18 | DECEMBER 26 • 2019 

‘Know Yourself ’

Prepare U gives Hillel Day School students tools 
to maintain mental health.

STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
O

n a recent chilly Tuesday morn-
ing, eighth graders at Hillel 
Community Day School sat in a 
circle, journals in hand and pondered a 
text from Rabbi Abraham Kook (1865-
1935): 
“But know the reality in which you live. 
Know yourself and your world. Know the 
thoughts of your heart, and of all who 
speak and think.
”
In a first for Jewish day schools, Hillel 
Day School in Farmington Hills is teach-
ing Prepare U, an experimental mental 
health curriculum for adolescents that 
was created by local therapist and Hillel 
alumni Ryan Beale. 
To adapt it for their Jewish students, 
Hillel faculty infused the arc of 15 lessons 
covering topics such as anger, anxiety and 
stress, grief and family systems, social 
media, relationships and self-reflection. 
Midway through the course, students 
discuss signs and the aftermath of suicide. 
In many of the classes, students sit in a 
circle as a teacher directs them through 
what often are deep conversations about 

mental health.
Throughout the workbook are pages 
left blank for self-reflection, plus self-care 
tips and national hotlines for suicide pre-
vention, domestic abuse and LGBT teens. 
Prepare U is taught in select high 
schools in six states, including Michigan. 
Now in its second year at Hillel, the 
course there is funded by a grant 
from the Michael Kroopnick Family 
Endowment Fund for Healthy Emotional 
Development and Resilience. 
There is a mental health crisis among 
the country’
s schoolchildren. Locally, the 
Jewish Federation’
s 2016 study, Jewish 
Community Health and Social Welfare 
Needs Assessment, confirmed the high 
rates of anxiety and stress or experiences 
with a mental illness — about 50 percent 
— among teens in Detroit’
s Jewish com-
munity. 
Hillel faculty members Nicole Miller 
and Kimberly Love said that Prepare 
U was developmentally appropriate for 
the school’
s eighth-graders and a good 
response to the Federation findings. 

Jews in the D

Doris Gold, 13, 
reviews some 
of her Prepare 
U coursework 
at Hillel Day 
School. 

STACY GITTLEMAN

continued on page 20