March 2025 l Hillel Day School of Detroit + Hebrew at the Center
Director’s Message: Enabling Students to Speak Hebrew: Reaping the Benefits of High-Quality Professional Development
Dr. David Farbman, Project Director, The DEEP Consortium
At the Prizmah conference in early February, the DEEP Consortium was pleased to launch our Concierge Desk, a free consultation service for day school leaders around issues related to professional learning. We created the Concierge Desk because we recognize how tricky it can be for schools to implement high-quality professional development (HQPD) and, in turn, we expect that providing substantive guidance from our concierge consultants will help facilitate that implementation. You can get started by visiting our website and filling out the intake questionnaire.
The story in this issue told by educators at the Hillel Day School of Detroit demonstrates another instance of how HQPD — in this case, aimed at strengthening Hebrew instruction through their partnership with Hebrew at the Center — does demand significant time and effort. Yet, the profiled stakeholders also make clear that it is eminently possible to achieve success when that effort is managed through conscientious planning and putting proven systems in place.
This is the kind of work I imagined — and that I point out is the exception rather than the norm — in the piece I just published in eJewish Philanthropy, Investing in Jewish Educators: The paradigm Shift Needed to Achieve Excellence. For day schools to achieve educational excellence, educators, parents and donors must come to understand that HQPD is not a cost, but an investment. Hillel Day School educators proudly made this investment and are reaping the rewards.
Living Up to Our Vision for Effective Hebrew Instruction
Dr. Darin Katz, Head of School, Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit
Hillel Day School is a preschool (18 months) to eighth grade community day school. We serve more than 600 students and boast more than 1,700 alumni to date. Founded in 1958, the school welcomes students from all Jewish affiliations.
Hebrew is central to our curriculum because it is the language of the Jewish people. It provides a connection to Judaism, to Jewish prayer, to the Tanakh, and, importantly, to the land of Israel.
In 2019, we contracted with Middlebury College staff to conduct a Hebrew language audit to determine what aspects of our Hebrew program were working successfully and where we might improve. The audit report, which was completed in 2020, included several recommendations, including to:
- Start formal Hebrew language instruction in pre-K rather than in kindergarten
- Rely less on teaching to a particular curriculum
- Increase focus on speaking Hebrew rather than reading or writing.
When we received the audit results, we began to search for a partner organization to help us implement some of the recommendations. I decided to explore a partnership with Hebrew at the Center. Hebrew at the Center has been around for quite a while and has built a reputation for guiding schools through improvements in Hebrew language and teaching. Schools often look to outside consultants and organizations to help guide the change management process. We chose Hebrew at the Center as they are one of the leading experts in the field.
Thanks to contributions from the William Davidson Foundation and a private donor, we were able to secure the funds needed to launch a three-year partnership with Hebrew at the Center starting in the 2021-2022 school year.
As head of school, I needed to ensure that the Hebrew program would continue to reflect our school’s mission and vision, even as we sought to change our approach to teaching Hebrew. While I left execution of the project to the academic leaders, I monitored progress and how the project was working and also met regularly with Hebrew at the Center staff. We tracked this through yearly student assessments (AVANT testing), parent surveys, and teacher feedback. In our most recent parent satisfaction survey (December 2023), parents provided exceptionally high ratings for Hebrew language instruction at all levels, from early childhood through middle school.
As the new approach rolled out, we anticipated that one major challenge would be teacher resistance to change and adapting to a new way of teaching and learning because veteran teachers, the majority of whom are native Hebrew speakers, might believe that their instructional approach would not need any modification, confusing experience with expertise. And because we had not been using any external measures of student learning in Hebrew, teachers had no means with which to assess their instructional effectiveness.
To preemptively address teachers’ concerns, we engaged extensively in meaningful conversations with teachers, trying to understand their thinking. Among other things, they shared that they did not want to eliminate the iTaLAM curriculum that they had already invested time and effort to train in and implement. With these concerns front and center, we could then determine how to implement change processes. We relied heavily on Hebrew at the Center’s expert direction and guidance, as they had significant experience in helping similarly reluctant faculty to change their mindset.
We managed to find time for teachers to engage in professional development by allocating time during our weekly faculty professional development sessions (Wednesday afternoons). When teachers attended professional development sessions, we arranged for substitute teacher coverage. Professional development included live visits by Hebrew at the Center or webinars. These sessions were led by the Hebrew at the Center experts or our internal Hebrew coordinators. (See timeline of activities and topics here.)
My brief bits of advice to others: Change takes time and small wins matter. Do not go too fast: Go slowly with implementing a new approach or curriculum to give teachers time to acclimate. Importantly, don’t allow what you have always done to serve as a barrier to what is possible. Finally, make sure to rely on your school’s academic leaders to lead the way on how to appropriately effect the shift to a data-informed, mission-driven Hebrew program and from a textbook-centered curriculum to a student-centered approach, more communicative approach to language instruction.
Unpacking the Value of Our Partnership
Amira Soleimani, Director of Judaic Studies, Curriculum and Instruction
As we considered how to integrate the changes recommended by the Middlebury audit of our Hebrew program, we were concerned that we were facing an overhaul. Through our partnership with Hebrew at the Center, we learned that we did not need to completely discard our existing Hebrew program. Instead, the process focused on refining and adapting our instructional approach to better support student learning. This mindset—modifying and massaging rather than starting from scratch—made the process far less intimidating and more achievable. We were fortunate that we were able to lean on the expertise of Hebrew at the Center whose deep knowledge of second-language acquisition and shared cultural connection with native-born Israeli Hebrew teachers allowed for open, direct communication and collaborative problem-solving.
This partnership revolved around a school-wide change process that operated on multiple levels of our professional ecosystem. That is, school leaders held themselves equally accountable for the change that we were asking our Hebrew faculty to implement. For example, when we asked our teachers to participate in a Zoom professional development session or attend a retreat in Detroit, Rabbi David Fain (Rav Beit HaSefer) and I also joined as active learners. Engaging in the learning together fostered a shared language and created a collective sense of purpose among all participants.
To be sure, this deep investment in professional growth required sacrifices that rippled throughout the school. For instance, when our Hebrew faculty participated in training, our general studies team generously stepped in to support classroom instruction. The flexibility and collaboration of the whole faculty were essential in enabling our school to prioritize the professional development activities of our Hebrew educators.
Even as we have seen much success so far in strengthening our Hebrew instruction and promoting more proficiency in the Hebrew language, one of the biggest challenges remains the dynamic and ongoing nature of instructional improvement. While our formal partnership with Hebrew at the Center has concluded, we continue to rely on their support and guidance as we refine and evolve our program. Each year, we welcome new students with unique strengths and challenges, which means our curriculum map remains a living document. This constant reflection and adjustment demand significant effort but also underscore our commitment to continuous improvement and the program’s long-term success.
Curriculum Mapping: A View from the Classroom
Amalia Poris, K-4 Hebrew Coordinator and Second Grade Teacher, Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit
When the administration first introduced the initiative to strengthen our Hebrew program, teachers understandably expressed some reluctance about implementing new methods. For years, the school has used iTaLAM, a Hebrew language and Jewish heritage curriculum. Teachers were afraid that a new paradigm (i.e., the Proficiency Approach) to teaching Hebrew would mean that we would throw everything out and that the entire existing curriculum would need to be redone from scratch (view timeline here) These fears quickly dissipated when we began working with Hebrew at the Center because they explained how we could improve Hebrew proficiency by delivering our current curriculum more productively.
A key step in the process of improving our teaching came as Hebrew at the Center helped us implement “curriculum mapping,” which involved laying out how the iTaLAM units fit across the entire school year on a very granular level. We determined first the content knowledge and communicative goals and objectives per unit and the vocabulary and grammatical concepts we wanted students to know and use, and also as defined the assessments and the activities for each unit. We then mapped this content to days (and even hours) across the year for grades K-4, which had Hebrew instruction for 45 minutes (on average) daily.
The mapping allowed us to intentionally address all necessary linguistic, content, and communicative targets without feeling rushed or overwhelmed. We also knew when we would administer the summative unit assessments and how they would look, which helped inform what we need to work on in every lesson. I met with teachers regularly to gather feedback and assess how instruction and students performance is going vis a vis the objectives we laid out in the mapping. During these meetings, we looked at student outcomes, pacing concerns, and any areas where adjustments might be needed.
Once we implemented realistic yearly mapping and pacing schedules that are based on our school’s hours of instruction, we were able to see much more clearly how we could refine and improve our instruction within that structure. We realized that while the curriculum map is flexible, it also provides a solid framework to stay on track and make informed teaching decisions. While before Hebrew instruction was guided by the textbook and individual teacher decisions, teachers now began to appreciate how mapping allowed them to break down the curriculum into manageable units. Further, operating within a curriculum map ensures that students are learning new knowledge and expanding their skills as the year progresses and from year to year, regardless of the specific instructor.
The key to all this successful change is flexibility. Being tuned in and listening to classroom teachers is the key to everything. We also need to ask how we can fine-tune what we are doing to the reality of our teachers and students. In implementing the Avant standardized Hebrew assessment test (including summative performance-based assessments per unit) after working with the mapping, we could see how both third and fourth grades showed progress overall, as well as which students needed additional support to meet the stated learning targets.
This year, the fourth year of our partnership, we are going back to focusing on classroom instruction. With curriculum maps in place, we are revisiting how to plan at the lesson level, using the lesson plan template provided by Hebrew at the Center. Our Hebrew teachers are aiming to provide effective Hebrew language instruction in the classroom using all the knowledge, tools, and skills gained over the past three years. Meanwhile, as the instructional leader, I am working with Rabbi Fain on honing my classroom observation skills, including using various protocols and rubrics that synthesize principles of effective instruction and the principles of the communicative approach to language teaching. My goal is to provide teachers with actionable feedback on various elements of their Hebrew instruction, while continually keeping students at the center of what we do and how we can engage our students to speak more Hebrew.
Developing a Common Language Around Language Instruction
Yifat Golan, Hebrew Coordinator for the Middle School, Grades 5–8
In grades 5–8 we have used the B’shvil Ha-Ivrit (formerly NETA) Hebrew language program as well as other curriculum materials, but we were not seeing students performing to the level we hoped. Indeed, school parents felt that the students were not speaking enough Hebrew and did not feel comfortable using the spoken language.
During the past few years, with the help of Hebrew at the Center, this deficiency in outcomes has begun to change, as we implemented the Hebrew language proficiency approach in our classes. This change starts with teachers thinking differently about how to bring more authentic Hebrew usage to the students. While we continue to use our existing curriculum, we have added more context to bring Hebrew to real daily life. For example, I expanded the curriculum to complement the unit, ”b’te’yavon” בתיאבון that relates to food, by adding words related to the kitchen including eating utensils and cooking. Students have made Hebrew cooking videos and have also participated in a master chef competition conducted entirely in Hebrew.
Of course, we did not make these kinds of modifications without significant support. Last year, Dr. Esty Gross from Hebrew at the Center came to our school twice for two days each time and we also Zoomed with her once a week to plan and reflect on how to enrich students’ spoken Hebrew and accurately assess their progress. We considered together what we had been doing for years, and, within the context of the fresh perspective that Esty brought, we were able to identify ways to differentiate instruction: objectives, content, materials, and outcomes of the same thematic unit for students in different proficiency groups, for example. And we made these modifications in our instruction within the broader context of having examined everything we were teaching, counting days and dates and determining how to line up the curriculum to the time we had with our students. This mapping ensured that teachers were held accountable so when students advanced to a new grade level, they were appropriately prepared and there were no gaps or duplication of effort.
Perhaps, most importantly, we are now using a common language in how to analyze instructional practice and address how we can strengthen it. The whole Ivrit team uses the same terms, concepts, and methods to support students in their learning. This was one of the key goals for this initiative. Ultimately, I feel that the teacher training provided by Hebrew at the Center is similar to what I had received for my M.A. degree at Middlebury College.
Assessing the Impact of Our Partnership
Rabbi David Fain, Rav Beit HaSefer, Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit
Our partnership with Hebrew at the Center entailed many aspects and was truly a team endeavor that required significant time and effort. We revisited our Hebrew mission and vision, rewrote the scope and sequence for Hebrew across the school from early childhood, and trained teachers in the communicative approach and critical pedagogy through onsite PD days, webinars, one-on-one coaching sessions with teachers, and mentoring sessions for the Hebrew leaders. Some of the key topics we learned about were the ACTFL Proficiency Scale, how to set lesson objectives in the language classroom, material selection, basic strategies for differentiated instruction, an effective lesson structure, the integration of the three Modes of Communication, and much more. Perhaps the most daunting challenge was helping teachers understand and embrace this new endeavor, and doing so required constant communication between and among teachers and administrators.
Ultimately, the effort has been worth it, and I see improvement in many areas. Our teachers are now more skilled, and they understand what it means to be a teacher of Hebrew and to use the best pedagogical practices in the classroom, practices adapted from general education to the context of Hebrew instruction. For instance, making input comprehensible to all learners through TPR, movement, songs, visuals, slower speech, modeling, scaffolding, and advanced organizers have been instrumental, as has providing all students with varied and frequent opportunities for meaningful structured and spontaneous output through student-to-student interactions.
As a result, teachers have made meaningful progress in helping students speak more Hebrew in class in addition to focusing on reading and writing. Among colleagues, there is conversation at a higher and more sophisticated level about what student learning looks like. We now have benchmarks, and we know more precisely the goal of each classroom, whether it’s to learn Hebrew words related to a Jewish holiday or to describe the weather.
In concrete terms, we have seen our students’ achievement on the nationwide Avant standardized Hebrew assessment test – which measures Hebrew reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills – increase. In fact, administering the test itself is an improvement because it has enabled us to track progress and helps us pinpoint where instruction may need to grow even stronger.
Just walking into classrooms, I see that students are more engaged in their Hebrew learning and have a more positive feeling for the language. Meanwhile, our graduates have continued to study Hebrew in high school and beyond, becoming more open and engaged with the Hebrew language. And we are feeling more confident that we are meeting our goal to help students become fluent speakers of Hebrew so that they can be connected to Eretz Yisrael and Jews around the world.
Collaboration Is Key to Success
Rabbi Andrew Ergas, EdD, Chief Executive Officer, Hebrew at the Center
Dr. Esty Gross, Chief of Staff and Director of Education, Hebrew at the Center
We came to Hillel Day School with eyes wide open. The school leadership approached Hebrew at the Center hoping we could support their efforts to transform their Hebrew language instruction and to do so on the foundation of what they already had in place. From parent surveys, they had identified that their student outcomes were not meeting expectations. The school leadership hired a Hebrew consultant to assess their situation. The report indicated that structured and intentional pedagogic training would provide their Hebrew teachers with the knowledge and skills to make significant improvements to instruction. When school leadership approached us to work with them, we helped put together an ambitious multi-year plan that would bring our expertise to the school with the goal of embedding that knowledge within the faculty and the instructional leadership. The school leadership took our proposal to a school supporter who cared about Hebrew language learning, and he agreed to fund a portion of the work, with the balance then secured through a deeply committed institutional funder.
While both the school leadership and Hebrew at the Center had a well-planned strategy for change, we know from legendary management consultant Peter Drucker that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” In order to facilitate a shift in how Hebrew language instruction took place within the school, we needed to dedicate time to clarifying the educational mission related to Hebrew learning, to build relationships with teachers and administrators, and to introduce a school-wide standardized assessment system that empowers teachers to make data-informed decisions, rooted in what they can identify as forward progress and areas of growth.
To add to the challenge, we launched this initiative at the same time that the school and the field were navigating through the Covid pandemic, and so we needed to find new ways to implement professional learning sessions, school visits, and the like. During this four-year period of focused work, we also had to manage through staff changes both at the classroom level and with the pedagogic team at Hebrew at the Center, potentially undercutting continuity of service provision. We knew, too, that onboarding new staff would entail revisiting the goals of training and allocating sufficient time to ensure clear communication between school and Hebrew department leadership and Hebrew at the Center’s educational consultant. Despite these challenges, we largely met the goals and objectives laid out in the initial plan. We were, for example, able to celebrate that seven students in the school attained the Global Seal of Biliteracy in Hebrew in the project’s final year, an excellent indicator of significant progress.
Our experience suggests that schools that seek transformative improvements in instruction and student outcomes elevate both Hebrew language instruction and professional development. To that end, they have invested significant time and resources in the kind of professional development that can actually have an impact on instructional practice. Hillel Day School made those commitments, with support from the lead professionals, the instructional leaders, and the classroom teachers, along with support from their lay leadership and funders. Success required all of these stakeholders working together.
And this commitment showed meaningful results. The annual parent satisfaction survey, which had consistently expressed concern about Hebrew language learning and was a main impetus to seeking change in the first place, now showed parents not mentioning Hebrew learning at all – and most recently, one that was noted a number of times as an area of real success and pride on the part of students and teachers. By embedding this expertise within a restructured educational leadership and within the faculty, the school now has a culture that will continue to advance and professionalize how their teachers approach their work.
Hebrew at the Center Resources
- קווים מנחים בהוראה מיטבית של עברית כשפה נוספת Guiding Principles for Effective and Equitable Hebrew Instruction
- A Questionnaire for Planning Professional Learning for the Hebrew Department
- A Lesson Plan Template
- A webinar recording: Making Sacred Hebrew Texts Accessible to All Learners – B’Ivrit!
We Want to Hear From You
We hope you find The DEEP Dive useful and meaningful. We welcome your feedback about how we might build upon this foray into professional learning for future issues! Email me at [email protected].
