It is difficult to reflect on an evolving situation, as memories feel both fragmented and awhirl. Temporal distancing is a technique I’ve learned to implement, as I try to fast forward and imagine how I will look back on this time, and what I will likely remember. I wonder if it will be the wailing sirens in my neighborhood, day and night, that didn’t stop, and the fear that gripped us. I wonder if it will be the sleepless nights as we prayed and longed for loved ones, counting our blessings and appreciating all that we had.

Covid-19 has been a whirling dervish that both uprooted and solidified our understanding of our purpose and place in this world, with all of its disruptions, stressors and challenges elevating the role of resilience to front and center in our path to recovery. I hope that I will remember more than the frightening experiences we endured, but the sacred and authentic spaces we created, in which we embraced our vulnerability, realized God was in control, gave strength to ourselves and those around us and engaged in dialogue that shattered stigma around mental health—dialogue that I pray will far outlive the pandemic.

As a Jewish educator and mental health professional, I have long-held beliefs about the power of supportive relationships and belonging in facilitating meaningful and engaging learning experiences, and the wellbeing that emerges from the power of those connections. Educators, mental health professionals and administrators have humanized the struggle that the pandemic induced and went above and beyond to make themselves available for each other and for their students, all while juggling their own families and personal responsibilities in a way that blurred boundaries and stretched the hours of the day. We all dug deep and embraced the idea that feeling genuinely accepted, nurtured and connected within a school community is crucial to recovery, resilience and growth.

We all experienced an unprecedented “shared traumatic reality” (in the words of Bar Ilan professor Nehami Baum) with our students, as we helped them cope with the crisis, trauma and stress the pandemic induced while living through it ourselves at the same time, as we innovated and sacrificed to make the remote learning experience as engaging as possible, amidst our own struggles and uncertainty. Schools without walls were born, as we pivoted and brought the warmth and sense of community into our students’ homes and allowed students to share a piece of their homes with us. We all began to realize that education is life itself, as we worked our way through the endless days and wondered whether we were really reaching all of our students, or if we would ever know. Digital learning definitely broadened the scope of what schools could do in terms of education, but we all knew that the joy of being back together safely in person was something that so many of us longed for and needed.

As we prepared for school reopening, we took time to reflect on what drives the success we’ve experienced with our students. Our communal hubs of learning that define the Jewish schooling experience are home to rituals, routines and relationships that are both sacred and grounding and pave way for the joy and wonder we all long for as we return to school in the fall each year. The careful and deliberate planning in which we engaged before school opened was a labor of listening, as we surveyed our families about supporting them and their children upon return and learned so much about partnering with parents. I was humbled by the challenges that our families, faculty and students faced and overcame, and quickly realized that we may have just scratched the tip of the iceberg, as stressors tend to linger, but yet, we powered on.

I recall speaking to teachers about adopting a stance of radical compassion and flexibility as we focused on reintegration and working to ensure that we all felt emotionally connected and able to reacclimate to our new socially distanced 2020 reality, with the possibility of quarantine looming around every corner. Just when we may have been approaching our threshold of compassion fatigue, we showed up and modelled coping skills, actively promoting resilience, leaning in to each other and our communities of practice to truly elevate the role of educators as those on the frontlines.

The new school year brought opportunities to reflect on the changes we had all experienced, and I recall my first class back with my students, listening intently to their understanding of the unprecedented times in which we were living, and how they navigated the instability and uncertainty around them. Again, I learned the power of listening, and was strengthened by my students’ retelling of the opportunities they found to search for meaning, cultivate a growth mindset and discover coping tools they never knew they had. The more listening I did, the more I realized that creating safe spaces where we could all just be our whole, authentic selves was key to our healing and allowed our schools to become beacons of warmth, mental health and support. Tending to the mental health needs within the school community became a delicate dance of leaning in, reaching out to see what others might need, and shifting perspectives to be mindful of sharing resources that were aligned with where people were truly at.

True to a trauma-informed school environment, we all learned to approach concerns we had with curiosity and exploration, wondering why students may have been acting the way they were, what may have been driving their behavior and giving them ownership and voice in the process. Thinking deeply about what it meant to be on the receiving end of support and where each of us fit within the framework of our school networks allowed us to restore relationships and keep the safe spaces within our classrooms and buildings alive and authentic. In the process, I believe we all grew a sense of shared ownership for caring for each other, and developed a renewed focus on creating the conditions for all of us to flourish, as our schools transformed to prioritize and destigmatize self-care and relationships before rigor.

I pray that the inside-out approach we have taken this year will pave way for cultivating more compassionate, inclusive and welcoming classrooms for many years to come. While we often think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, this year we have learned that above all else, we are feeling creatures that think, and need to embrace our emotional needs and make space for the needs of others. I believe the future ahead of us is very bright, as the resilience we have forged will allow us to continue to positively adapt and regain our ability to thrive and innovate, with room for positive growth and transformation. Let us not forget the tireless progress we have made, and the potential for so much more.

Recent articles and gatherings, including Prizmah’s Mental Health Summit, have addressed a growing concern about mental health issues in our schools. While creating initiatives to address the mental health needs in our school communities is necessary, the long-term success of these efforts is not guaranteed. 
What often happens in schools is that an identified problem, or even an opportunity to improve something, leads to initiatives (or innovations) that are poorly or incompletely implemented, or dropped entirely. In some cases, the problem was misdiagnosed, the solution did not match the problem, the initiative was not well thought out or even needed. It can also happen that the process of engaging the faculty was too top-down and, as a result, there was no real buy-in from teachers.

Just as often, however, the reason for failure is that the school simply did not have the bandwidth to take on a new project. As one colleague used to say, “More things get piled on our plates, but no one gives us more people or more plates!”

Change Management

Adhering to successful practices in change management will ensure that your initiative in mental health will be well conceived and planned. If you are the one(s) being tasked to introduce new mental health programming, here’s what you need to do so things don’t get messy.

In the language of organizational management, projects that succeed pay attention to a school’s institutional capacity (people, funding, time, management systems, leadership, communication protocols, relationships, technology, ability to assess and monitor) and the school’s Institutional readiness (change management skill sets, history of success, ability to plan, role clarifications, history of collaboration, relationships, consensus on purpose/goals/outcomes, ability to adapt). In other words, your school community may want to solve a problem, or launch an initiative, but you have to ensure that you have the necessary resources and readiness to do so. As leadership guru Warren Bennis points out, it’s the difference between the “desire to do things right” versus the “ability to do the right things.

Administrators are under pressure to innovate, to run “cutting edge” schools, to be first out of the gate to adopt a new educational approach or curriculum. This pressure comes from a variety of sources: board members, donors, parents, even teachers. Some pressure is good. A school should examine its practices and strive for improvement. This is healthy and should be encouraged by the school’s administration, as well as its board. 

But a successful school will manage pressure, stick with programs and encourage faculty partnerships. Schools would be wise to follow Douglas Reeves’s Rule of Six: no more than six initiatives at any one time. This includes both new projects and other recently launched initiatives. Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I would like to suggest that a lack of institutional capacity and readiness eats school culture for lunch. 

Using the concepts of “institutional capacity” and “institutional readiness,” and engaging your entire school community in this process, is a good way to ensure that your school does the right things, and does them well.

Checklist for a New Program

I would like to propose some questions you and your leadership team might consider asking before launching a new mental health initiative. While the focus here is on mental health, I believe that the following approach can work with all kinds of initiatives.

As you go through this list, I suggest you keep this mantra in mind:

Tafasta merubeh, lo tafasta (the more you grasp, the less you really have). Do fewer things, better.

Capacity and Readiness Inventory

Defining the Problem

• What is the (specific) problem we are trying to solve?
• What does it look like?
• How is it impacting our students, teachers, families, others?
• How important is it? What is the priority?

Why Should We Tackle this Problem?

• How does addressing this issue fit in with our mission and vision?
• Which of the school’s core values are guiding us here?
• Will this initiative force us to drop something from our ongoing strategic plan?
• What if we don’t tackle this problem?

How Will We Discuss This?

• Who are the key people involved in looking at this issue?
• Where will we get our information about this?
• Who needs to know about it?
• What do various constituencies need to know about it?
• Do we have a shared vocabulary—mental health terms, planning terms (goal, input, outcome), education terms (curriculum, unit, lesson, learning goal, assessment)?

Making Decisions

• Who will be part of making decisions (about program content, resources needed, prioritizing)?
• Who will “own” this decision?
• Who will decide what other goals or projects will have to be put on hold?

Planning

• How much time will it take to plan this initiative?
• How many meetings (# hours) will we need for this?
• What other meetings will drop off in order to do this?
• Who has to be at what kind of meeting (planning, budget, curriculum, other)?
• Do teachers have time to attend some or all of our planning meetings?
• What combination of “plug and play” resources and teacher-made programs are we aiming for?
• What will drop out of our regular classroom and large-group educational programming?
• How much will it cost to implement?
• What role does technology play in this? 
• What will be the role of parents?

Implementation

• Who is in charge of implementing the initiative and individual program(s)?
• Have roles been delegated clearly (goals, how to get things done, assessment protocols)?
• How will administrators adjust their workload/other assignments for this to be successful?
• Will we need to add hours/salary to make this happen?
• How many meetings (# hours) will we need for ongoing management of this initiative?
• What other meetings will drop off in order to do this?
• Who has to be at what meeting?
• Do teachers have time to do this?
• What tasks will the Head of School take on in this effort?

Communication

• What will the board and administration communicate to others (parents, teachers, student, donors)? How often?
• In what venues will the Head of School address this?
• What educational/mental health resources will the school make available to teachers and parents?

Assessment

• What are the criteria for success for each part of our initiative?
• How will we measure? How often will we measure? Who will measure?
• Are we willing to allow ongoing assessments to lead to midstream changes in the program?
• Will teachers be evaluated on how they implement?
• Will administrators be evaluated on how they implement?
• How will the school celebrate progress/success?

Covid Questions

• How will post-Covid needs/demands add to the school’s already long to-do list?
• How will post-Covid needs/demands impact the daily schedules of teachers/administrators?

Mental Health Sensitivity Questions

• What are the prevailing beliefs/attitudes about mental health in the school community?
• If there are stigmas attached to mental health, what advanced work must be done to overcome them so that programming will be successful

At this point, you may ask, “Isn’t this a lot of front-loading to undertake before beginning to address mental health issues in our school?” I get it. The need is great and you want to do something NOW.

Here’s one answer: Growing up in LA, I was used to seeing cast members wear T-shirts that advertised their upcoming movies. A shirt for a movie about stuntmen called Stunts had the following tag line: “Forget the dialogue, let’s break something!” Unlike movie stunts, your goal isn’t to break things; it’s to repair what’s broken. Like a carpenter, you need to measure twice and cut once.

Another answer: We read in the Friday night Lecha Dodi prayer: “Sof ma’aseh bemachshavah techilah”—start with the ends in mind. If you don’t know where you’re going or how to get there, you won’t accomplish what you need to, and you’ll be frustrated. Take the time to plan and you’ll ensure success. In the end, you’ll be glad you did.

For the better part of the past year, our synagogues, organizations and schools have been making decisions about the extent to which the racial identities of their community members is going to factor into their visions. We have been awakened to the reality that while we all saw our spaces as being welcoming, Jews of Color have not always felt embraced. We’ve engaged in uncomfortable conversations about why we might not see the 12-15% of American Jews who identify as Jews of Color in our spaces. We’ve had to look inward and examine how “Ashkenormativity” has given us our definition of who is a Jew and realize that we have been othering our own Jewish siblings.

Jews of Color have shared their stories of being called dirty on the playground, being called the Black Jewish N-word in hallways, being thrown into trash cans in the lunchroom and what it feels like when their teachers were surprised at their Hebrew fluency. We have been left to reflect on whether the cumulative impact of our actions (and inaction) in response to these incidents is that we’ve reinforced a set of values that makes the parents of Jews of Color question whether a day school education is a viable option for their children. Schools who are undertaking this work are saying very clearly: This doubt is unacceptable—our schools must do even better to create an embracing, nurturing culture for all.

My Experience and Debate

As a Jew of Color and day school parent, some of my most difficult experiences have been exacerbated by feeling a lack of leadership response to incidents involving my children. As a professional educator and school leader, I hold the schools my children attend to the same standard that I set in my own. When conversations with administrators ended with a defense of the assumed intentions of the aggressors, I was left feeling like the severity of the incidents were not taken seriously. When my eldest was called the N-word for the first time and the administrative response was to give their parent my phone number (so they could convince me that their family isn’t racist), the impact was that I felt unsupported and that it was up to me to resolve the issue. When my children came home crying about what happened to them at school, I agonized over how to present the issues in a way that I would be heard. When the response was either brief without resolution or forwarded along without any follow up to ensure that my concerns were addressed, I was left feeling defeated, powerless and unable to protect my sons. The net result has been a feeling that my children were not completely safe and that the mission and vision of the schools they attended did not include any consideration of their race.

For years, I have been locked in an ideological debate with myself because, despite the experiences my children have had, Jewish education is still a value of mine. It is from the day school environment that my children will build their Hebrew literacy, which will give them access to any future prayer space they want to attend. Their Jewish education will lower the barrier to entry into organizational spaces and may even spark within them a calling for leadership positions or the rabbinate. But that is difficult to reconcile when sending them to school might do them harm.

DEI Work in Jewish Schools

The demographics of the United States have necessitated DEI work to be mainstays in the public school system. From book clubs to professional development, to examining the cultural responsiveness of their curricula, day schools have begun diving into this difficult work as well. As an educator who has been immersed in SEL (social-emotional learning) work for well over 15 years, I think a lot about the long-term impact on Jews of Color who have been exposed to micro- and macro-aggressions, at times daily, in their day school environments.

As schools opened this year, some of us had the opportunity to engage in work around becoming trauma-informed educators, learning about toxic stress and how trauma affects the brain permanently. We have to classify incidents that have happened to JOCs in our schools as traumas and work towards ensuring both their physical and social emotional safety. One only has to look at how many JOC students return year after year, how many return as faculty and how many are seen in leadership positions to note the changes that need to be made.

So what can be done? We’re approaching the end of the school year, the time when we examine our EOY data and make curricular decisions for the upcoming year. Many schools have started thinking about what an ELA curriculum would look like that reflects the diversity of our Jewish community, or a history curriculum that includes the histories of JOCs intertwined as part of American history instruction. As those decisions are being made, consider this lens:

What would a person think about race in the Jewish community if all they knew was their experience in your school?

What qualitative and quantitative data would you look at to answer that question?

Who would you call to your table to shape the decisions you will make?

Engaging Multiple Stakeholders

As you’re organizing around what the outcomes will be for the DEI work you are doing, ensure that your vision is clearly articulated from your head of school so that everyone on the faculty, in parent groups and among your students can speak to the values you set forth. If you’re creating spaces such as affinity groups in your school, ensure that it is an embedded practice for a representative from those groups to have a seat at your decision-making table. Without additional voices to help hold you accountable to your vision, you will set families up for failure if they do not feel empowered to be part of the change you’re making for the benefit of all students in your school.;

Expand the vision of equity to examine all of the places where improvement may be needed so that focus on one group isn’t at the expense of another. We are instilling within our children the responsibility that we have to live up to the promise of the words in our daily tefillah; in order for them to do that, the onus is on us to create environments that foster a lifelong love of learning that supports the personal growth of all—the discovery of who they each came into this world to be.

What’s at Stake

I now only have one child remaining in day school, and I am in awe of his resilience. He has had more racial slurs hurled at him since entering the day school system at age five than I have in my entire lifetime, but nevertheless, he persists. I am heartbroken that I couldn’t pay my middle child to attend a day school again after his last experience (which was compounded by his IEP needs). There are still days when he asks if he has to be Jewish, which leaves our family to rebuild the sense of Jewish identity that his lived experience broke. And that is what’s at stake if we don’t get this right in our schools.

After eight years of these stories, I wish the choice about sending my youngest to day school were simple. I wish that my process didn’t involve immense research, one-on-one conversations with admissions directors and combing through websites and other sources to determine each school’s hidden curriculum, because I need to know that his beautiful brilliant light will not be dimmed.

We must now answer the call to put these new tools into action because families like mine need your help. It is my hope that you feel inspired to embody the leadership of Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya and remove the barriers to entry so that all who want to learn within the walls of your schools feel safe to do so.

The Call to Action

The Jewish community in New York is the largest outside Israel. Unsurprisingly, New York is also home to more Jews of Color than anywhere else in the country. Yet despite this unique opportunity to have Jews of Color included in all parts of Jewish life, Jews of Color are deeply underrepresented in the Jewish communal landscape.

In fact, years of outreach and conversations with Jews of Color have shown us that Jews of Color do not feel authentically included in our schools, synagogues and other Jewish communal settings. While this past year brought a long-overdue national reckoning on racial equity, many corners of Jewish communal life have been quietly facing our own shortcomings and working to build a more inclusive community. However, the time had come to accelerate the pace of this effort and do a better job at creating welcoming spaces for Jews of Color in New York.

New York features a wide range of day schools and yeshivot, distinct in terms of geography, size and culture, who are at vastly different points on their journey to build a culture of racial equity both within their organizations and in their broader communities. Some schools that are mostly heterogeneous and relatively new to discussions about racial equity are searching for ways for educators, parents and students to learn about and practice racial inclusivity. In others, school leaders are interested in learning from colleagues and experts how to overcome challenges to building a strategic equity roadmap.

In response to this environment, this February UJA launched Nafsheinu: UJA’s Race, Equity and Inclusion Cohort: Equity in Jewish Day School Education, in partnership with four New York schools that want to actively engage in REI work. The Abraham Joshua Heschel School, Hannah Senesh Community Day School, Rodeph Sholom School and Schechter School of Long Island span Manhattan, Brooklyn and Long Island, serving K-8 and K-12 student bodies.

We created the program in collaboration with The Jewish Education Project, which has deep experience in school change and leadership development. We also engaged Martha Haakmat of Haakmat Consulting, an expert in REI. Our goal for the program was to deepen school leadership’s knowledge, expertise and skills necessary to foster a more inclusive day school community.

Digging Deep With Challenging Issues

The intensive program brought together several members of each school community—the head of school, senior educational leadership, admissions/development personnel and teacher leaders—to learn about and explore specific REI topics.

Facilitated by at least one REI expert, joint sessions included a focus on the power of language and an examination of unconscious bias. Leadership gained resources and tools to implement a strategic vision of REI with different constituencies immediately and in the long term. They discussed alternative approaches, such as building REI goals into each administrative team’s annual goals. For parents, that might look like better understanding and upholding community agreements related to equity and inclusivity, as outlined in family handbooks and enrollment contracts.

Schools sharpened their understanding of what it takes to move an institution and openly discussed some of the challenges they faced, including educational staff and parents who are concerned that curricular changes aimed at inclusivity might distract from other educational goals. When disagreements arose on how to achieve the goals of REI, school leaders grappled with how to work with the whole school community on developing shared communication skills, without compromising a school’s commitment to REI.

“It's hard work to put into practice actions aimed at becoming more racially equitable and inclusive. I have been impressed by the openness to collaboration between schools and school leaders,” said Martha Haakmat, an experienced educator of color who has spent her 34-year career teaching and leading in independent schools.

The four-school cohort has been particularly powerful when it has benefited from the collective wisdom of colleagues. Participants enjoyed moments when they realized that other educators in different settings face similar challenges, and as a group they explored alternative approaches.

For instance, one school had already been challenged trying to communicate curricular shifts to parents and other stakeholders. That school’s participants shared how they built productive conversations with the student body about the goal of a diverse community. Rather than sending out a string of emails to the school community, this school is planning to convene a series of coffees between parents and senior educational leadership and create a parent book club highlighting books by diverse authors.

REI Work in Different Schools

Beyond multiple-school sessions, the individual school teams meet with the REI expert to explore school-specific challenges that surface. One school is working on revising its mission statement and is thinking through whether to explicitly add language about racial equity.

Other schools are developing professional development for teachers to increase racial awareness, help them teach about racism and provide tools for engaging students in meaningful conversations. Schools are asking questions such as, What type of professional development is needed to increase the knowledge of our own educators? and Which Jewish sources should be included in our broader REI curriculum?

Takeaways

Key takeaways from the Nafsheinu program include that engaging in REI practice more deeply requires a close study of language, as well as honest and respectful conversation and listening for understanding, and an investigation of implicit bias within our policies, procedures and systems. The process requires adults to be in learning mode in ways that typically do not come easily.

Engaging in REI work brings up related issues that are also critical for creating communal inclusivity. Some schools are talking about the relationship of subcontracted employees (e.g., paraprofessional aides) within their broader educational community. The REI learning is solidifying schools’ convictions about the work’s importance and underscores that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to building a school culture of racial equity.

As schools clarify their priorities for the post-Covid phase, they may have a new opportunity to consider how REI efforts could benefit their community. UJA envisions convening new cohorts that represent the full spectrum of our day schools and who seek to build fully inclusive and representative environments. We are grateful to the schools who have begun this effort and look forward to working with more schools to help make our community inclusive for all Jews.