Background

According to the recent State Comptroller’s report, 99% of Israeli students graduate without ever meeting someone from the other sector (Jewish or Arab) during their years of schooling. Since an integrated educational system is not attainable in Israel at this time, Givat Haviva has been working since 2014 on the integration of teachers across sectors, bringing Jewish teachers of spoken Hebrew into Arab schools.

The program has proven effective in reducing suspicion and bringing the beneficiaries closer, with a positive impact on their communities. This led to the recognition of Givat Haviva as a valuable partner by the Ministry of Education, resulting in the rollout of a Cross-Sector Teachers Exchange as a program with the potential (and the intent) to scale up integration within school faculties. The program aims to facilitate large-scale encounters between teachers and students in a familiar academic environment for a sufficient period to bring about a meaningful impact. The teachers and faculty are provided with support and training to guarantee a positive and effective semester.  

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Program Details

The proposed program is a series of semester-long exchanges of teachers in pairs from Jewish and Arab schools. Schools will be paired based on proximity and parity to facilitate stronger connections between the schools, beyond the individual exchange teachers. The program will run for three years as a pilot with the Ministry before being scaled up and integrated into the educational system. In the first year, the mechanisms for implementation were created and honed on 14 pairs of teachers. In the second year, we plan to expand to 25 pairs. 

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• In order to accommodate the language gap of the Jewish teachers, we will focus primarily on teachers of English, the Sciences, physical education, and the arts. 

• Each of the schools will provide a mentor host teacher to personally accompany the visiting exchange teacher, to create a smooth transition.

The visiting teachers doing the exchange, the designated mentor host teachers in the schools, the school leadership, and leading faculty members will all receive significant, targeted training. The students will also receive facilitated preparation and processing sessions.

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The exchange combines the three approaches to conflict resolution and shared community building: contact theory, narrative and identity dialogue, and shared goals and interests. It accomplishes this by bringing people from the two societies together for an extended period of time on an almost daily basis for 3-4 months. It provides training that enables constructive narrative dialogue in a familiar and academic setting where teachers and students work together in pursuit of clearly defined objectives.

The beneficiaries of this program include the visiting teachers in the program, their mentor host teachers, the principals and faculty of participating schools, and of course these teachers’ students in high school and junior high school, in mixed regions and cities in Israel. A program operating through the public school system reaches all segments of the population regardless of socioeconomic status or political alignment.