HDS announces new Head of School
Hebrew Day School of Ann Arbor is delighted to welcome Dr. Wendy Lawrence as our Head of School. Dr. Lawrence holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College, an M.Ed. from Boston College, and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Eastern Michigan University. Over more than two decades in education, she has worn many hats, including classroom teacher for grades three through 10, founding faculty member and Middle School Head at an independent school, and lecturer for educational leadership courses at both EMU and U-M. Most recently, she served as an organizational researcher and educational program evaluator at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Wendy is also deeply rooted in the Ann Arbor Jewish community, having co-chaired the Jewish Community Relations Council and served on the boards of the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor and Temple Beth Emeth.
In the column below, Dr. Lawrence shares the experiences that have shaped her approach to education, and the vision she brings to Hebrew Day School of Ann Arbor and to our community.
Brucha HaBaa – ברוכה הבאה!
The village school: Responsibility and promise
By Wendy Lawrence
When I lived in Lesotho with the Peace Corps, every night I cooked dinner over a gas camping stove, and my small home would fill with children. Mostly, they came to see the lekhooa (white person) and tease me about my strange food. Some brought homework, written in English despite Sesotho being their first language, hoping I could help make sense of it. I had an official job as a Peace Corps Volunteer — writing national curriculum and running biodiversity education programs for local chiefs and village development councils — but these children became my real job and the main focus of my time. They were the start of my teaching career.
It takes a village to raise a child and because they walked through my front door, I became a part of their village. Maybe it’s because my educational journey started in an African kitchen, but this idea of needing a village has always been fundamental to how I see education. Over time, my understanding of that idea has evolved, but the belief that a community’s children are both its promise and its responsibility is foundational to my understanding of teaching and learning.
At first, I understood this saying through the lens of a science lover. I double majored in biology and economics in college, tracing the ways we all depend on one another to sustain the planet and the systems that hold us together. I’ve never seen my own role as an educator — whether my title was teacher, lunch lady, or Head — as separate from that web. I’m one piece of a larger ecosystem that nurtures every child.
But it isn’t only about my role in that ecosystem — it’s also about how the ecosystem shapes me. My own career path has never looked like a ladder: It’s a web of connections with remarkable people and opportunities I’ve been lucky enough to come across. I’ve been a science museum demonstrator, an elementary and middle school teacher, a parenting and education author, a volunteer firefighter, a curriculum coordinator, a substitute teacher, a university lecturer, and a national park volunteer. I am who I am because of the villages I’ve been lucky enough to belong to.
When I returned to school to study educational leadership, my understanding shifted again — because before, while I appreciated the importance of the village, I hadn’t thought about how it got there. A village doesn’t build or sustain itself — just ask anyone who’s tried to drive down State Street lately. Infrastructure needs tending, or even rethinking. Sometimes the old infrastructure doesn’t suit us anymore: An old wall might be unjustly keeping people out; an unfinished bridge might mean two people haven’t had the chance to meet yet. My doctoral research centered on this idea: Leaders must be the architects of our educational villages.
Think of a beaver, one of Michigan’s great builders — it doesn’t just create a home for itself; its dam reshapes the whole waterway into a wetland that dozens of other species depend on. That’s the work of leadership as I understand it: not proclaiming from the town square, but making sure the paths exist for everyone else to travel, connect, and belong. Jewish tradition has long understood this: Joshua ben Gamla, a High Priest in Jerusalem over 2000 years ago, is remembered not for his own scholarship, but for insisting that every town establish its own school. This was a promise that each child’s access to Torah study would be provided by the community, not subject to the knowledge and wealth of their parents.
Hebrew Day School is the promise that we’ve built for our village, and as I take on this role, every interaction reminds me of the sacred nature of that promise and the honor it is to be entrusted with this position. I remain nestled inside a much larger village: our synagogues and community groups, our JCC and Federation, and above all our parents, grandparents, and families, without whom none of this exists.
That’s really the heart of what I want you to know about me, and about Hebrew Day School: This school is not something any one of us can carry alone, and it was never meant to be. Hebrew Day School is ours. It is what builds and stewards the hearts and minds of the next generation of Ann Arbor’s Jews. It is our community’s promise and it is our community’s responsibility.
If you’re curious enough about Hebrew Day School to be reading this, whether you’re a prospective parent, a fellow Jewish professional or lay leader, or a community member reflecting on the future of Jewish Ann Arbor, I hope you’ll reach out. I’d love to start a conversation about what Hebrew Day School means to you, how we can support the ideas and passions your perspective brings, and how, together, we can steward the village that Ann Arbor’s Jewish children deserve.
