three is get excited: This is a project that will be benefit the entire school community.

The next time you or others get upset about something your colleagues, teachers or administrators do, please know that looking to the sky, rolling your eyes, and asking “What were they thinking?!” or “Why did they think that was okay?!” are actually great questions. Because underlying the frustration, there is a powerful question that has the potential to transform your school: “What is our definition of good?”

Friends,

I am so excited that the registration for the Head of School Retreat and the Day School Investor Summit will be opening in the next few days, and I hope you’ll be able to join us. Before it goes live, though, I wanted to take the opportunity to send you some great language to use to invite your major donors to represent your school at the Day School Investor Summit in February. The event is by invitation only, and we need your help to ensure that you get the biggest possible benefit from this important gathering.

One hundred of the top investors in our schools will join us to consider how they can partner with their schools and communities to make real change for the day school field. Our first Investor Summit, in 2018, can be traced to several major programs that have made significant change for schools: from Toronto’s Generations Trust Scholarship to Atlanta’s recently announced Jewish professionals tuition discount, these seeds were planted at Prizmah’s Investors Summit.

In order to make sure the right people are in the room, we turn to you, our day school partners, to help us identify the change-makers for your school. Typically, we think about those who have given $50,000 or more to your day school for at least two years. Since many of you have close relationships with these investors, we would love for you to consider inviting them to this unique gathering directly, giving you another engagement opportunity and the ability to offer something special to your top donors. We plan on sending out invitations to a select group that we are curating with your input, but we’d love for the initial invitation to come from you. If it’s useful, I’ve drafted the email below that you may customize to use as your invitation. Feel free to use the contents for any of your outreach, or visit this website for more information and to add someone’s name to our invitation list.

If there’s someone you’d like us to add to the invitation list, please let me know ASAP. Only investors with a pre-approved, individualized code will be allowed to register, and I don’t want any of your participants to have to jump through extra hoops.

I’ll add one more thing… I imagine many of you are asking yourselves, “Are they going to solicit my donors?” So let me reassure you that there will be no solicitation at this event, and that--as always--Prizmah’s first goal is to encourage more resources to go to our schools, never to take them away. The donors that attended the Investor Summit last time returned home feeling inspired and well-connected to other major givers, and many even increased their gifts afterwards. It was a major success for schools.

We can’t wait to see you at the Head of School Retreat, where you’ll overlap with these investors for a few purpose-driven hours on Monday afternoon. We expect the outcomes of both gatherings to be exceptional.

Thanks for all you do to make your school amazing.

Paul

Draft email to invite your investors:

Dear [Donor Name],

[Insert personalized greeting.]

I’m wondering if you’ve heard yet about the Day School Investors Summit being hosted by Prizmah this February 6-8 in Ft. Lauderdale. This will be the second time they are hosting an event like this, and I would love for you to be there to represent our school. There will be around 100 people from the US and Canada who are deeply invested in day schools attending, with the goal of learning from other philanthropists, thinking about ways to advance our school and community, and to advance the cause of Jewish day school education on the whole. (Optional: There is also a Head of School Retreat that overlaps on the final evening of the program, and I plan on attending. I’d love to have you as my partner for the work we’ll be doing during that time.)

Would you think about attending? It’s by invitation only, so you’d just need to add your name to the invitation list at this link, and then they’ll send you more information when registration opens in November. I’m happy to talk about it more, or to connect you to Hannah Olson at Prizmah, who is working on this event.

Thanks so much for considering. I look forward to hearing all about your experience when we get back.

Warmly,
[Your Name]