Source: Kav L'Chinuch
The Beit Berl College has established an academic unit to aid beginning teachers deal with difficulties in their work during their year of internship and the following two years of work. The main aim of the unit is to prevent the dropout of beginning teachers from the school system. This, in the light of recent research, which shows that about half of the graduates of Israeli teacher colleges don't go into teaching or dropout of the profession within three years of their graduation.
The unit will provide professional workshops for their graduates for 40 hours annually. The workshops will deal with problems faced by the new teachers in their schools, such as problems with class organization and management, dealing with conflict situations in the class, teacher-pupil relations, improving communication with parents, writing assessments, improving teamwork, as well as other professional or affective issues raised by the teachers.
The unit will employ the college's teaching internship coordinators along with 25 workshop coordinators who were trained at the MOFET Institute for this purpose. The unit will also work to strengthen ties with administrators of schools where the new teachers work. The unit will also operate a website with a web forum for each workshop where the new teachers can carry out discussions with their peers and workshop leader about any arising issues. The workshop leaders will also be available for telephone consultation.
In addition to supporting the new teachers, the new unit will carry out action research which will document the new teachers' teaching experiences in order to gather knowledge about this area and pass it on to the educational policy makers.