“Ironically, during the first stage of the war, the students who came to school for the displaced were students who were looking for companionship and were not very interested in studying,” Kiryat Shmona's Ort. said Dr. Maggie Muallem, biotechnology coordinator at Danziger High School. .
Muallem is also currently a teacher at a school for children evacuated from the north that has opened near Tel Aviv.
“Strong students stayed in hotels because it is impossible to study regularly in such classes.” Muallem added, “They understood that the entrance exams might not go as expected. “I also understand that the three hours a week I teach via Zoom is not the same as a typical eight hours in person.” receive. Soon, these students will be taking selection exams for military positions. They will find themselves disappointed sitting next to people who were able to study well in high school without having their lives completely disrupted. When these evacuated students start studying at university, who will care that they were sitting in a hotel four years ago and couldn't study properly? ”
Muallem was one of the featured speakers at the Conference on Education in War and the War on Education, held recently in Tel Aviv. The conference addressed the biggest challenges and issues in the education sector that immediately emerged on the morning of Sunday, October 8th. The gulf between Israel's periphery and center existed long before this war.
Periphery and displacement as widening inequality
The problem is now even more acute as the evacuated students are all from the Gaza Strip and remote areas of northern Israel. These issues and very worrying expectations for the future were at the heart of the conference, which was organized by the nonprofit organizations Kedma and Village Way Educational Initiatives.
About 48,000 school-age children and teenagers were evacuated from the south and north. Together with their families, they evacuated to more than 377 evacuee absorption centers in 54 local governments across the country.
Perhaps because of this dispersion, the Ministry of Education does not have up-to-date information on approximately 8,000 evacuated children, or 17% of all evacuated children. Are these children attending school? If so, where are they?
Professor Orit Hazan of the Technion's Faculty of Science, Technology and Education, who presented the data at the conference, said that even three months after the outbreak of the war (the expiry date of the presented data), the state still has no control over the education provided to evacuated students. We only have partial information about the service.
Challenges for displaced students
Mr. Muallem used the case of Kiryat Shmona to introduce the various problems and challenges faced by displaced students, parents, and teachers. After initial disorientation and failed attempts to integrate city students into Tel Aviv schools for various reasons, a special school was established for students who had taken refuge in shopping and entertainment malls near Tel Aviv. It was established.
This school reflects the extraordinary mobilization of the school as a whole, starting with the teachers who were evacuated from the city and its surrounding areas, which constitute the main artery of the teaching staff. The latter suddenly found themselves in a new professional framework with staff, colleagues and managers they did not necessarily know. They were also usually required to work on additional subjects that they had not previously taught.
These teachers were primarily asked to serve as emotional support for students who were living with their families in hotel rooms or other temporary housing for several weeks. “For evacuated students, their only private space at the moment is often their pillow,” Muallem said.
The evacuated teachers did all this in the face of all the hardships of a panicked and evacuated population, often worrying about their spouses left behind or in the Reserves. Is going. Of course, teachers also have to deal with their own children's anxieties.
Although there is a lot of goodwill and dedication in high schools for evacuees, these temporary schools suffer from a number of serious problems. The building is in no way suitable for educational purposes. Classes are very diverse and change almost every day. Students with special needs find themselves learning alongside gifted students. All of this creates extreme instability, and teachers find it nearly impossible to maintain a consistent learning routine.
This problem is particularly acute for evacuated high school students, with a quarter of the students from Kiryat Shmona not being placed in any framework since their evacuation from the city. For many of them, studying for entrance exams suddenly stopped and was replaced by wandering around the city and all sorts of other highly undesirable phenomena.
The growing role of NGOs
Since October 7, non-governmental educational institutions have stepped up their activities and contributed more than ever. In the second week of the war, the non-profit organization Kedoma established a special learning center for students evacuated from Sderot in one of his Dead Sea hotels. Based on its operational success, Kedoma subsequently established additional study centers for other students evacuated to the area.
Village Way Educational Initiatives founded the Pathfinders Project. This project aims to personally empower displaced students and help them construct constructive narratives about this traumatic time. In the spirit of Dr. Chaim Peri, a veteran and respected educator, each participating student will perform an act of tikun olam (social repair) within their own community and complete a personal photography project (“Triumph of Victory”). You are encouraged to create your own album. “If there are seven words worth engraving today, they are 'growing over time,'” Peri recently wrote.
It is clear that there is no magic solution to such a sudden and traumatic crisis, such as the one that befell the education system during a general national crisis. I have to say that the Ministry of Education has done quite a bit, but the continued struggle to evacuate 2.5% of Israeli students, almost five months since the war began, requires improvement.
At the meeting, questions were raised about what would happen if, God forbid, there was a tsunami or earthquake that required much larger evacuations. The Department of Education will apply key lessons currently being learned to effectively manage the system, based on a complete and reliable database, and ensure that the majority of students continue to learn, even in the face of large-scale challenges. I wonder if it can be done like this? Natural disasters? This is the challenge for the future.
After an exhausting day's work at a school for evacuated students near Tel Aviv, evacuated teachers, and many others like them, put hours of their time and energy into a remote afternoon. I cannot finish without saying more about the teachers who spend their time. Learn via Zoom with students from your original local school or classroom.
When asked what motivates teachers despite the objective challenges, Muallem answered: They understand that this is a national mission, and after years together, they don't want to see their students fail the entrance exam. ”
“And…we're also waiting to be noticed,” Muallem said of the evacuated teachers. “They're going to ask us how we're doing, too.”
The author is CEO of Village Way Educational Initiatives. Village Way Educational Initiatives is committed to transforming Israeli society through education that empowers and creates a sense of belonging.
