When Smart Kids Struggle: The Challenge of Reaching Diverse Learners in the Torah Classroom

This article is part of a Jewish Action series on accessibility. In this installment, we look at educational accessibility—creating Torah classrooms where every child can learn, grow and thrive. Our focus is on mainstream Torah classrooms and the broad range of learners they serve; the unique needs of students who require specialized educational settings are beyond the scope of this article.

Shira’s son was in first grade when his teacher told her he would never learn to read Hebrew. She was devastated. “It was the beginning of a rude awakening,” she says, describing her oldest son’s school experience. “In preschool, he seemed so bright, so precocious. And then suddenly school became endless frustration for him.” Shira didn’t understand why he was struggling so much to acquire basic skills, and most of his teachers—this was more than twelve years ago—didn’t recognize the red flags.

Shira’s son was ultimately diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disability that affects an individual’s ability to read, spell and process language. She feels that her son would have benefited tremendously if he had received earlier intervention.

“I didn’t know then what I know now,” Shira says. When two of her other children showed similar struggles in school, she felt better equipped to address their dyslexia sooner. Still, her children’s journeys through Jewish day school and yeshivah haven’t been easy.

Learning disabilities, like dyslexia, affect 13 to 14 percent of students in the US, according to federal data. That means the student body at a typical Jewish day school likely includes children with a range of learning differences such as language processing disorders, auditory or visual processing disorders, and attention deficit disorders. Additionally, a growing number of children struggle with executive function challenges as well as anxiety or depression, which can also manifest as difficulties in the classroom. To make matters even more complex for educators and students alike, children with learning disabilities often have co-occurring conditions. Many of these children are every bit as intelligent as their peers, but because they process information differently, they often struggle to show what they know in a traditional classroom.

Students at Hebrew Academy of Long Beach (HALB) Elementary School located on Long Island, New York. Photo: Dovid Mittel

“Reaching diverse learners in a classroom has always been the hardest part of education,” says Richard Altabe, who recently retired after a more-than-forty-year career in Jewish education. “You have one teacher and twenty to twenty-five students. How can the teacher challenge the stronger students, challenge the middle students, and teach the weaker students all at the same time? And that is not even considering how to reach students who simply need to learn differently.”

It’s an obligation to help these children, not a chesed. It’s not okay to leave 10 to 20 percent of our children behind.

While addressing the needs of students with learning disabilities or diverse learning styles is difficult for any teacher, there are unique considerations in the Jewish day school classroom. For example, when children have language-based learning disabilities, “They struggle with the language of their home, but it’s even harder in a second language,” says Altabe. “This is a big challenge for many of them in kodesh classes; the language of the Chumash and the way we break down the words and pesukim will be over their heads.”

“Hebrew is such an impediment for so many students. Forget Aramaic—that’s an even bigger impediment,” says Rabbi Pesach Sommer, who teaches Judaic studies at Ramaz Middle School in Manhattan.

Despite the challenges, many limudei kodesh teachers are committed to making Torah lessons resonate for all their students. “There is a mindset specific to Judaic studies that Torah is universal, and therefore teachers feel a mission to reach kids as best they can,” says Altabe. There is often a willingness on the part of teachers to do whatever it takes to make sure students feel a strong connection to Torah.

Courtesy of Bnos Yisroel of Baltimore

On the other hand, some schools are hesitant to deviate from traditional modes of teaching in kodesh classes, which precludes experimenting with newer methods that might better serve diverse learners. These schools are often more willing to adopt those methods in general studies classes.

Devorah Pinkus, an educational consultant who works with schools and maintains a private practice in New Jersey, says that while “there are some schools that still insist on doing what worked thirty years ago, it’s definitely not the majority. Most are upping their game.”

“The world is different today,” she adds. When today’s adults were in school, “you had to learn your teacher’s style and expectations. Essentially, you had to master the teacher more than the material. Now, it has to be more about the student. We know there are tools we can use to make sure every child feels successful in the classroom.”

Altabe believes that the Jewish community continues to make progress in this regard, but it lags behind the field in general nationwide. “It’s a hurdle to get people to move past the notion that learning is fixed and based on IQ, and to understand the idea of growth potential for every child,” he says. “That’s a jump in thinking and we’ve been slow to adopt it.” In other words, he explains, it used to be widely accepted that the brighter student would catch on even if he was not engaged in class, and the weaker student wouldn’t understand the material, regardless. A growth mindset means every child has the capacity to learn and grow, and that translates into a responsibility to teach every student on their level, to help them reach their full potential.

“It’s an obligation to help these children, not a chesed,” says Altabe. “It’s not okay to leave 10 to 20 percent of our children behind.”

Shayna’s Story

From a young age, Shayna was very aware that she was different from her peers in school because of her learning disabilities. “It was hard because my friends could read and I couldn’t,” says the fourteen-year-old. “I was definitely jealous, and I got upset about it sometimes.”

Shayna was the only student with dyslexia in her class until middle school, and she felt like her elementary school teachers didn’t make helpful accommodations. “In my younger grades, I really can’t remember any time when I felt like the teachers understood me,” she says. “I hated when they told me I’m so smart and I should try harder. I was trying really hard, and they just made me feel worse that I wasn’t getting it.”

More recently, Shayna is grateful to have some teachers who made real efforts to help her succeed in class. “Last year, my teacher assigned a reading test, and I told him I didn’t think I could do it,” she recalls. “He was very kind and modified the test, which really helped me do well.”

Many Jewish day schools and yeshivahs do have support systems in place for students with learning differences, such as a resource room, a place where students who need extra help get specialized, small-group instruction and tutoring for a portion of the school day. For example, at Bnos Yisroel of Baltimore, Maryland—a K–12 institution—every division, starting from preschool, has its own special educator who works alongside a social worker and tutors. Students receive individualized support in the school’s Learning Center. The larger the division, the larger the support team. A special education coordinator oversees the program across all divisions.

So many kids would learn better and be happier if schools were better equipped for them. These kids spend so many years feeling stuck.

But what’s most innovative, shares Ahuvah Heyman, Ed.D., school director at Bnos Yisroel, is that she and the principal meet with every team in every division on a weekly basis. “This ensures that we’re addressing the needs of every student,” says Heyman. Usually around fourth grade, the school requires  students who need academic help to undergo testing. This is done, explains Heyman, in order to distinguish between emotional and academic concerns—for example, between a child suffering from anxiety and therefore not performing well academically and a child with a language-processing disorder. After that point, says Heyman, a student can’t be in the Learning Center unless she has an academic need. “This doesn’t mean the school is not assisting students with emotional challenges, but it does mean the school is attempting to address the core issues and not simply have students remain in the Learning Center when it’s not really necessary.”

Heyman will sometimes recommend that parents obtain a neuropsychological evaluation for their child; the school tries to help find funding to cover some of the costs, which can range from $3,000 to over $5,000. “A good [neuropsychological evaluation] can completely change a child’s academic trajectory,” says Heyman. “And a lack of testing can make a miserable school experience for a child.”

In addition to a resource room, schools should provide accommodations to students with learning challenges, such as extended time for test taking, copies of class notes, preferential seating, or directions given orally and in writing. Sometimes modifications—a higher level of intervention that changes what a student is expected to learn—are in order, such as a reduced workload or modified tests. “Accommodations can range from limiting the number of questions a student has to answer on a test to translating a test from Hebrew to English just for that student,” says Heyman.

Beyond One-Size-Fits-All

For schools that need guidance in providing students with support, there are options. Torah Umesorah’s Diverse Learners Initiative (DLI), launched seven years ago, helps “create a system and culture in schools that supports all learners,” says R. Perlow, who oversees the program. “When we first began looking into this about eight years ago, we saw that the passion and the desire to help were there, but students were nevertheless being left behind. We needed a framework that could be put in place in any school.”

The DLI program trains school leadership and student support staff to recognize and understand various learning disorders and intervention options. The goal is to help students, teachers, therapists and administrators collaborate to improve students’ skills and performance.

DLI was originally launched in the New York area, but the transition to virtual courses during the pandemic extended its reach, so it currently has schools across North America—including Mexico—as well as in Australia, South Africa, England and Israel. The schools range in size from small to large and represent a broad cross-section of the community.

Photo: Dovid Mittel/HALB

Once schools have a trained student support coordinator in place, they can opt to become DLI “Partner Schools.” These schools—about fifty to date—are paired with a coach who works closely with the student support coordinator to help them apply what they learned in the training to real-life case studies.

DLI has been a game-changer at the large boys’ elementary school where Rabbi S. serves as the student support coordinator. Before the school began participating in DLI in 2025, “support for struggling students was addressed on an ad hoc basis and without a consistent system,” he says. Unfortunately, follow-up was even more inconsistent. As a result of the program, the school now has a deliberate process for identifying students who are struggling and developing targeted intervention plans.

“The staff regularly meets to review students’ progress and ensure accountability,” says Rabbi S. “The program has helped us build a more organized, thoughtful and unified system for addressing the needs of our talmidim.”

Sometimes even schools that have systems in place for addressing the needs of diverse learners still struggle to meet every student’s individual needs. The Modern Orthodox elementary school that Ariella’s three sons attended (not part of the DLI program) has a student services coordinator, but the number of students is simply too great for one person to manage, and as a result, she felt her sons—who all have ADHD—didn’t get enough in the way of accommodation or support. “They can’t possibly make it work for everyone in a school with hundreds of kids,” she says, “and therefore students get lost.” Two of her sons are now in high school, where they have found a much more supportive environment for their learning needs.

Many of these children are every bit as intelligent as their peers but they struggle to show what they know in a traditional classroom.

When her oldest son was in the lower grades, accommodations were “teacher by teacher. Some were truly amazing and went out of their way to help him succeed, and some just didn’t understand these kids at all. We were lucky that the assistant principal at the time intuitively understood ADHD, and he made his office a safe space for them. My older two sons spent a lot of time in his office.”

Her youngest son is more inattentive than hyperactive, and Ariella has noticed that because he’s not disruptive, “the teachers are more willing to make accommodations for him,” she says. But some teachers can’t cope with his executive function challenges. “In second grade, his teacher was constantly frustrated with him,” she says. “He would be too slow to do his cutting, or whatever it was, so she would just take it and do it for him. It made him feel terrible.”

Nonetheless, Ariella has noticed real change taking place in the school in recent years. “The school has evolved a lot in the five years between my oldest and my youngest.” Still, she wishes schools could create better environments where neurodiverse children like hers can thrive. “So many kids would learn better and be happier if schools were better equipped for them. These kids spend so many years feeling stuck,” she adds.

Can Learning Be Customized?

As the principal of Hebrew Academy of Long Beach (HALB) Elementary School in New York until his retirement last year, Altabe was proud of several programs the school embraced to reach more diverse learners.

HALB started a cohort based on an educational model known as Integrative Collaborative Learning, where a special education teacher co-teaches the class alongside a regular teacher. Altabe notes that this model allows children with more severe learning disorders to stay in mainstream classrooms. “In typical circumstances, the gap between those with learning disabilities and their peers grows with each grade,” he explains. “But with this program, we found the gaps between the special education students and the regular students actually decreased. This was a way we could help more students within our school.”

HALB also adopted a blended learning model in classrooms, where groups of students rotate between working on computers and learning in small groups with a teacher or teaching assistant. “In this way, each child is benefiting from the power of the small group and differentiated learning,” he explains.

HALB uses an online learning platform called Lomdei, a limudei Kodesh educational digital tool focused on skill building. Currently in seventy-four schools across the US and Canada, Lomdei reaches roughly 8,500 students, offering a targeted, individualized learning experience for students, which can make a huge difference. A separate division of Lomdei offers professional development and coaching to train Judaic and general studies teachers to adopt new models of teaching to better reach all the students in their classroom.

Using Lomdei, an innovative online learning platform to master Chumash skills | Courtesy of Lomdei

In a traditional classroom, for example, a third-grade teacher stands at the front of the room and the students sit at their desks with an open Chumash and worksheet. The teacher may believe the lesson went well, and she only finds out two weeks later when she gives a test that a handful of students didn’t understand the material at all. “This style of learning is mostly about frontal instruction and compliance,” explains Chani Richmond, Lomdei’s director of professional development and coaching. She and her team of fifteen coaches help implement innovative educational approaches, tailoring them to the needs and sensitivities of Jewish schools.

In contrast, in a student-centered learning classroom, the students are divided into smaller groups, which rotate between “learning stations.” Some might be working with technology, such as Lomdei’s platform, to complete assignments while others may be using flashcards or learning with a partner, and a third group sits with the teacher.

“Now the teacher is sitting with six students at a time, and she can be reteaching, reviewing or enriching,” explains Richmond. “This is where the magic happens. We now have more opportunity for the teacher to hear from more students, to see who is understanding and who isn’t, and it’s all in real time. The students feel like their teacher truly understands them and the teachers can differentiate learning for their students, with adjusted expectations and different pacing, so everyone can learn.”

Sample translation exercise | Courtesy of Lomdei

Richmond acknowledges that it can be difficult for teachers to move away from frontal classroom instruction toward small groups and independent learning. “Blended learning is a mindset shift for teachers,” she says. However, most teachers genuinely appreciate the chance to work with the children in smaller groups. “We’ve gotten the feedback like, ‘I know my students better now,’” Richmond adds. “When it comes to students in a classroom, we know that one size doesn’t fit all. It doesn’t matter what subject is being taught or what grade. This is a way to better meet the educational and social-emotional needs of students.”

When Richmond speaks about her work with principals in Jewish schools, their enthusiasm is nearly unanimous. “Schools want this training,” she says. “But the first question is always, ‘How much will it cost?’ If there’s no funding, they can’t make it happen.” The partnership of the Mayberg Foundation is helping to bridge the gap and bring Lomdei’s innovative services to more Jewish day schools across the country.

Finding Funds

The question of where the funding will come from is a constant concern for schools when trying to accommodate diverse learners. Often, it is the deciding factor in whether a child receives the help he needs to succeed in school.

States have vastly different regulations regarding the funding and services that are available for struggling students in private schools, and how they can be used. For schools in the US, Title I funding can sometimes assist with services to help struggling students; in Canada and other countries, there isn’t necessarily a similar opportunity. Notably, any public funding that is available can be used exclusively for general studies educational support and not for Judaic studies.

When it comes to students in a classroom, we know that one size doesn’t fit all.

Some states directly provide learning support services, such as tutors or therapists employed by the local Board of Education, to students in private schools who have an Individualized Education Program (IEP), a legally binding document that outlines the specialized instruction, supports and services a school must provide to help a student with a learning challenge succeed. Other states provide funding to the school to use to support children with IEPs. Under another model, states provide funding directly to the parents, to be used to support their child’s educational needs. Yet some states provide minimal or no funding for services, and the schools or parents must foot the bill.

HALB was fortunate to be part of an initiative of the UJA-Federation of New York, which made a three-year commitment to helping fifteen local Jewish schools develop programs to address diverse learners. “Each school did something that worked for them,” says Altabe. “Those schools benefited tremendously.”

In general, he says, funding is the absolute biggest challenge in implementing programs to support diverse learners in mainstream schools. When a school wants to introduce a new initiative and no public funding is available, parents often bristle at the notion that their hard-earned tuition dollars are being used to cover what they perceive to be extra help for another child. However, he has seen that on a local level, it is possible for a school to raise funds for a program, “if the concept is well developed and you can show the data that it works.”

Photo: Dovid Mittel/HALB

In many cases, the costs of supporting children with learning challenges fall squarely on their parents’ shoulders.

“All the extra help and testing we’ve gotten for our children has cost a fortune,” says Shira. For starters, she paid thousands of dollars for evaluations by a neuropsychologist—which were then repeated for each child every two to three years. “I wanted a more comprehensive evaluation than what’s done by the Board of Education,” she explains. “And I wanted someone who would tell me honestly if I needed to take my child out of Jewish day school to best help them, and not someone who would say, ‘It’ll be okay.’”

But for Shira, in addition to the neuropsychological evaluation, there were the fees for learning specialists and private teachers who worked with her children before, during or after school—for both keriah and English reading—and occupational therapists, too, because children with dyslexia often have trouble with writing as well (known as dysgraphia).

“Not all things are equal,” when it comes to the funding schools have available to them, says Pinkus. “In those places without resources, those who can afford to help their kids do. But for children whose parents cannot afford it, should there be nothing?”

Ultimately, Altabe believes that the responsibility to fund programs and services for students with learning differences should belong to the community as a whole. “We have the imperative to educate our children,” he says, “so we must figure out both how to reach them and how to pay for it.”

Acting Out

R. Perlow of Torah Umesorah says many schools reach out about bringing the DLI program to their schools because they are looking for help with students who present behavioral challenges in the classroom. While DLI isn’t designed to address behavior specifically, very often a child’s behavior is an indication of some underlying learning issue, she says.

“Behavior is a child’s way of communicating,” she says. “If we look at the behavior only, we miss what’s going on underneath. We need to ask why they are doing what they are doing and how it is working for them in some way.”

For example, acting out in class was Rabbi Yehuda Avner’s strategy to avoid reading out loud as a child. “I’d count the paragraphs and desks, and I’d prepare in advance what I was going to have to read,” he says. “If I didn’t manage to prepare, I’d say something stupid to get kicked out of class before my turn.”

His experience as a student with dyslexia and ADHD inspired him to become a rebbi to help young people like him. He is now the director of student activities and a rebbi at Torah Academy of Bergen County (TABC), a boys’ high school in New Jersey. “When I was in school, reading English was hard. Hebrew was harder. Gemara—not a chance,” he says. “I could be in a higher-level shiur, but skills-wise, I was always toward the bottom. It’s hard to understand what it means to struggle like that if you never have.”

Rabbi Avner developed his own system for breaking down the Gemara, which he uses when he learns on his own and when he teaches. “It’s a note-taking system, with questions and bullets and indenting,” he explains. “It helps students follow along with the Gemara, so they can pronounce the words, punctuate, translate and understand.”

A few years ago, Rabbi Avner approached the administration of TABC and suggested launching a keriah program. “I’m not a trained professional in the field of learning disabilities,” he says, “But I could see that there are many children struggling in this area.” He did research and found that very few yeshivah high schools in the area had Judaic studies learning centers.

Photo: Dovid Mittel/HALB

So he built a program, with reading assessments and small cohorts that met for six to eight weeks, and ran it for two years. While some students were approached and offered the opportunity to participate, it was entirely voluntary. “Just because a student doesn’t have an IEP, doesn’t mean they’re not struggling,” Rabbi Avner notes. The program was open to any student who felt he needed assistance with keriah.

He notes that the program wasn’t very expensive for the school to run, relative to its impact. “There was no curriculum to buy,” he says. “I gave up one class I had been teaching to make time for it. I received some training, and we had a consultant on retainer to call for advice.”

“In six weeks, we saw drastic improvements,” he says. “One sixteen-year-old had said his father was away for Shabbos sometimes, and his mother would ask his thirteen-year-old brother to say Kiddush for the family because he couldn’t do it. He came to me afterwards and said, ‘I made Kiddush for the first time.’ He was brimming with joy.”

It can be very difficult for parents of a child who is struggling academically to know what is reasonable to expect from a teacher or school in terms of extra support and resources. And sometimes it is similarly hard for the school to determine how far their teachers and staff must stretch to teach one child.

When I was in school, reading English was hard. Hebrew was harder. Gemara—not a chance. I could be in a higher-level shiur, but skills-wise, I was always toward the bottom.

“A teacher’s job is to be well educated on the different ways to reach their students,” says Pinkus. “They need to be asking themselves, ‘What tools can I use so this student in front of me can learn and grow?’” By the same token, she says, “It shouldn’t be that a teacher sees symptoms of ADHD and doesn’t know what those symptoms indicate or how to try to reach that student so they can learn.” Nowadays, she adds, “it’s not okay for a teacher to say, ‘This isn’t my responsibility.’”

Pinkus believes there are excellent resource room programs in many schools, but to be truly successful, they need to ensure there is follow-through on any education plans or interventions that have been put in place. “Schools beg parents to get evaluations and services for their children,” she notes. “But then what? They must make sure those services are rolling into the classroom so that they can help the child beyond each session.”

Shayna felt like her tutors and therapists were not communicating with her teacher as much as they should have, and it made her resent even more all the extra services she received during and after school. “Having tutors and going to the Learning Center was very annoying,” she says. “I hated being pulled out of class and having after-school OT and reading tutoring. They were all supposed to talk to each other and to my classroom teacher and be coordinated, but somehow they could never help me with my homework the correct way.”

In her work with individual schools, Pinkus helps improve their support systems for diverse learners, especially around assessments and tracking progress. “When resource rooms assess incoming students, they don’t have to rely solely on the teacher’s report. Then we can see measurable progress, which will ensure we’re putting the resources toward the right people for the right reasons.”

Data from assessments can also result in more professional conversations with parents. Equipping a student support coordinator with the language and the data to explain the situation to a parent can be invaluable, says Perlow. “When parents hear, ‘The assessment shows your child had a weakness in phonemic awareness, let’s work on it,’ it tends to be a more productive conversation.”

For frum parents, the decision about where to send their children to school is not usually made lightly, and sometimes there seem to be more pressing considerations than resource rooms or learning accommodations. Additionally, oftentimes, parents choose a school for their child before they even realize their child has learning differences.

“As a parent, you have to weigh a lot of factors in deciding on a school,” says Ariella, whose children stuck it out at an elementary school that wasn’t especially accommodating to their needs. “There’s one school in the area that is supposedly better at differentiating learning for students, but it’s also known for other things that were not a good fit for our family.”

Courtesy of Bnos Yisroel of Baltimore

For a variety of reasons, Shira kept her children with dyslexia at an elementary school she describes as “sometimes helpful and sometimes not. When the school saw how invested we were, and the team we’d gathered, they pretty much let us do what we wanted,” she says. In high school, however, her son switched schools when it became clear the school he was in wasn’t being thoughtful or intentional about accommodating him.

Pinkus reminds parents that they are not meant to have all the answers about what is best for their child. “Your job is to ask the questions and push to get the answers,” she says. “Be proactive to make sure your child is getting the support they need to be the best person they can be.”

In some situations, that involves confronting the difficult reality that a child might need more resources and support than their regular school can provide.

“Sometimes a student’s challenges require a specialized program that a mainstream school will not be able to provide,” notes Altabe. And in such cases, Pinkus adds, it is best for the school to be honest about it as soon as possible.

“It is better for a school to say they are not equipped,” she says, “than to pretend they are and waste the time and resources trying to accommodate a family and then realizing they can’t do it.” Of course, she adds, it’s not a decision to be made lightly, and she hopes the school’s administration seeks halachic guidance before making such a call, especially in a place where there isn’t another Jewish school that can meet the child’s needs.

“It’s very painful for parents to be at that crossroads,” says Pinkus. “It’s heartbreaking for the school to say we’re not being successful at helping your child, and even more heartbreaking for the parents to hear.”

Heyman, however, has seen children leave for a year or two, receive the support they need—for example, for dyslexia—and then reintegrate successfully when they return to a Jewish school.

No Child Left Behind

The risk of not reaching all learners in the classroom is great, says Rabbi Yaakov Mintz, educational advocate at Work At It. The New York–based organization helps young people who haven’t found success in conventional education settings.

“Difficulties tend to start for these children in elementary school,” he says. “But often, elementary schools will push kids along, to ‘get them through,’ so to speak. When they’re teens, we see the buildup of years of not finding success in school. They can’t keep it up in high school.”

Founded in 2018, Work At It was part of the first cohort of the OU Impact Accelerator. Each year, the program supports about 100 young people, ages sixteen to twenty-four, with strength discovery, alternative education opportunities, career guidance and job placement. Additionally, it offers workshops for students and professional development for educators.

“These are talented, capable kids who haven’t been successful at school for various reasons,” explains Rabbi Mintz. “Some made it through school by slipping through the cracks and, after graduation, they’re at a loss as to what to do. Most have dropped out or were kicked out of school.”

It’s very clear, says Rabbi Mintz, that “we have a significant population of children who don’t thrive in a structured school environment. If we can’t make a place for these children, we’re systematically excluding a portion of our communities from our educational system.”

Often a student who is not good at Gemara will internalize not only that he’s not good at Gemara, but that he’s not good at Judaism.

Unfortunately, Altabe says, some of these children abandon Judaism as well. “Many times, when the school system can’t handle a child, they end up in public school. The public school can reach them, and they can do well, but their Judaism falls by the wayside.”

In another all-too-common scenario, he adds, “we keep the child in our schools, but we don’t educate them properly. The gap grows over time between that child and their peers, until they feel like a loser.” These teens drop out of the system and often end up abandoning religion altogether. “So many of those stories start with failure in school, because they were not being reached in the classroom,” he says.

As a veteran Jewish educator of more than twenty years, Rabbi Sommer has seen this over and over again. “Often a student who is not good at Gemara will internalize not only that he’s not good at Gemara, but that he’s not good at Judaism,” he says. His solution: Find other ways of defining success. “If a student can’t read, decode and connect to Gemara in that way, we need to find other ways to connect them to Torah, to text and to Judaism.”

The student also needs to feel good about himself. “It could be being a gabbai,” he suggests. “It could be music. It could be classes that aren’t text-based.”

At Bnos Yisroel, the mandate, Heyman says, is “to make every child feel successful.” She is therefore most concerned with answering these questions: When students finish school, will they be successful people? Do they feel good about themselves? Do they feel connected? Do they want to do better?

“I don’t really care about grades that much, but you know what I care about?” she asks. “Effort. Put in effort and recognize your value.” Heyman’s priority, as she tells all her teachers, is to “find opportunities for each child to shine.”

Hope on the Horizon

Shira is very relieved that her son with dyslexia has graduated from high school, and that that chapter is behind them. He’s headed to yeshivah in Israel and then to his top choice for college. “He’s seen successes, thank G-d,” she says.

She’s holding her breath and hoping her daughter also finds a fresh start this year at a high school they intentionally chose for its supportive culture.

“She’s so burnt out from years of bad experiences,” Shira explains. “I know the teachers work hard—harder than anyone else—and some really wanted to help, but they simply had no tools to work with.”

While there’s no question that children with learning differences struggle the most, Shira notes, “it’s a hard journey for parents, too. You have to wear so many hats: You are always looking for the best tutors or therapists, constantly advocating for your child with the school administration, and pushing your child to get their work done—when they often have to work twice as hard as their friends or siblings.”

On top of everything else, she says, the experience is very isolating. “You’re looking to professionals for chizuk on some level, but for the psychologists, therapists, teachers and administrators, it’s all in a day’s work,” she says.

“They’re not sensitive to the impact of their words or to the power those words have to give hope or to shatter it.”

After advocating for her children’s education for so many years, Shira frequently gets calls from other Jewish moms whose children have been newly diagnosed with dyslexia. “I tell the moms, ‘Your kid is going to do amazing things, and they’re going to find their strengths. Just keep on going because, as hard as it feels, this is absolutely doable.’”

Rachel Schwartzberg is a writer and editor who lives with her family in Memphis, Tennessee.

In This Section

When Smart Kids Struggle: The Challenge of Reaching Diverse Learners in the Torah Classroom by Rachel Schwartzberg

A Matter of Focus: Inside the Mind of a Teen with ADHD by Leah B.

What Educators Are Saying

What Parents Are Saying

What to Do When Your Child Is Struggling by Amian Frost Kelemer

The View on the Ground: A teacher’s perspective, as told to Rachel Schwartzberg

Dear Mrs. Fructer by Sarah L.