Mesivta 404 Mesivta 404: Our Story of Risk-Failure-Opportunity | Page 9

Dovid and Meir were the first. With no place to turn, they showed up every day to study with a teacher online
from Chicago in a preschool coatroom. It was not really a program to build hope, but at least it was not a school
doing harm.
We had a design question to test...could Jewish learning online work? If so, how? Could it be scaled? If so, this
would open a world of opportunity to boys in our community who are not fitting into a traditional mesivta
setting. It would also connect the best educators to boys who might not live in proximity. Could high-quality
Regents courses for the English program be delivered through an international accredited school with instructors
that would never be available in our community?
At first, our ideas seemed to work. As long as it was the two of them, the classes seemed personalized enough to
succeed. But, soon after, when a third and fourth boy joined. The design began to break down.
Dovid and Meir in the early days of learning online. Preschool boys wandered into their coatroom to watch their shiur.