Seminar HaKibutzim

Thursday September 8, 2011

The first day of the seminar was mainly focused on introduction lectures.  It was quite overwhelming because many people were still very jetlagged.  Most groups have the same hour or so drive in each direction from their homes to the seminars. 

The following days have been more focused on education/language acquisition/ teaching a foreign language/ English as a Second Language.  Several of the lectures have been very much focused on the same material I was exposed to during my undergrad.  However, helpful for the ITF members without teaching backgrounds at times a little boring for the educators.  There are about 5-8 of us who have either completed undergrad with an education background, and have had teaching experience already.

The interesting lectures have been about the focus of the structure, struggles, and special qualities of the Israeli education system.  We have seminars in the morning and then after lunch we have small group instruction.  Cities are placed together to study with a Mechanechet Pedagogic (Professor of Education).  We are together with the Ramle/Lod group.  Our Mechanechet is Ruthie, she is great!  We definitely share the same approach to education and expectations of students.  The class has really gelled nicely of the first couple of days.  We are mostly comfortable with each other and have very open and honest conversations with ruthie.

Yesterday afternoon we had three rotating seminars.  Each mechanechet taught a fun focused approach.  When we were with Ruthie we discussed different activities/games to begin a lesson with engaging activities.  One professor focused on songs as a mode of classroom management.  It is always fun when a group of 20 something year olds begin singing songs such as "Ten Little Monkeys", "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes".  The activity we were given was to split into groups and think of two songs from our childhood and then lead the class.  It was really a lot of fun.  The third seminar was about using literacy based lessons with students.  That was a lot of fun as well.

Overall, we have had a very intense but fun variety of seminars for our first week at Seminar HaKibutzim.