Dr. Yuval Dvir: Head of Younited School

 

By Sami Jinich

 

On the morning Yuval Dvir received his acceptance letter to the Israeli Opera as an orchestra musician his phone rang. A friend was asking him to take over managing a music department at an elementary school in Tel Aviv. “From a strong intuition,” Dvir says, he chose the school.

 

Years later that same instinct would lead him to found Younited, the only high school in Israel where Jewish, Arab and international students live and learn together. The school on the Givat Haviva campus asks its students to take leaps across language, culture, and identity.

 

Dvir grew up in the city of Hadera, the middle of three boys. “I grew up in a family that appreciates curiosity, and from an early age what interested me most was music,” he says. Dvir took music seriously and started playing trombone professionally at age fifteen. He went on to play during his army service before auditioning for the prestigious Israeli Opera.

 

Then he changed paths.

 

“I loved my role as an educator,” says Dvir. “I could communicate with students all day long, and I could communicate with teachers all day long.” Four years later, Dvir combined his passion for music and new love of teaching to create the non-profit Meitar (“string” in Hebrew) that brings music education to communities lacking conservatories. It was during Dvir’s early years running Meitar that he encountered Givat Haviva for the first time, while hosting a summer music camp on the campus in 2008.

 

Another decade of experiences—pursuing a Master’s degree in education policy, researching the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, and working at an international school near Tel Aviv—convinced Yuval of the importance and challenge of shared education.

 

It was during this period that Dvir started working with Arab students in Israel. “The first time I met and worked with Israeli Arab students was when I was already a father,” Dvir says. “Through that work, I realized how little I actually knew about them, how strong the stereotypes are in the general public, and how different the reality is from those stereotypes.” 

 

Over time Dvir had become committed to the idea of education free of hierarchies between Jews and Arabs, one that gave students the attitudes and skills to build peace. But he knew it would demand a lot from students: unfettered curiosity, comfort with uncertainty, and a willingness to jump into the deep end. 

 

Good education “requires a clear vision and an ability to adapt,” says Dvir.

 

When he got a call in 2016 from Givat Haviva’s former executive director, asking him to build what would become the Younited international school, Dvir didn’t hesitate.

 

“I understood that there is something about Givat Haviva that can allow this meeting space to be different from what I saw before, and that I could generate something which allows for true, authentic, intercultural discourse and connection,” says Dvir. “I moved my family next to campus, changed my entire life, and immersed myself.” 

 

“Israeli society is split between tribes. People don’t listen to one another or understand one another because we weren’t brought up together,” he says. Younited’s aim is to create something more sustainable for both its students and Israeli society.

 

At the core of Younited’s academics is the IB curriculum, and the rigor is no joke. One of the IB’s central challenges is maintaining a single global standard, Dvir explains. But this year, amid the wars in Israel and the region, Younited’s staff have found unique ways to adapt, working closely with the senior management at the IB to offer non-exam alternatives to the students’ assessments.

 

Dvir also hopes to expand language requirements and offer courses in conflict mediation not currently offered by the IB, but acknowledges that institutional change takes time. “The IB is a platform. It’s not the aim,” he says.

 

For the past seven years, he has been working to strike a balance by preparing students for academic success while cultivating a deeper commitment to the world and communities around them. Despite launching the school on the eve of Covid and then leading it through years marked by war, he remains confident. “This work echoes my internal beliefs,” Dvir says.

 

Establishing shared schools that promote a culture of peace can appear particularly difficult with so much instability and uncertainty. “On the other hand, these are the times where you can actually introduce new ideas to education,” explains Dvir. As he sees it, the way Israelis have been educating until now doesn’t allow young people to embrace the diversity of their society.

 

Younited students graduate with an IB diploma, but Dvir believes they leave with something more: a set of values and relationships shaped by the environment around them. 

 

This shared education is rare in Israel. That doesn’t deter Dvir. It fuels him. “It’s intercultural understanding, and it’s the best thing we can do as educators in Israel today.”

 

To learn more about Younited, or support the school’s mission, please contact Nurit Gery, nurit@younitedschool.org.

 

Sami Jinich recently moved to Israel from Maryland, working as Assistant to the Director of Strategy in Givat Haviva and as a Community Educator at the Younited International School, with support from the New Israel Fund’s Shatil Social Justice Fellowship.