Preparing a new generation of community leaders

 Leadership, Projects  No Responses »
Aug 302012
 

Sendy and Ronit organized their community’s first “Mitzvah Day”. Sara has set up a Jewish film club, whilst Vera has started a children’s dance ensemble.  Dina has set up a new youth club. Anezka and Karolina have edited their local community magazine. All have made a positive contribution to their Jewish communities – in Istanbul, Warsaw, Mogilev, Barcelona and Prague, to name but a few.

What these young people have in common is that they are graduates of World ORT’s Future Leaders Program – an intensive nine-month leadership scheme for 16-18 year olds, designed to develop a new generation of Jewish community leaders across Europe and the former Soviet Union. The second cycle of the Future Leaders Program is now open for applications until 28th September 2012.

The program provides participants with a set of tools and experiences which equip them to support Jewish activities and develop new initiatives back in their home communities.

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Students Need Time Offline

 Educational Technology, Leadership, Pedagogy  2 Responses »
Jul 042012
 

This post is contributed by Marcelo Lewkow, National Director of ORT Chile.

It often seems as if everyone in the education world today is racing to keep up-to-date with the latest technological developments and to integrate the latest technical gadgets into their teaching. The benefits of using technology to engage students in the classroom are well-rehearsed, and I have no wish to dispute them. Nevertheless, I have been involved in a project which prevents school students from using technological devices in school.  Let me give the background and explain the rationale…

Maimonides School in Santiago, Chile, is an orthodox Jewish school which achieves consistently high academic results. The school makes frequent use of technology where it enhances the teaching and learning environment – both inside of the classroom and for homework/extension tasks. We certainly have all the technological equipment that we need. However, we have decided to ban students completely from using their own communication devices – smart phones, tablets, or anything else – inside school. Of course, much of the received wisdom nowadays is that making use of students’ own devices for positive educational purposes in the classroom will involve them more in their studies.  So why are we going against the grain?

This generation of school students is permanently “connected” – via instant messaging, via Facebook, via music sharing sites and via many other platforms. Absorption in this online world can often come at the expense of developing meaningful face-to-face relationships – for children especially. At Maimonides, we think that schools can offer one of the last places for addressing this and for reducing the “noise” which comes from being constantly connected. We want students to relate to their teachers and peers on a person-to-person level, not always interrupted by technological distractions.

As a by-product, this decision has helped us also to reduce the amount of contact between students and their parents during the school day. Students would sometimes worry or mislead their parents by contacting them immediately after any minor incident that happened at school. This would also result in teachers feeling undermined, if parents knew better than them what had been going on at school. The distance at school between students and their parents is a healthy space for growth, and should remain this way. Our policy has helped to maintain this space.

Much educational research points to the fact that education is an inherently social activity. If there is no real interaction, there is no real learning. Online interaction is great, but it cannot be the only kind of interaction. That is why we are going back to basics at Maimonides and refocusing the way that our students communicate – between themselves, with staff and with their parents.

Interview with Marina Moiseeva, ORT Moscow Technology School, Gymnasium # 1540

 Leadership, Pedagogy  No Responses »
Jun 012012
 

Marina Moiseeva is the Principal of ORT Moscow Technology School, Gymnasium # 1540. My recent conversation with her focused on two topics:

  • How the school strikes the right balance between a busy state-regulated curriculum and the demands of ORT’s Jewish & technological education.
  • How the school has successfully integrated into mainstream lessons students with special educational needs.

Striking the right balance between a busy state-regulated curriculum and the demands of ORT’s Jewish & technological education

Our school was established in 1994, with the status of a state-funded school. This means that 95% of our budget comes from national and municipal budgets, and only 5% is collected through fundraising (including the efforts of World ORT) and parents’ donations.

Like any other state-funded school, we are obliged to work through a fixed curriculum of compulsory school subjects, developed and approved by the Ministry of Education & Science of the Russian Federation, together with the Moscow Department of Education. This leaves us with only 5 hours per week per student for additional specialist subjects, such as – in our case – computer science and Jewish history & traditions. Some Hebrew teaching can be incorporated as language teaching in the state curriculum, but this still has to be topped up. In practice, our technology and computer science specialism requires 4 hours per week, our Jewish specialism requires a minimum of 5 hours per week alone.

Although these specialist subjects are considered to be very important by the school and by students’ families, none of the subjects are included in the final school exams used as entrance criteria by universities. The formal education system only regards them as “supplementary”. In addition, there are no officially certified teaching programs for these subjects. As a result, inspectors always ask lots of questions about the teaching of these subjects when they visit the school.

It is a real challenge for us to strike the right balance. Our students’ parents expect the school to guarantee good results and a smooth passage to university. At the same time, they specifically chose a Jewish school because they wanted their children to be educated in a Jewish environment.

From a practical perspective, there are simply not enough hours in the school week to fit everything in. Other gymnasiums and lyceums in Moscow actually open on a Saturday and work a 6-day week to fit everything in and to spread the weekly workload more evenly. However, as a Jewish school we would not open on a Saturday. As a consequence, we have to make the school days longer, which is officially not allowed and puts us at risk of being punished! The funny thing is that we have never been punished. Our set-up is something of an open secret.  I think that the city educational authorities know about our specific curriculum and additional subjects, but since they have no clear understanding of what to do with a Jewish school and what the borders of our religious freedoms should be, they just pretend not to see us.

Integrating into mainstream lessons students with special educational needs

We are in the 8th year of our Integration Project, supported by the Jewish Agency and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, involving several Jewish schools in Moscow. We have learnt a lot and received guidance from outstanding professionals in the USA and Israel. We now have a clear and well-developed system in place to cover enrolment, socialization, learning and teacher training.

Our school specializes in integrating students with Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Typically, we enrol no more than 3 or 4 students with special needs in a class of 25. However, this number can increase owing to the fact that some parents may not disclose full details about the educational needs of their child until they have already been enrolled.

In 2011 our first group of students with special educational needs graduated the school successfully, and most of them are now first year students at Moscow universities. This article details the experiences of a visitor from the USA who came to our school and was positively affected by our Integration Project.

Interview with Kalya Hilu – Director General at CIM-ORT, Mexico

 Leadership, Pedagogy  No Responses »
May 012012
 

The World ORT education blog is taking a new direction in the next couple of months.  It will feature interviews with leading ORT educational practitioners around the world, with an emphasis on pedagogical opportunities and challenges that they face in their roles.

The first of our interviewees is Kalya Hilu, Director General since August 2010 at Colegio Israelita de México (CIM) ORT in Mexico City.  CIM-ORT caters for over 650 students, ranging from pre-school age to high school age.  The school joined the ORT network in 2010.  I caught up with Kalya at 07:00 – her usual start time – at the beginning of a busy Friday morning.

Tell me a little bit about your background and what brought you to CIM-ORT.

Until now, all of my working life has been spent in the Israeli education system.  Before coming to Mexico, I was the Principal at the 1100-student Western Galilee Junior High & High School, now affiliated to World ORT in Israel.  During this time, I made big changes in the way that the school’s teaching staff worked with the students.  I am no stranger to change; my Masters Degree at the University of Haifa was on change in educational organizations.

After nine years in the role, I felt that it was time to move on.  Two opportunities opened up to take positions in Mexico, one of which was as Director General at the Colegio Israelita de México.  Since the school already had a good relationship with World ORT, I knew that I would receive the support I needed in this role.

What did you see at the school which needed doing differently when you arrived?  How have you gone about effecting change?

CIM had been known as one of the top schools in Mexico, but when I arrived it was struggling with its reputation and ability to attract students.  I was hired specifically to help the school with boosting its image and improving the quality of education.

I dedicated my first year at the school to changing the way in which the school’s administration and organizational hierarchy worked.  The different schools on the campus – kindergarten, junior high, high – worked very separately.  Given that many of the students stay all the way through from kindergarten to high school, this was not an ideal arrangement for establishing a sense of educational continuity.

My goal was to build a senior management team, with a common vision for the schools.  This was not so easy because it took time for colleagues to understand that I wanted to take decisions with them and that I needed them to give their opinions openly.  I did not want a team of yes-men!

Having put the organizational management in place, it was important to also empower the teaching staff and make them appreciate that they can affect what goes on.  We set up a voluntary focus group of 20 teachers, who were tasked with suggesting pedagogical changes which the school would benefit from.

The main pedagogical change we have made is introducing project-based learning into the classroom – be that the kindergarten, the primary school or the high school.  The high school is developing a methodology of integrated learning, through encouraging students to engage with case studies – like the learning style of Harvard Business School.  The rationale for this is that students do not learn by being passive recipients; they learn through doing.  Case studies are a good way of training students to ask questions, to investigate and to learn independently.

Whilst the original 20 teachers from the focus group were on board with this, we still needed to convince the remainder of the 100-strong teaching staff that this was a positive change of direction.  I believe that 30% of them are with us very passionately.  Another 50% will wait and see how everything develops, and gradually come on board.  Inevitably, the remaining 20% will find it very hard.  We are putting on capacity-building training to support teachers in adjusting to this new way of working.

What differences have you noticed between working at a school in Mexico and at a school in Israel?

One of my primary goals as an educational leader is to foster a strong sense of teamwork in my school.  I worked very hard on this in Israel, but have found it more challenging in Mexico – for a funny reason.  Mexican culture is generally more hierarchical; employees are very obliging and are expected to obey their bosses.  It is very different in Israel, where the first person you disobey is your boss!  Israeli employees need to be convinced of your leadership credentials.  So whilst it may seem easier in Mexico, there is a risk that people have only been won over superficially.  I have therefore stressed the importance of my staff being as open with me as possible.

I have also found that whilst in Israeli schools it is sometimes easy to take for granted the students’ connection with Israel and Judaism, in Mexico this has to be consciously considered and thought about the whole time.

What kinds of relationships have you built between CIM-ORT and schools at both a local and international level?

The Va’ad HaChinuch (Jewish educational council) in Mexico City works hard to bring together the different principals from the different Jewish schools across the city – for example, by conducting visits to each other’s schools.  Developing cooperation is a challenging task because the different schools are effectively in competition with each other: we are all competing for a limited pool of students.  My view is that even though we are competitors, we cannot afford not to cooperate at the same time.

On a wider scale, we are developing relationships with two private Christian schools in Mexico City – one of these projects is focussed on Holocaust education.  We are also participating in a university sports project, which involves a variety of other schools in the city.  I would like to develop more links with local schools.  My sense is that once we re-establish our reputation as a leading educational light in Mexico City, other schools will be more interested in collaborating with us.

At an international level, the school values its membership of the ORT network, but our connection is not as effective as I found it to be in Israel.  We feel ORT’s involvement less in day-to-day matters, probably as a result of our perceived distance from the focus of activities in Israel and the Former Soviet Union.  I would like to establish a closer relationship with ORT organizations in South America, but the physical distances between us are still enormous!  It is still early days.

What has been the highlight of your work so far in Mexico?

Being consciously aware that I am a shelicha – an emissary – from the State of Israel, and that my overriding purpose is to bring the spirit of Israel to Mexico and to develop the best possible Jewish education that I can in Mexico.