Chotam – Teach for Israel
Source: Chotam – Teach for Israel
A new program for recruiting bright young college graduates to the teaching profession has been launched by the Israel Ministry of Education along with JDC Israel and Hakol Hinuch, the Movement for the Advancement of Education in Israel. Recent college graduates will be recruited to begin teaching in the 2010-2011 school year after an intensive summer course. They will continue their teacher training and mentoring while teaching an 80% work load, receiving their teaching certificates at the end of the first year of the program.
During the second year of the program, the new teachers will continue teaching along with mentoring and professional development sessions. After two years of teaching they will be eligible for stipends for their graduate education.
The program, "Chotam – Teach for Israel" is modeled after the "Teach for All" program which has been implemented in the US and UK and other countries for years. This program was created to address the problem of educational inequity by enlisting excellent university graduates to commit two years to teach in highest-need schools. In the US and UK 50-60% of the program graduates remain in the teaching profession.
In a recent article in Haaretz, a number of influential academic teacher educators expressed skepticism about the ability of the Chotam program to make long term contributions to the Israeli education scene. They suggest that raising teachers' salaries and investing in improving currently existing teacher education programs would do more to improve the Israel education system.