Lomdei's First Year of Mayberg Foundation Support Doubles Its Jewish Day Schools Coaching Reach

Lomdei director of operations and business development Ralph Alter: "The Mayberg Foundation's support [is] directly responsible for... accelerating the wave of HQPD and coaching now taking hold across our Jewish day schools."

When cost is the biggest barrier keeping schools from investing in High-Quality Professional Development (HQPD), even willing schools often can't start the conversation. "The single biggest barrier keeping schools from participating in High Quality Professional Development and Coaching — or participating in a meaningful, sustained way — is cost," said Ralph Alter, founder and director of operations and business development at Lomdei, a Mayberg Foundation partner and DEEP Consortium member that provides HQPD coaching for Judaic studies teachers as they shift toward personalized, student-centered instruction.

"Time and again, we see schools that were on the fence about investing in their rebbeim and moros (teachers) finally start the conversation the moment they learn financial support is available,” Ralph added. “It's not a marginal nudge; it's often the difference between a school sending one teacher here or there and a school scaling coaching across their staff in a way that actually shifts culture."

This past year, Mayberg Foundation support helped Lomdei — which provides HQPD coaching for Judaic studies teachers as they shift toward personalized, student-centered instruction — do exactly that for a growing number of Jewish day schools: the number of partner schools grew from 12 to 26 (+117%), and the number of teachers receiving coaching rose from 42 to 94 (+124%) over the course of the year. As Alter put it: "The Mayberg Foundation's support doesn't just supplement what we do — it's directly responsible for unlocking conversations that wouldn't otherwise happen, and for accelerating the wave of HQPD and coaching now taking hold across our Jewish day schools."

Lomdei director of the TailorED Division Chani Richmond

At the center of Lomdei's model, led by Alter and Chani Richmond, director of the TailorED Division, is a simple but effective structure: school teams of administrators and Judaic studies teachers work together to set clear, achievable goals for their coaching engagement. Rather than a one-off workshop, this creates an ongoing partnership — a framework for building a growth-minded culture of professional development that lasts well beyond a single training day. The focus throughout is empowering Judaic studies educators to design personalized Jewish learning experiences, technology-enabled or not, that make foundational text and tradition accessible to every student in the room.

For many schools, that model only becomes real once they see it in action. "It's one thing to hear about professional development in the abstract," said Chani. "It's another to watch a Rebbi or Morah grow week after week with a coach in their corner, and to see that growth ripple into the classroom — in how a lesson is planned, how a difficult moment with a student is handled, how confident a teacher feels walking in each day."

That same structure is what has allowed Lomdei to grow without diluting the coaching relationship at its center. By pairing every school with a defined goal-setting framework rather than a one-time engagement, Lomdei has been able to bring on new schools and expand within existing ones while keeping the coaching consistent and sustained — a model built for scale.

That shift is visible in the classroom. Teachers who participated in the coaching describe a real change in how they teach Judaic studies. One reflected that their teaching has "increasingly shifted away from conventional, worksheet-driven instruction toward a more student-centered approach that prioritizes interactive learning and responsiveness to diverse learning styles," resulting in what they called "greater engagement and more meaningful participation" from students. Another described the concrete changes they made: bringing more choice and creativity into the projects they assigned, and adjusting how they grouped and scaffolded students according to individual skill level.

As Lomdei closes out its first year of partnership with Mayberg Foundation, these numbers and voices point to a model that schools are not just trying, but sustaining — one that's reshaping how foundational Jewish values and wisdom get transmitted in the classroom, and that positions Lomdei to scale further in the years ahead.