Hebrew for school parents: WhatsApp groups, meetings and school letters

Updated

Your child is learning Hebrew at school, often faster than you are. But the school talks to you too: through the class WhatsApp group, through notices, the report card and the parents' evening. And it talks to you in Hebrew, quickly, with words that a first-year ulpan does not teach.

This guide gathers the words and sentences that come up most in a parent's school life, one situation at a time. It does not replace a course; it tells you what to learn first.

The class WhatsApp group

This is where most things happen: what to bring, timetable changes, trips, birthdays. The messages are short, without vowels, often without punctuation. A handful of words covers most of them:

A typical message, « מחר יום מקוצר », means "tomorrow is a short day": school finishes earlier than usual.

Two tips. First, do not reply in the group to a question about your child alone: message the teacher privately, as you would email a teacher back home rather than reply-all to the class list. Second, a translation app helps with one message, but it trips over abbreviations and school words. Learn the words that come back every week: after a month, you will read most messages without help.

The parents' evening and the teacher meeting

The אסיפת הורים (asifat horim) is the parents' evening. The homeroom teacher, the מחנך or מחנכת (mekhanekh, mekhanekhet), either presents the year or sees each family for a few minutes. The words that come up:

Prepare two or three sentences in advance. They are enough to hold the conversation:

There is nothing awkward about the last one: slowing down costs the teacher less than sorting out a misunderstanding later.

Letters and school notices

A school notice, a חוזר (khozer), almost always follows the same plan: who it is for, what it is about (often after the word הנדון, hanidon, "re:"), what you are asked to do, and by when. Look first for the date and for the verb that asks something of you: לחתום (lakhtom, to sign), לשלם (leshalem, to pay), להירשם (leherashem, to register), לאשר (le'asher, to confirm).

When you need to stand up for your child

The day the school suggests an assessment, extra support or a change of class, the language moves up a register. You will hear אבחון (ivkhun), an educational assessment, ועדת שילוב (va'adat shiluv), the school committee that decides on support (close to an IEP meeting in the United States), and ערר (arar), an appeal. Olim pupils have rights, and you have to ask for them: the guide to olim pupils' rights sets them out. To understand how Israeli schools are organised, the guide to the Israeli school system starts from the beginning.

This is the situation where a clear, polite written request carries the most weight, and also the hardest one to write in Hebrew.

Preparing with elev's ulpan

elev's ulpan has a chapter for exactly this: "Dealing with institutions", free with an account. It teaches you to write a formal letter and an appeal, then follows an oleh parent through a meeting with the school counsellor, from the assessment to the committee and the appeal. It is a level ד׳ chapter, the most advanced level, so it assumes you already read well.

If you are not there yet, start with the placement test, free and with no account, which tells you which level to start at. elev's ulpan for adults is described here.

And if it is your child who is struggling with school Hebrew, especially in maths, this guide covers it.