Spring 2026 l The Shefa Center, Hidden Sparks, Gateways, REACH-Chicago, and Prizmah
Director’s Message: The Power of Collaboration in Its Many Dimensions
Dr. David Farbman, Director, The DEEP Consortium
This issue of The DEEP Dive breaks from our usual spotlight on school-partner initiatives to feature a groundbreaking event: the first professional learning gathering of its kind in the Jewish day school world.
The Together We Thrive Inaugural Conference, hosted at The Shefa School in March, emerged from a vital question: How do we better empower educators supporting diverse learners? The answer, driven by five DEEP Consortium members, was clear: radical collaboration. By fostering communication across schools, the conference proved that we reach every learner more effectively when we work together.
Through the following five pieces, you’ll discover how this vision came to life and how its spirit of partnership is expanding the movement for inclusive, excellent Jewish education.
Building a Field Together: Professional Learning at the Together We Thrive Conference
Rebecca Ritter, Shefa; Tamar Appel, Hidden Sparks; Brian Coonley and Sharon Goldstein, Gateways; Debra Drang, Prizmah; and Tamar Shames, REACH
On March 9 and 10, 2026, 140 educators and school leaders gathered at The Shefa School in New York, where the Shefa Center convened and hosted Together We Thrive, a national conference focused on strengthening how Jewish day schools can, and do, support diverse learners. The conference was planned collaboratively by five DEEP Consortium member organizations – Prizmah, Hidden Sparks, The Shefa Center, Gateways, and REACH – each of which works in different ways to help schools develop their capacity to support all students.
The results of two days of learning alongside colleagues from Jewish day schools across North America were quite inspiring. “This conference, in short, has launched a field,” expressed one participant. Another reflected that one of the most powerful takeaways was simply realizing “that we are not alone and that we are all facing similar challenges, wins, and everything in between.”
The idea for the conference first emerged during a conversation at a DEEP Consortium convening, where leaders from our five organizations were reflecting on the shared challenges schools face in supporting students with diverse learning needs. Again and again, the conversation returned to the same question: what might happen if we brought the educators doing this work together in one space?
From that moment, a planning team representing all five organizations began meeting monthly on Zoom for nearly ten months. Those meetings were themselves a kind of professional learning community – an opportunity to share perspectives from across the field, think together about what schools most need, and design an experience that would help practitioners strengthen their work while building relationships with peers.
The result was a gathering grounded in the simple but ambitious goal of bringing together the educators doing this work so they could learn from one another, deepen their practice, and begin building the infrastructure of a stronger field.
At the heart of the conference was a message that resonated across sessions: supporting diverse learners should not be a siloed effort within a school. Rather, the pedagogy and philosophy that undergird supporting struggling learners are central to the success of teaching and learning in every classroom and with every student. Put another way, when schools strengthen their capacity to reach students who struggle, they ultimately strengthen teaching and learning for everyone.
One participant captured how this approach can translate to immediate application: “I learned a wealth of new information that has already influenced how I think about supporting students in the classroom [who struggle with executive function]. It also prompted me to reflect on our 1st and 2nd grade executive functioning practices and how we might develop more universally designed tools and supports that can benefit all learners, not just those with identified needs.”
But the conference also surfaced the reality that in many day schools, the professionals responsible for supporting struggling learners – and, thus, practicing evidence-based pedagogy that all students would benefit from – often do so in relative isolation. With often little opportunity to collaborate in their own schools, the conference ultimately offered participants an authentic path toward learning from and with peers.
Participants exchanged strategies during sessions on a variety of topics, from addressing ADHD to the latest science around language-based learning disabilities to setting up effective data systems for tracking student needs. Attendees also visited classrooms at Shefa to observe inclusive instructional practices in action. Then, conversations continued in hallways and over meals. By convening practitioners from across North America, Together We Thrive created a space where educators could not only refine their own practice but also begin to see themselves as part of a larger professional community dedicated to reaching all learners.
This vision aligns closely with the mission of the DEEP Consortium, which champions sustained, high-quality professional development as essential to the vitality of Jewish education. When educators have opportunities to learn together, collaborate across institutions, and develop shared expertise, the impact extends far beyond any single conference.
The challenge ahead for our organizations, and indeed for all of those who are committed to ensuring that every child can fully participate in Jewish learning and community life, is to expand our work outward. As the organizers, we are committed that this not be a one-time event, but instead lead to durable professional networks, shared resources, and structured learning arcs between conferences.
To that end, we provided every attendee with:
- A participant contact list to facilitate ongoing peer collaboration
- A centralized repository of all session materials, with continued updates
- An announcement of 3–4 virtual convenings over the next two years, offered exclusively to conference participants
- Connection to Prizmah’s Learning Specialist Reshet, a moderated national community of practice
The Together We Thrive conference has shown us that the will for spreading knowledge and practice is strong, and now we must build the infrastructures that can channel this will to shape the future of Jewish education.
The Moral Imperative of Belonging: Including Neurodiverse Students in Jewish Day Schools
Lianne Heller, Executive Director, Sulam
At the recent Together We Thrive conference, special educators, school leaders, and learning specialists from across the Jewish day school world gathered to confront a pressing question: In an ever-changing world, how can we ensure that more students find their place in Jewish education, even when their learning paths look different from those of their peers?
The conversations took place at a notably high level. Educators shared practical strategies, explored research, discussed intervention models, and compared approaches to teaching reading, executive functioning, and social-emotional skills.
But the conversations did not stop there. They were asking bigger questions like: As the population of day school students seems to grow more diverse, how must schools evolve so they can welcome an even wider range of learners? What systems, mindsets, and structures must change so that even more Jewish children can remain in Jewish education?
Beneath every session, workshop, and hallway conversation lay a deeper theme: belonging. According to psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary, belonging is not simply a feeling that is “nice to have.” In their seminal research, they write that belonging is a basic, powerful, and universal human motivation, as fundamental as the need for food, shelter, and safety. It is essential for human flourishing.
Children who feel that they belong to a community are more willing to take risks, to persevere through difficulty, and to believe in their own potential. When students feel marginalized or misunderstood, however, confidence erodes. Motivation fades. Talents remain hidden. For neurodiverse students, this situation is often painfully real.
When a neurodiverse student is unable to remain in a Jewish day school because their learning needs cannot be met, the loss extends far beyond academics. The child risks losing connection—to Jewish learning, to communal life, and to the powerful sense of belonging that sustains identity. Of course, schools must always balance between enabling as many students to belong as possible and the real considerations of human resources, money, and space, but starting from a place where all students belong is the necessary mindframe shift. From there, school leaders must strive to expand services and supports to the fullest extent possible to those students with needs who might have previously been considered a poor fit for the school (e.g., children with behavioral challenges or language-based learning disabilities).
Jewish tradition offers a powerful lens through which to understand this responsibility. Our sages teach that every human being is created B’tzelem Elokim – in the image of God. Each person therefore possesses inherent dignity and immeasurable worth, so including every learner is a core Jewish value.
Inclusion is more than helping individual children, though. When Jewish day schools invest in specialized support, professional development, and innovative teaching approaches, they strengthen the entire community. Students learn empathy. Teachers deepen their craft. Schools begin to reflect the full diversity and richness of the Jewish people. Most importantly, children discover that they belong.
The conversations at the Together We Thrive Conference made one thing clear: the future of Jewish education depends on our willingness to think expansively—not only about how to help individual students succeed, but about how to build schools capable of welcoming more learners with a wider range of needs.
Because when Jewish schools open their doors wider, when they create environments where every child can learn, grow, and participate fully in Jewish life, they do more than strengthen education.
They strengthen the Jewish future itself.
Strengthening Inclusive Learning: Insights from the Together We Thrive Conference
Elana Weissman, Lower School Principal; Erin Gittings, Akiva Program Director, Lower School; Yehuda Oratz, Middle School Principal; Leah Bennett, Middle School Director of Student Support; and Batsheva Atlas, Middle School Akiva Teacher, Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School
When our team at Beth Tfiloh first heard about the Together We Thrive Inaugural National Conference, it was a no-brainer that we would send a team of administrators, directors of student support, and learning specialists to participate. In recent years, we have been grateful to seek the counsel of the leaders of The Shefa School and to benefit from their guidance as we have built our Akiva Program for students with dyslexia and language-based learning differences. Their leadership in the field of Jewish day school education and learning support has helped shape the way many schools across the country think about inclusive education.
The Together We Thrive Conference offered us the invaluable opportunity for uninterrupted time to learn from experts in the fields of day school education, learning differences, and executive functioning. The sessions we attended focused on the pedagogies and practices specific to what we encounter as we build our Akiva Program and the broader issue of how we can support students with language-based learning differences while maintaining the rigor and depth that define a strong Jewish day school education. These conversations reinforced the importance of thoughtful instructional design and collaboration among educators.
Equally meaningful was the opportunity to connect with colleagues from across the country who share a common goal: ensuring that Jewish day schools can meet the needs of students with diverse learning profiles while maintaining our mission, our commitment to academic excellence, and our adherence to educational best practices. The conference reinforced the belief that these goals are not in conflict, but rather can and should exist together.
We returned from the conference energized and inspired by new ideas and strategies, such as more intentionally looking at our systems of support through a multi-tiered approach and embedding executive functioning strategies consistently across classrooms. Even more, we appreciate that we are part of a larger tapestry of day school educators working toward the same goal. It truly felt like the seeding of a burgeoning field of inclusive education in day schools.
The Unifying Experience of Learning Together
Sam Forman, Director of Learning Support, Pressman Academy
Over the past several years, our school has made a significant investment in the capacity and quality of our learning support program. And while we have made immense strides in our ability to support a diverse range of learners at our school, especially those with documented learning challenges, often the process has felt like our own solitary journey in navigating the unique challenges of implementing best-practice learning support in a Jewish day school context.
Seeking a community of practice as we continued in this endeavor, we attended the Together We Thrive Conference and left with a sense that, together with colleagues from across the nation, we had the support for both our team and our students to thrive.
We met colleagues from all over the country, and learned about how their schools have met the needs of their student body. We studied, for example, various models of including students with learning disabilities in a day school context—lessons we could immediately apply to our own program. We also took away some research-based tools to support students with specific profiles, as well as a valuable framework for communicating more effectively and sensitively with parents about their child’s strengths and struggles.
We also had the opportunity to observe teachers at the Shefa School, who consistently employ best-practice strategies for academic and executive functioning support with their students. My colleague who teaches sections of Middle School math support returned from the conference and the next week was already using “near-point references” and “strategy notebooks” with her students based on her observation of a Shefa middle school math teacher.
The conference abounded in an uplifting spirit of the importance and holiness of our work. As a group, we all know what can be at stake when we fail to serve a student in our school, and in a way, the conference felt like an opportunity to collectively commit to our efforts in supporting our students. We left with a clear sense that our work matters and that we have a community of other schools and professionals who together understand why it is so important to invest our resources toward this cause.
Investing in Building a Field
Rachel Mohl Abrahams, Senior Advisor for Education Grants and Programs, Mayberg Foundation
One of the goals for the three funders supporting the DEEP Consortium is to build a field of professional development providers. The Mayberg Foundation, together with Arnee and Walt Winshall and UnitEd, wanted to cultivate a community of organizations dedicated to a common objective—the proliferation of high-quality professional development—through the use of shared approaches. The goal is not uniformity, but rather to enable diverse organizations to collaborate and operate more effectively, whether their efforts are broadly focused on matters like encouraging increased investment of time and money in high-quality professional development or more specific to objectives like better serving diverse learners.
DEEP has utilized Bridgespan’s The Strong Field Framework to identify five core qualities necessary for strengthening this field:
- Shared Identity: Diverse organizations that share a common purpose or goal
- Standards of Practice: Codification of practices, rooted in research
- Knowledge Base: Credible evidence that practice achieves desired outcomes
- Leadership and Grassroots Support: Influential leaders and exemplary organizations, along with a broad base of support from major constituencies
- Funding and Supporting: Organized funding streams
We are highly gratified to see a subset of Consortium organizations organically creating their own collaboration to support educators who serve students with special needs in day schools. This emerging “mini-network” is actively building a distinct field for special education within mainstream day schools and, thus, enabling day schools to serve a more diverse population of students.
The leadership of this new collaboration has articulated its vision using language that mirrors the core goals of DEEP, emphasizing that “Establishing a passionate community of practitioners, researchers, and organizations will enable us to build this field together by developing a common language, shared assumptions, recognized expertise, standards for practice, a pipeline, and leadership”. This dedicated field-building effort will, we expect, advance the day school field in ways that positively impact the lives of thousands of Jewish students.
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].