Leadership – A Floor, But No Ceiling

Not All “Science of Reading” Is Science: Hebrew Deserves Better

No serious school leader today would dismiss the Science of Reading when it comes to English. When it comes to Hebrew, though, most schools aren’t shrugging – they’re exhausted. Bandwidth, training, and resources are real barriers. Still, we can’t let those barriers define what’s possible when Hebrew literacy is the key to prayer, Torah, and Jewish belonging.

No serious school leader today would dismiss the Science of Reading when it comes to English. We know the research. We’ve seen the results. We’ve changed practice.

When it comes to Hebrew, though, I don’t think most schools are shrugging – I think most are exhausted. Bandwidth, training, and resources are real barriers, and Hebrew instruction has rarely had the scaffolds that English teachers now take for granted. Still, we can’t let those barriers define what’s possible. Too many of us keep relying on tradition, intuition, or “this is how it’s always been done,” and the result is predictable: children who stumble, schools that struggle, and a field that quietly lowers its expectations. While it has been published and cited publicly before, it clearly hasn’t resonated yet so I feel it must be repeated: less than 40% of students in day schools and yeshivot across North America are reading at or above grade level benchmarks for Hebrew reading.

The stakes could not be higher. Hebrew is not just another subject on a Jewish day school schedule. It is the key that unlocks prayer, Torah, rabbinics, Israel, and Jewish identity itself. Post–October 7th, Hebrew feels more urgent than ever – not just as an academic subject, but as the connective tissue of Jewish peoplehood. If we want our children to pray with fluency, study with depth, and feel part of a global Jewish story, they must be able to read Hebrew with confidence and comprehension.

[When I say “reading,” I’m using the Science of Reading definition: reading comprehension is the product of accurate, automatic decoding × language comprehension. In Hebrew, that means kriah (decoding/fluency) must be built systematically while oral language and text knowledge are cultivated. There’s no real “reading” without comprehension.]

In my early months at Scott Goldberg Consulting (SGC), I’ve had the privilege to sit with our coaches, visit schools, and watch teachers and students doing this work. And here’s the thing: even after twenty years as a head of school, even after working closely with consultants, even as someone who already believed in the Science of Reading, I realize now how much I didn’t know. We didn’t use these products in my schools. We didn’t fully recognize the stakes. And I see now what a difference it makes.

Bandwidth and capacity are real barriers. Schools are stretched thin. Leaders are juggling more than ever. But I’ve been inspired by what I’ve seen: coaches guiding teachers, teachers guiding students, students unlocking Hebrew fluency across every kind of learning profile. It’s real. It’s happening. And it’s transformative.

A growing number of programs now claim to be aligned with the Science of Reading and that’s a good sign of renewed attention to literacy. But let’s be honest: not all “Science of Reading” is science. True SoR alignment means explicit, systematic instruction built on decades of empirical research. Our work in Hebrew draws directly from that research base, applying it faithfully to a new language rather than just borrowing its buzzwords.

That work is being led by Dr. Scott Goldberg, who has published foundational research on Hebrew oral reading fluency and written and presented alongside many of the scholars who defined the Science of Reading field globally. His continued scholarship has positioned him as the go-to voice for Hebrew within Science of Reading academic circles.

At SGC, we’ve applied the full Science of Reading framework to Hebrew through two complementary products. MaDYK is a universal screening and progress-monitoring assessment that measures the basic early literacy skills that predict overall skilled reading, including comprehension. Even Kriah is a comprehensive curriculum and professional-learning system that helps teachers deliver explicit, systematic Hebrew reading instruction so students become skilled readers with strong decoding and comprehension skills. This isn’t “phonics-only”; it’s the pathway from oral language, vocabulary, phonological awareness, orthography and fluency to meaning.

Hebrew at the Center has long been at the forefront of elevating Hebrew teaching and learning across the field. Through our partnership on the Pritzat Derech project and at the recent Hitkadmut Conference, we are working together to connect that expertise in Hebrew language pedagogy with evidence-based approaches to reading. This collaboration — alongside the work of networks like Tamim Academy Schools, who have piloted Even Kriah — reflects a growing recognition that Hebrew literacy deserves the same rigor, research, and professional development that English literacy already enjoys.

This is exactly what MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports) calls for – a tiered approach where Tier 1 curriculum is evidence-based and Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions are systematic and responsive. When we fail to provide that structure in Hebrew, we fail our most vulnerable learners. To deny struggling students access to effective Hebrew reading instruction is not just a pedagogic failure. It is a moral one, because without it, these children are shut out of prayer, Torah, community, and belonging.

So what can we do tomorrow?

We can start by asking harder questions about how Hebrew is actually being taught and assessed in our schools. We can make sure Tier 1 instruction is evidence-based, explicit and systematic. We can use real data – yes, like the kind MaDYK provides – to ensure all students are developing necessary reading skills and to inform interventions that work. We can carve out time for training so teachers understand how children really learn to read Hebrew. And we can keep this conversation alive – at Hitkadmut, in our networks, in every place where Jewish learning matters.

If we wouldn’t tolerate outdated practices and more than 60% of students performing below grade level in English, why do we accept it in Hebrew? If we already know how children learn to read, why would we allow the key to Jewish life to remain locked?

This is not about one program or one vendor. It is about a field waking up to a truth hiding in plain sight: we know what works, we have the tools, and the only question left is whether we have the will.

The Jewish future depends on many things. But one is clear: if we want our children to pray, to learn, to belong – we need to get Hebrew right.

The science is here. The tools are here. The time is now.

If You’ve Seen One Jewish School, You’ve Seen…One Jewish School

Like many Canadians, this December took me from snowy boots to sandy flip-flops as I spent time in Florida. What I encountered there—sometimes in the span of a single day—was a striking reminder of the diversity, complexity, and quiet miracle of Jewish day schools, and what that diversity asks of us as leaders.

Like many Canadians, this December took me from snowy boots to sandy flip-flops as I spent time in Florida. However, what made this trip different was not the weather, but the work: over the course of a few days, I had the opportunity to visit several Jewish day schools in person, sometimes more than one in the same day.

What struck me wasn’t simply the warmth or the hospitality. It was the contrast.

In the span of hours, I moved between schools that differed dramatically in size, educational philosophy, religious culture, physical space, and communal norms. Different buildings. Different dress. Different rhythms of tefillah and learning. Different assumptions about what a “good day school” looks like. And yet, each was deeply and unmistakably Jewish – animated by care for children, commitment to Torah, and responsibility for the future.

I found myself thinking: this is a quiet Jewish miracle.

We often talk about “diversity” in Jewish education, but usually in abstract or ideological terms – denominations, movements, labels. What I witnessed instead was diversity as it actually lives and breathes: in hallways and classrooms, in schedules and staffing models, in the daily choreography of institutions serving real families in real communities.

And this was just one small slice of a much broader tapestry.

In my current work, I’m in relationship with schools across continents and across the Jewish spectrum – large and small, legacy institutions and newer ones, schools wrestling with growth and schools wrestling with sustainability. The contexts vary widely. The challenges don’t always rhyme. And the solutions cannot be imported wholesale from one place to another.

Which is precisely the point.

Strong ideas matter. Research matters. Proven practices matter. But they only become transformative when they are translated and interpreted through local culture, capacity, and readiness. Too often, we confuse replication with leadership, assuming that what worked “there” will work “here,” if only we apply it faithfully enough. In reality, systems fail not because ideas are weak, but because context is ignored.

This is where humility becomes a leadership skill.

Not the performative kind, but the disciplined kind: the willingness to listen before prescribing, to ask better questions before offering frameworks, and to assume that wisdom already exists within the institution, even when outside expertise is invited in.

January is a funny month in schools. Some communities are just regaining momentum after Winter Break; others are easing toward Yeshiva Break. It’s a liminal time—part reset, part continuation. It’s tempting to think of this stretch as lost time, or as a holding pattern before the real work begins.

I’m increasingly convinced the opposite is true.

These in-between moments are where the most important noticing happens. What feels heavy right now? Which conversations are being deferred? What successes deserve more attention than they’re getting? The experiences leaders are having now are often the clearest signals of the changes they’ll want to make later – but only if they pause long enough to name them.

I’ve long believed in taking advantage of all the “new years” available to us: the secular new year, Rosh Hashanah, Pesach, Tu BiShvat. Each invites a different kind of stock-taking. Each creates space not just to set goals, but to revisit assumptions.

So, in that spirit, here are a few quiet “resolutions” I’m carrying into the (secular) year ahead shaped by what I’ve seen recently, and by the privilege of walking alongside many very different schools:

To keep difference visible rather than smoothing it over in the name of efficiency or scale.
To lead with questions before frameworks, and curiosity before conclusions.
To resist one-size-fits-all solutions, even when they are elegant or popular.
To honor the wisdom already present in institutions, not just the expertise brought from outside.
To remember that meaningful change depends as much on readiness and relationships as it does on strategy.

Jewish day schools do not form a single story. They are a library of stories – distinct, contextual, and deeply rooted. The work ahead is not to unify them into sameness, but to help each one become more fully itself, in service of the children and communities it serves.

Standing in Florida classrooms in December – moving from boots to flip-flops, from one world to another – I was reminded how rare, fragile, and hopeful this ecosystem really is.

That feels like the right place to begin the year.

Starting Early Enough to Do It Right

The hardest thing to do – even when you know it – is to start early enough to do it right. As schools head toward Chanukah and Winter Break, a reflection on leadership, time, and why the work we are living now must shape the change we hope to make next.

One of the things I say most often in my leadership coaching is also one of the hardest things to live by:

The first day of school is the beginning of the planning for the next school year.

Intellectually, most Heads of School know this. Practically, almost none of us experience it that way.

Instead, the first day of school is the beginning of…everything. Counseling out a student who clearly isn’t thriving. Offering difficult feedback to a teacher you genuinely care about. Celebrating a small but meaningful success that took far more effort than anyone realizes. Sitting with a family in pain. Feeding Jewish souls. Managing the thousand invisible decisions that make a school function before lunch.

And all of this unfolds inside the same, stubborn reality: time is a zero-sum game. Every hour spent responding to what’s urgent feels like an hour stolen from what’s important. Even when we know better, the hardest thing to do is to start the things early enough to do them right.

In theory, we want to plan. (Man plans.)

In reality, life intervenes. (God laughs.)

What I’m seeing again and again in my coaching work is not a lack of insight or commitment among school leaders. Heads know what they want to change. They know what’s not working. They know where systems are misaligned, where culture needs tending, where capacity is stretched too thin.

What they lack is not vision.

It’s space.

The paradox is this: the experiences you are having now fuel the changes you are craving for the future. The tensions of October. The hard conversations of November. The exhaustion of December. These are not distractions from the work – they are the work. They contain the data, the stories, and the emotional truth that should shape what comes next.

But here’s the rub: you cannot build that bridge later if you don’t begin laying it now.

Starting early doesn’t mean drafting a strategic plan in September or adding another initiative to an already overflowing plate. It means noticing. Capturing. Naming. Asking better questions while the experience is still alive:

What patterns am I seeing right now that I don’t want to normalize?
Which decisions feel reactive—and why?
Where are people asking for clarity that I’m not yet giving?
What am I learning about our systems, our culture, our limits?

This is the quiet work before the work. And it’s the part that gets skipped most often – not because leaders don’t value it, but because it doesn’t scream for attention the way today’s crisis does.

The danger in waiting is not just that we lose momentum. It’s that by the time we’re finally “ready” to plan, the experiences that should have shaped our thinking have already been flattened into memory. We remember the conclusions, but not the texture. The emotion. The human cost. The nuance.

As we head into Chanukah, many schools are cresting toward Winter Break—or, in some communities a bit later, Yeshiva Break. There is a familiar rhythm to this moment: exhaustion mixed with pride, relief paired with a quiet sense of unfinished business. We tell ourselves that the pauses ahead will give us space to think, to plan, to reset.

Sometimes it does. Often, it doesn’t.

Breaks offer rest – which is essential – but they rarely offer clarity on their own. By the time January (or February) arrives, the pace returns quickly, and whatever we hoped to hold onto from the fall can feel strangely distant unless we have already begun to notice it with intention.

So perhaps the invitation for this moment is a modest one. Not to solve, fix, or design – but to begin. To capture what you’re seeing now while it’s still vivid. To write a few notes you won’t yet act on. To name the questions that deserve more time than you currently have. (Perchance to blog?)

Starting early doesn’t mean starting loudly.

It means starting honestly.

The first day of school really is the beginning of the planning for the next school year. Not because we should rush, but because the story is already being written – whether we are paying attention or not.

Chanukah reminds us that light doesn’t come from certainty. It comes from beginning, even when the oil doesn’t yet feel like enough.

Lead With the Story, or the Story Will Lead You

Every school is a story, and someone has to tell it. Why narrative leadership – naming the chapter, locating people in the journey, and shaping meaning – is one of the most powerful tools a Head of School has.

There’s a screaming truth I keep returning to in my leadership coaching: every school is a story, and someone has to tell it.

If leadership doesn’t narrate the story, someone else will—and leaders rarely enjoy the version that fills the silence.

Over the years – as a head of school, a mentor, and now a consultant -I’ve become convinced that one of the least understood and most essential responsibilities of a Head of School (or Executive Director, or CEO) is to serve as the Storyteller-in-Chief. Not as a marketer. Not as a cheerleader. But as the person who names reality honestly, locates people in a shared narrative, and helps the community understand what chapter they’re in and what comes next.

Why stories matter in schools

Neuroscience has confirmed what good educators have always known: stories are how humans make sense of the world. They build trust. They anchor memory. They create connection.

But institutions run on story too…and not always the official one. There’s the story a school tells publicly. There’s the story people tell each other in the hallways and parking lots. And there’s the story people carry privately about their place in the community.

When these stories align, culture feels coherent. When they diverge, culture frays. This is why narrative leadership isn’t “soft work.” It’s culture work. It’s alignment work. It’s leadership work.

Where storytelling actually shows up

In my headships, and now in the schools I coach, I see the same narrative leverage points again and again:

Admissions. Families join the story before they join the school.
Development. Donors give to a future they can see themselves within.
Board governance. Boards drift when members think they’re in different chapters.
Faculty culture. Teachers need to understand how their daily work fits into the broader arc.
Change leadership. Change is always a narrative moment: “What story am I in now, and who am I in it?”

You can have the right strategy, the right curriculum, even the right people.

But if no one understands the story, the work stalls.

What happens when the story goes untold

Here’s the pattern I see most often when I begin coaching a leadership team:

When leaders don’t narrate clearly and consistently…

…people fill in the blanks themselves.

And what fills the vacuum?

Rumor.

Assumption.

Projection.

Shadow stories.

Once those harden, they’re hard to undo.

The antidote isn’t more meetings. It’s intentional, transparent, repeated storytelling.

How leaders become Storytellers-in-Chief

This is not a personality trait. This is a practice. Here are some of the habits I help leaders develop:

1. Name the chapter.

Are we rebuilding? Growing? Stabilizing? Innovating? Surviving?

Say it out loud. People crave orientation.

2. Tell the small stories.

The hallway interaction. The quiet win. The moment a child lights up.

These “small truths” build big trust.

3. Connect the story to values.

If belonging, kindness, curiosity, or rigor matter, tell stories that show them lived.

4. Locate people within the narrative.

“Here’s where you matter.”

“Here’s what you helped make possible.”

Belonging is a narrative act.

5. Repeat yourself. Then repeat yourself again.

A story becomes a culture only when it becomes shared memory.

A Jewish Frame

Moshe is remembered as the humblest of leaders, yet his final act is Sefer Devarim – an extended retelling of the people’s journey, giving them clarity and courage. Our tradition is built on leaders who narrate meaning, re-frame experience, and locate communities in a sacred trajectory.

In Jewish education, narrative isn’t ornamental.

It’s heritage.

Why this matters now

Our schools are navigating complexity: changing demographics, rising expectations, cultural tension, burnout, mission-drift.

You can’t solve all of that overnight.

But you can narrate it—honestly, consistently, and compassionately.

And when leaders narrate well, something remarkable happens. People stop feeling whiplash. Teams realign. Boards settle. Families feel anchored. Teachers reconnect to purpose. Change becomes possible.

Because clarity is calming. And stories create clarity. If leaders don’t tell the story, the story will lead them. If they narrate it well, the community finds its way. This is the work of leadership. And it is work that we can learn, practice and strengthen…together.

Why Humility Outperforms Hubris

The humility we ask of school leaders must also be the humility we model as consultants. When we listen first, we build the kind of trust that makes change possible.

After three months of learning how to work as a consultant, I’ve been struck by how loud the marketplace can be.

There are frameworks and formulas, signature programs and proprietary acronyms — all promising transformation. I understand why; I used to hire them. Schools want clarity, confidence, and a plan. But the longer I do this work, the more convinced I become that the most effective consulting doesn’t start with brilliance. It starts with humility.

That may sound naïve — humility isn’t what gets you noticed. In a space that rewards visibility, it can feel countercultural to lead with quiet. But if we claim to want Brené Brown cultures of vulnerability and trust, why do we so often hire cowboy consultants to save the day? We say we want to build capacity, but too often we just want to buy credibility.

Here’s what I’ve learned from both sides of the table. When schools approach change with humility — when boards and leaders are willing to ask hard questions, to listen deeply, and to hold complexity — they create the conditions for sustainable growth. And when consultants model that same humility — when we listen first, honor context, and resist the urge to prescribe before we understand — we strengthen those same muscles in the institutions we serve. The posture of humility, it turns out, is contagious.

Jim Collins called it “Level 5 Leadership,” the paradoxical blend of fierce professional will and personal humility that turns good organizations into great ones. Jewish tradition calls it anavah. Moshe wasn’t our greatest leader in spite of his humility, but because of it. His clarity came from service, not self.

The best consultants I’ve worked with, inside and outside Jewish education, had strong ideas and structured methods. But they used them to teach us to fish, not to sell us fish. They understood that capacity built through humility lasts longer than credibility bought through charisma.

I’m still learning how to make my voice heard in a noisy world — how to make the case that quiet consulting can be both principled and powerful. But maybe that’s the point. Humility doesn’t demand the spotlight because it already trusts the process. And in a field that teaches others to lead with humility, maybe the truest form of integrity is to model it ourselves.

Many Floors, Still No Ceilings

As we approach Labour Day Weekend, schools that haven’t yet started (including one I know pretty well in my community) are primed to open next week. It’s a strange thing to watch the commercials, scroll past the social media postings, to feel the vibes of back to school—but not actually be going back to school.

For the first time in eight years, I’m not filled with excitement (or butterflies) about opening those doors to welcome parents and children into their classrooms. There’s a wistfulness in that—an ache, even—but also a curiosity about what it means to (re)experience September from a different vantage point.

I’ve toggled before between the micro and the macro. Two headships placed me squarely in the daily rhythms of children, teachers, and parents. My work at Schechter, then Prizmah, shifted me out a level, looking more at systems, networks, and strategy. A third headship allowed me to bring what I had learned from the macro back into the micro. And now, at Scott Goldberg Consulting (SGC), I find myself toggled again—back in the macro, but with the even-more-recent wisdom (and scars) of years in the micro.

Through each role I’ve been blessed to play in this field—head of school, executive director, grad student, DSLTI mentor, and now consultant—I’ve noticed that while my context changes, my north stars (yes, we’re sticking with “north stars.” Thanks, NoTosh!) don’t.

I believe in children’s boundless capacity to learn.

I believe leadership is about transparency, courage, and care.

I believe change is both necessary and possible, but only when it’s rooted in people and process.

Those convictions have evolved over time, but they remain foundational touchstones.

Which brings me back to blogging. For two months I’ve been sitting quietly, wondering: what is this space now? How can I write authentically when my job is not just to lead a single school, but to help others lead theirs? What stories are mine to tell, and which belong to my colleagues and clients?

At the same time, I find myself wrestling with new (old) provocations—questions that echo from my last toggle out of headship into the wider field:

How does a process-oriented person thrive in a product-oriented field?
How does someone who is naturally “quiet” (Susan Cain’s word, not mine) make enough noise to be heard in a crowded marketplace?
How do you grow new business without becoming a “look-at-me” person?

I don’t have tidy answers. Maybe (likely) this blog is where I’ll explore them. Maybe (probably) this is where I’ll test ideas about leadership, strategy, and change—always with an eye toward the Jewish future, always grounded in the north stars that have guided me since the beginning.

And so here I am, in September, watching schools open their doors from a different vantage point. I feel the tug of the micro—the hum of classrooms, the smell of new markers, the nervous energy of the first day—but I know my work now lives more in the macro. I’m toggling again, as I always have, between leading in one place and serving across many.

Through every toggle—SSDS-LV, MJGDS, Schechter, Prizmah, OJCS, and now SGC—the truth has been the same: the particulars evolve, but the purpose does not. My work has always been about helping schools and leaders discover what is most true for them, and to grow into their best selves on behalf of the children they serve.

Which is why I’ve long said—and still believe—that there is a floor, but no ceiling. I’ve stood on many floors, and now I get to visit even more. But the ceiling? When it comes to children, leaders, schools, organizations, and communities, there simply is none.

So call this a relaunch, a reset, or simply a return. The questions may shift, the vantage point may change, but the why endures: to serve Jewish children, through Jewish schools, for the Jewish future.

Many floors. Still no ceilings.

Let’s go.

Looking Backwards to Look Forward #4: Leadership

When people think about leadership in schools, they often imagine principals making announcements, board chairs running meetings, or student council presidents handing out spirit day schedules. And sure, those things happen. But if there’s one thing the last eight years at OJCS have taught me, it’s that leadership isn’t about who holds the microphone. It’s about who makes space for others to lead.

At OJCS, leadership is more than a title—it’s a culture. A culture that runs through students, teachers, administrators, and our governance structures. A culture shaped by trust, transparency, empowerment, and purpose.

This post, the fourth in our “Looking Backwards to Look Forward” series, traces the arc of how leadership has evolved and expanded at OJCS—not from the top down, but from the inside out.

Student Leadership: “We Own Our Own Learning” in Action

Our North Stars say it plainly: “We own our own learning.” That guiding belief is foundational not just to how we teach but to how we raise leaders.

We began by redefining what student government could look like. Our Junior Knesset (Grades 3-5) and Senior Knesset (Grades 6-8) were restructured to provide students with meaningful roles in shaping school life—from Jewish Life to Communications to Environment. This wasn’t just about letting students vote on Dress Down Days. It was about giving them voice and responsibility.

And student leadership didn’t stop at Knesset. We’ve seen remarkable growth in student-led clubs: Bracelet Making Club, Math Club, Game Design Club, and more. These initiatives have emerged not because an adult created space, but because students claimed it.

You can see this leadership captured in real-time on our student blogfolios. In a 2022 Grade 6 post titled “Leading the Way with Knesset”, one student reflected:

“Being in Knesset is more than saying announcements. It’s showing others what our school values.”

That’s the kind of ownership we’re after—not just of learning, but of identity and responsibility.

And, of course, the hoped-for transition to Student-Led Conferences (with Goal-Setting already in place) will, perhaps, be the clearest pedagogical expression of this ethos. When students articulate their own growth, name their goals, and share their work with families, they’re not just learning leadership. They’re living it.

Faculty Leadership: Treating Teachers Like Learners

From the start, we committed to a simple principle:

If we believe students learn best when they have voice, choice, and agency—why wouldn’t the same be true for our teachers?

This principle guided our transformation of professional learning at OJCS. It’s why we moved to teacher-led evaluations, why we created the APReP process (Annual Performance Review Process), and why we implemented Professional Growth Projects (PGPs).

Instead of imposing top-down checklists, we asked teachers to reflect, dream, and define what growth would look like for them. As I wrote in How We Grow Our Teachers:

“Our teachers are learners, too. If we are asking them to personalize learning for students, shouldn’t we model the same for them?”

This commitment to faculty empowerment hasn’t just strengthened morale—it’s elevated our teaching. Teachers now co-lead PD, mentor colleagues, and regularly share practice through classroom blogs and peer observations. It has been among the most transformative leadership decisions we’ve made.

Middle Leadership: Tzimtzum and the Art of Making Space

In Jewish mysticism, tzimtzum refers to God’s act of self-contraction to make space for creation. I’ve often borrowed that idea as a leadership model—reframing headship not as “filling the room,” but as creating the room in the first place.

That’s been our approach to middle leadership at OJCS.

Rather than centralizing decision-making in the admin suite, we’ve empowered classroom teachers, coordinators, and administrators from all places on the org chart to lead—from curricular design to scheduling, communication, and culture-building. Whether it’s planning PD, leading committee work, or piloting new initiatives, our middle leaders are central to how the school runs.

And the truth is: when you lead through tzimtzum, you don’t disappear—you multiply. You build a culture where everyone sees themselves as part of the mission.

A few weeks ago, our board chair suggested making sure Ms. Gordon had opportunities to “hold the microphone” during assemblies, as a way of signaling transition. We both laughed. Ms. Gordon has been holding the microphone for years—not because it was handed to her, but because she helped build the stage. That’s what leadership looks like here.

Governance: Leading with Clarity and Care

One of the quieter success stories of my tenure has been the strength of our governance. I inherited a model with built-in advantages: I already knew three of the four board chairs I would eventually work with—not personally, but as community leaders with vision, integrity, and purpose. Each brought a different kind of leadership, and together they modeled what shared responsibility really means.

Governance at OJCS has never been performative. It’s been strategic, transparent, and deeply values-aligned.

Together, we’ve launched multiple strategic planning processes, created structures for board education, improved committee functioning, and clarified roles and responsibilities. Our board hasn’t just supported our leadership—they’ve modeled it. That’s why our faculty, families, and students all feel empowered to lead.

Conclusion: A Culture of Leadership

Leadership at OJCS doesn’t live in a title or a microphone. It lives in the daily decisions to make space—for students to blog, for teachers to grow, for staff to step forward, for lay leaders to partner meaningfully.

It’s also deeply tied to our broader vision for change.

Throughout my time at OJCS, I have tried to follow a leadership arc that begins with naming a challenge, gathering stakeholders, prototyping solutions, iterating with feedback, implementing with support, and creating a new normal. That’s how we approached personalized learning. That’s how we approached French. That’s how we revised homework. That’s how we clarified the “J” in “OJCS”. And that’s how we approached leadership.

As I look ahead to our final two posts—on North Stars and Jewish Life—I’m struck by how much of what we’ve accomplished at OJCS isn’t about any one person. It’s about the culture we’ve built. A culture where leadership is shared. Growth is expected. And everyone has the chance to step forward.

Leadership Begins With You

OK, so I guess technically “Leadership” begins with “L”, but a pithy blog post title that does not make…

I have been blessed to have two leadership experiences juxtaposed across two weeks that drive home the idea that leadership is personal – and that leadership development is personalised. I am going to spend just a bit of space sketching out what those two experiences were and then see if I can meaningfully connect the dots.

Two weeks ago, we had our November PD (Professional Development, and although we prefer to use “Professional Growth”, “PG” is not the phrase people know) Day at the Ottawa Jewish Community School and we decided that in terms of both content and pedagogy, we wanted to lean into personalised learning. And that is how we wound up with…

A phrase I am fond of saying is that “we should at least treat our teachers as well as we treat our students,” which is my way of saying that oftentimes what is good pedagogy and practise for teachers teaching is also good for teachers learning. If we “own our learning” at OJCS [North Star alert!] than our teachers should have an opportunity to own their professional growth and, thus, “A Day of You” was born. Now it was not open-ended – if you look at the fine print you’ll see “Based on Teacher-Led Evaluation Learning Targets”. That is because although they had lots of choices, we did want to ensure that the day (like each and every other day) moves them and us closer to the OJCS Learning Target. [What is this “OJCS Learning Target” you speak of? Ah, yes. Click here for an important refresher.]

Here is what teachers were asked to do…

And what tasks did they have to choose from?

You might need to zoom in if you are interested in the details, but you can see that we provided teachers with lots of choices to grow themselves in each of the domains of our Learning Target. You also can see at the bottom that in addition to working on their own or in groups, the Admin (with support of a few of our “Leads”) offered direct coaching as well. Like a good old fashioned Choose Your Own Adventure book (you young folk can follow the link if you don’t catch the reference), our teachers were able to create a Choose Your Own Professional Growth Adventure by filling out…

The mood and the energy in the building was fantastic and we are already thinking about our February PD Day! More to say on this down below…

You either walk inside your story and own it or you
stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.

Brené Brown

This week, I was in Los Angeles for the Spring Retreat of Cohort 12 of the Day School Leadership Training Institute (DSLTI) for whom I serve as one of the Mentors. [I have written previously about this work, including how it contributes to my work as a head of school.] The title of the Retreat was “The Leader in Me” and it is not my place to share here the details of the readings and the learning that served as the anchor for the exchanges and conversations that anchored our time together. What I am capable of sharing, was that it was a rare opportunity for both the mentors and the mentees to take a deep dive inward as a means to staking out the next steps and stages of our individual (personal) leadership journeys. We studied text, we analyzed personality inventories and explored leadership theories. We journaled and we shared and we journaled and we shared some more. We made ourselves vulnerable and received caring feedback.

As is true with my rabbinical school journey, I carry a certain amount of guilt about the time I spend in DSLTI because I tend to believe that time is a zero-sum game – each minute not spent at school is a minute missed. But the truth is that these experiences make – I genuinely believe – me a better leader, which is to the good of our school, our teachers and, ultimately, our students. And the whole point of this retreat was to underline that idea – that when leaders don’t take the time to nourish and think and grow themselves, that their organizations run the risk of growing stale and declining. When the oxygen drops, we put our masks on first and then assist others…

What’s the connective tissue? Well. The last thing we did at our DSLTI Retreat was to create our own leadership quotes to summarize what we believe to be true about leadership. Mine (and I wish I could share them all!) contains some words that readers of my blog will surely recognize, but I think in some ways connects the dots from these two leadership experiences:

The goal of leadership is to ensure that there is an inspirational floor and an aspirational ceiling for each and every person in the organization – including you.

Jon Mitzmacher

Weeks like these last two are reminders that I have to keep learning and growing in order to achieve my ultimate leadership goal, which is to unleash the talent and passion of each student, teacher and administrator at OJCS. If we can do that, then we will hit those Learning Targets and reach those North Stars. It is a journey that I am blessed to walk, along with fellow travellers, both within my school and across the globe. It is a journey with both a clear destination and, yet, no endpoint. It is a journey whose momentum can only be sustained through pauses.

And with these pauses behind me and two action-packed weeks left before Winter Break, it is time to hit “play”…

The Rare Blessing of Stable Leadership in a Jewish Day School

I have had more than my share of leadership positions in Jewish Education over the years. And that is pretty par for the course. Some of that is to due to changing social norms about “careers” and it is the rare person in almost any field who has the same position or works for the same company from entry to retirement. Some of that is due to the more unique pressures of educational leadership and the average lengths of tenure for independent school leaders continue to be alarmingly low (like less than four years) and, post-COVID, trending even lower. Some of that is due to the special circumstances of Jewish day school leadership which suffers from its own kind of “grass is greener” phenomenon. [I wrote a lot about this during my time in charge of Schechter.] And, finally, of course, there are the individual idiosyncratic decisions that play their part as well.

I say all of this to provide context to just how rare a moment we are experiencing here at the Ottawa Jewish Community School. As I wrote about a couple of years ago, I am now in the second year of a (second) contract that extends for an additional three years – putting my minimum tenure as Head of OJCS at nine years. That, by itself, is pretty rare. But the more local folk know that our school’s success does not hinge on my leadership, and certainly not my leadership alone. Part of our success relies on the partnership I share with Keren Gordon.

When I came to OJCS, I was not the only person starting a new leadership position. Ms. Gordon was elevated from her Special Needs Coordinator role (a role in which she excelled) and was named “Vice Principal” with a contract that matched mine in length. We were constructed to be a team, match-made with the hope of complementary skills and personalities, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted how quickly our partnership would bear fruit and how deeply it is has evolved over time. From our students to our teachers; from our parents to our board – to anyone who has spent meaningful time working for or with our school – I genuinely believe it is clear how important this leadership partnership has been in helping getting our school from where it was to where it is. But where is it going?

I imagine a question has occured to you. If I am now working through a second contract that will end at a tenure of nine years, what about Ms. Gordon? If her contract was originally tethered to mine, what now? Well. I am very pleased to let our wider community know what our Board and our Faculty have now known for a few weeks. That after a healthy negotiation, we have come to terms on that second contract. And there are two features of that contract that I want to name…

The first is probably obvious at this point, but worth saying out loud. Ms. Gordon’s new contract will again match mine so that we are guaranteed at least nine years of partnership guiding the school. I cannot underline with thicker ink how unusual that is and how much it will contribute to our school’s current and future success. In a world with less and less stability, our school is blessed with more and more. It matters. Nine years literally represents the journey from SK to Grade 8, so for the families who began when we did (before we relaunched JK), Ms. Gordon and I will wind up being the only leaders they will ever know. Our knowledge of our students, our teachers, our families and our community grows each year along the way – so each year our ability to guide our school closer to its North Stars grows as well. So that’s the first feature – the length of time. But there is a second…

The job of being a “head of school” is ideally split between the “CEO-like” activities that one might describe as “outward-facing” (at least so far as the students and teachers might experience it) and the “principal” activities that one might describe as “inward-facing”. A head of school has to embody all the work of running a nonprofit while serving as instructional leader…aspirational at best, but some situations and some people do function more evenly between the two spheres. It has become increasingly clear that here, at least during this window, I have had to occupy a bit more “CEO space” than “principal space”. But luckily, Ms. Gordon has been here, and over the last five years based on the quality of her work and the relationships she has nurtured, she has begun to occupy more and more of that space. And that is why, with great pleasure, I am happy to share that Keren Gordon is no longer the Vice Principal of OJCS; Keren Gordon is our Principal. (Cue the applause!)

Although this well-earned honor doesn’t change all that much on the ground, it is still worthy of sharing with our community and of celebration. Ms. Gordon is my right hand and partner in all the work we have done, are doing and will be doing over the next three and a half years (and who knows from there!). Together we will have been blessed to co-author a few chapters in the narrative of this school’s story – and if that story is a story of “success”, then one of its main characters will surely be “stability”.

The Trauma-Aware Jewish Day School

Now that I have had eighteen hours of rabbinical school under my belt, I find myself becoming a bit self-conscious whenever I make a connection between something I am learning in school and the work we do here at OJCS each and every day. I am so barely into the first baby steps towards becoming a rabbi that it almost feels chutzpahdik to make mention of it at all. (At my current rate of taking classes, I can definitely pencil in my ordination for the Spring of 2037.) However, I am becoming a rabbi for a reason, and as I explained when I first shared this news, it was both likely and desirable that it lend a new perspective on my work.

One of the books for the current course I am taking is Wounds into Wisdom by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone. It is a terrific book that deals with the phenomenon of “collective trauma” and its impact on future generations. Without doing any of her work justice, it perhaps could be best understood in a Jewish context by recognizing that the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors may very well suffer – consciously or subconsciously – the effects of trauma, even if they did not experience the original trauma. In the context of my course, where all my classmates are either already or will likely be serving in a pulpit or chaplaincy, or otherwise engaged in some form of pastoral counseling, the application is a bit more obvious. You will inevitably have congregants who suffer from trauma and, thus, let’s spend some time recognizing what trauma looks like and how one might think about managing/addressing/navigating it.

For me, the dots connected differently, but no less powerfully.

We are now into our second year of pandemic schooling. “Collective trauma” is not an abstract idea that only applies to the victims of genocides and terror attacks, it is literally our lives. For over a year, our students, parents, teachers and community have been – and continue to – live in and with trauma. I think this is something we know intuitively, but if you want a little evidence, let me share with you a chart I shared with our Educational Leadership Team this week:

Classic Trauma Reactions

Engagement dissociation ←→ vigilance

Control passive ←→ urgent

Empowerment victimized ←→ hyper-resilient

Emotion withdrawn ←→ hyper-arousal

Patterning amnesia ←→ recall & repeat

Does this not sound like, I don’t know, everyone you know right now (including yourself)?

I see these responses all around me, all the time. I see it in the normally vivacious student who is unusually withdrawn. I see it in the normally laid back parent who has grown helicopter wings. I see it in the normally contained teacher for whom everything is now on fire. I see all the reverses as well. I see different reactions from different people at different times in the face of different circumstances. I see it in the parking lot and I see it in emails and I see it on social media. And I most definitely see it in myself.

There are techniques and methods from the worlds of psychology, counseling and pastoral care that have proven to have some success in moving individual people through trauma. When it comes to collective trauma there is much less to fall back on. (When it comes to inherited collective trauma, even less than that, thus Firestone’s book.) When it comes to COVID-based trauma…

When I think about all those way-too-long “Weekly Update” emails I sent last spring to our parents and each blog post I have written as part of “The Coronavirus Diaries” series, I can see that I keep coming back to one saving gracenote – empathy. That’s what I mean when I say that we have to give each other space to make mistakes. It is what I mean when I encourage and express gratitude for patience and flexibility. Empathy. Empathy for the collective trauma of pandemic living doesn’t necessarily change outcomes, nor does it serve as an excuse. It doesn’t mean that we necessarily do anything differently. But it does help.

If in a Jewish context we can employ empathy by keeping the notion of b’tzelem elohim – the idea that each and every one of us is made in the image of God, that we each share a spark of the divine – front of mind, perhaps we can find the strength to take a breath and assume the best of each other.

At least we can try…