Jewish Portal of Teacher Education

Source: Center for Israel Education

Building upon the previous successes of the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel (ISMI), CIE now offers the CIE Professional Development Workshop on Modern Israel: a week-long opportunity (June 23-28, 2013) in Atlanta, GA, for educators and educational leaders to deepen their understanding of Israel’s history, politics, economy and culture, while cultivating participants’ skills in classroom application and best practices. After collaborating with experts and peers, and honing their instructional practices, Summer Workshop alumnae are uniquely positioned to foster understanding of the significance of Zionism and the State of Israel in Jewish and world history for generations of students.

The CIE one-week workshop offers a comprehensive understanding of modern Israel and provides a wide array of tools for curriculum development and teaching. Workshop sessions are designed to reflect the needs of our cohorts attending, whether adding content or providing additional teaching ideas for curriculum and lesson plan development. Leading the workshop are experienced curriculum, academic, and content specialists from Israel and the United States. Sessions are conducted from Sunday afternoon until Friday lunch time. Each day is filled with content, curriculum development sessions, and time for reflecting and processing ideas culled. We anticipate that each teacher will leave the workshop with newly developed Israel curriculum materials, and encourage participants to bring previously created Israel curriculum to the workshop for assessment and possible augmentation. Each participant receives a large resource binder containing primary and secondary sources, power point prsentations and audio files for classroom use, half a dozen books to augment collections in a school’s library, an assortment of Israeli Consulate materials, and a collection of CIE curriculum sets which include teacher guides and student workbooks.

Topics

Topics covered in the workshop include: the biblical connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, modern Jewish history to the origins and development of modern Zionism, the growth of the Yishuv, Israeli foreign policy, development and workings of Israel’s political system, Israeli music and literature, domestic issues that confront a maturing Israel society such as civil liberties and national security, religion and society, social issues, the US-Israel relationship, Israel’s role in regional and international politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Israeli economy. Accompanying pedagogy sessions enrich a teacher’s ability to take new information directly into their classroom. These include sessions on experiential teaching methods and the use of technology in the Israel learning classroom.

Who Should Apply?

We encourage teachers who have a direct impact on students to apply for the limited number of available positions. The workshop is geared for teachers in day schools as well as supplemental and congregational schools, teaching 5th through 12th grades. Historically, more than 80 percent of the participants attending are in daily classroom contact with students. Education specialists in experiential settings, such as JCC educational directors and lead administrators from BJEs, are also encouraged to submit applications. They should demonstrate in their applications that they directly affect insertion of Israel content into their institution’s curriculum and instructional lesson plans. Where possible, we seek enrollment from two or more teachers from one school, in an effort to develop an Israel spiral curriculum. We have found our workshops to be applicable to various types of educators, and therefore accept applications from Jewish and non-Jewish teachers, those who do not speak Hebrew to native speakers born or educated in Israel. Workshop alumni stay up to date by registering at the CIE Curriculum Corner, and sharing lesson plans and best practices with a very large cohort of Jewish educators across the continent and beyond.

Requirements: To participate, teachers must submit a completed application form along with a commitment letter from their heads of school or principals indicating that the participating teacher will incorporate Israel into his/her classroom. Participants must be able to stay at the workshop site for the duration of the entire week.

Since 2003, generous funding for the one-week workshop has been provided by The AVI CHAI Foundation.