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Published: March 7th 2007
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students at Hadasim
my monday group at Hadasim, at our final party So, my internship is over. Goodbye to Branco Weiss (the name of the organization). It was a bumpy ride, but not without its positive moments and people. So, I wanted to tell you guys about some of the special teachers and students I met while working in these schools in Israel.
Yasu is a thirty-something man. He came to Israel from Ethiopia, part of the lost tribes of Israel. In the 1980s, the Israeli government found this “lost tribe” of Israel, in Ethiopia. At the time, Ethiopia was a very dangerous place for Jews, as there was a war going on. The Israeli government at the time, decided that they needed to do something to rescue these newly found Jews. They did a secret military operation and airlifted hundreds of these Ethiopian Jews. This wasn’t like “ok guys, the plane is here, jump on”. They had to escape Ethiopia first, by walking and hiding from the muslims with guns who were trying to kill them along the way. I don’t remember how long they walked for, but it was several days, and many died along the way, from starvation and exhaustion. Most of the Ethiopians who came on this Operation
senior girls at Lod
the best students I worked with, senior girls at a religious school Moses to Israel were young kids and teenagers, who left their families behind. Yasu was one of these kids. Now, twenty something years later, Yasu has a family and kids of his own, and works with immigrant kids who came to Israel, just like him.
Another man I met was named Joel. He was one of the executive directors of the organization I worked with, called Branco Weiss. Joel is an American who made aliyah (became an Israeli citizen) when he was a young man. The first time I met Joel was on my first trip to Israel almost 7 years ago. He spoke to my group and told us his story of being an Israeli soldier. His particular story was telling us how he had been part of the secret military operation to rescue the Ethiopian Jews. He helped rescue Yasu. This year, I met Joel again at a ceremony for some of my students. Now, as one of the executive directors of their program, he is an inspirational speaker, encouraging these students from disadvantaged backgrounds of all types, to work hard, the use their talents, and to succeed in life. I remember the first time I met
the boys in Rishon
some of the boys at Rishon... they made me take about a dozen pictures until we had one that the all liked, but this was my favorite Joel very vividly, his quirky, obviously American humor and personality was enough to make my entire group of 45 teenagers shut up and listen to his story. And now, even in Hebrew that clearly has a very distinct American accent, he tells the same story to teenagers, many of whose families are from Ethiopia too. And I saw in them the same awe that I remembered feeling.
One of the teachers I worked with a lot was named Hulda. Hulda is a 9th generation sabra Israeli, on both sides of her family. A sabra is the name given to those born in Israel. For her to be a 9th generation, it means that her family has been living in the land of Israel since at least 200-300 years ago. This, in Israel is an extreme rarity. To think of the history that her family has lived through in this land just amazes me. Hulda, now in her 70s, also happens to be an amazing English teacher. She is the oldest teacher working in the school system in all of Israel. She had retired several years ago, but they asked her to come out of retirement because she was such
me and Esther in Rishon
Esther was very shy about her english in the beginning, and only 14. But she got much more confident during our lessons. She's a sweet girl. a great teacher and they needed her help.
The Israeli school system has been very different to my experience in the American school systems. Students in Israel do whatever they want. If they want to leave class, they leave. If they don’t feel like doing their homework, or working in class, they don’t. The way the students talk to teachers would never be tolerated in the US. It’s not that these are horrible kids or anything like that, it is really just the culture here. My favorite thing that the students say when they don’t want to work is “ein li koach” meaning, I don’t have the energy. They say it all the time! When they say it to me, I just laugh and say I don’t either, but I’m still here. The kids may give teachers a hard time, but most of them are great kids. At least the ones I’ve worked with. The other major difference is the relationships between the students and teachers. Many of them have close relationships, teachers offering extra help, driving students home, hugging them, and in general, a warmer relationship (assuming the student and teacher actually likes each other!). This kind of
my crazy russians in Petach Tikva
Petach Tikva was a rough school. I had this group of 3 teenagers, who were native russian speakers, but spoke english as if it was their native language, and hebrew too. They were also some of the strangest, craziest kids I worked with, and we had a good time "learning" english. All we really did was talk, gossip and tell stories. I got a kick out of them. This is them being weird, as usual. Hehe behavior would never be tolerated in the US, because of law suits and personal boundaries that we are all very careful about in the US. Its kind of unfortunate, I think I would have liked to have a closer relationship with some of my teachers of the past (the ones I liked, which were few, hehe). Anyway. My students and I laughed a lot together, and I think they saw how important English is, and how it can also be fun to learn.
The way the teach English in Israel has the exact opposite problems of how we learn it in the US. Here they focus almost completely on grammar and writing, but they don’t learn to speak the language, and even many of the teachers speak Hebrew in most of the classes. Because they are not really forced to speak the language, they don’t learn how to use the simple grammar appropriately when speaking, they focus too much on the high level grammar, and not enough on the basics of speaking the language. This is the opposite of how I learned in school. We never really focused on much grammar, but instead spoke the language fluently, and knew how to use the grammar correctly in speaking, without knowing what its grammatical terms were. We also learned to write, although grammar was still lacking in this as well. There needs to be some sort of balance and mixture between the two methods. I’m not sure how much English my students actually learned, it depends on their level of English already, but I know that they did become more comfortable with the language, and have raised their confidence in participation in class, and for their eventual final exam in English, which they need to pass to graduate highschool, and later to get into university. In many ways, the school system is much harder here, in terms of having to pass these final exams. I know VA now has the SOLs, but these are so much harder and more concrete.
Three of the schools (out of 5) that I worked at were boarding schools, so the kids lived there. They got to go home for the weekends every two weeks. This seemed to be really hard on most of them. They were taken out of their families for many reasons, and to give them extra help and a better chance at succeeding. But they always talked about how they missed their families. This added an extra dimension to working with these students. They didn’t have much free time, they were in school extra hours, with lots of extra tutoring and special activities every day, and weren’t really given the chance to get in trouble. Of course, many of them did anyway, by sneaking out, getting caught smoking, being in each other’s rooms when they weren’t supposed to, and other things. Teenagers will be teenagers. I wish I had been able to get to know them better, but I am glad I was able to meet them, and maybe make a tiny difference or memory in their otherwise very routine lives.
So, I hope this gives you a taste of what my experience has been like, since I know I didn't talk about it much in my blogs. Included are pictures of me and some of my students.
At least one other blog to come shortly...!
Enjoy!
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Linda
non-member comment
thanks for more great pictures
I hope these entries will always be available online, because I haven't been saving them and they're really terrific! I'll want to hear more about your school experiences when you come home. Hope you and Lisa have a great time together :-)