I am in a hotel in Crete writing to process an inspiring three-day inspiring workshop funded by the Erasmus + program. When I arrived in Rethymnon in Crete from Israel, I knew I would be participating in a GatherED international workshop about language education in multi-lingual and multi-cultural classroom environments. I immediately discovered that the learning was engrossing, and the powerful emotional connections with fellow participants extended well beyond any expectation. I flew to Rethymno with four Oranim College of Education colleagues. I knew Janina Kahn Horwitz, the head of my department, very well, but the others were only acquaintances. Representing the college together in an international context instantly bonded…
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“Academia Community”
As a pedagogical advisor at the Oranim College of Education, I accompany groups of pre-service teachers (hereinafter referred to as students) in their practicum in a primary school. The second and third-year students are at the school one or two days a week throughout the school year. I have been at the Beit Zeev school a day a week for four years now. On the days that I am at the school, I meet with teachers and my students and observe my students teaching classes, small groups and individual pupils. At the end of the school day, I meet with the student cohort to discuss teaching, learning, and class management…
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Chat stations: Moving a favourite teaching strategy online
I am always searching for ways to encourage my students to be active and involved in the lesson; I aim for all to be engaged in the discussion. A whole-class discussion usually means a few students contributing, directing most of the comments to the teacher ping pong style. Even if the teacher decides to hear every group member, it can only ever be a short statement because of time limitations.I follow and deeply admire Jennifer Gonzales, a teacher blogger at Cult of Pedagogy. A few years ago, Gonzales wrote a post on ‘chat stations’, a teaching strategy that resonated with me, and I adopted it immediately. The simple idea involves…
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A Flipgrid Week – Teaching and Learning with Video
It has been a Flipgrid week. My first-year students in the Oranim English Department made introductory videos. The students, taking their first steps in academia, presented themselves in English in ninety-second videos. Looking at their faces, hearing about their backgrounds, their hobbies, and their dreams of becoming teachers was a pleasure for me, but it was much more than that. In an a-synchronous higher education course, where I only met the students once in a large group on Zoom, this opportunity to see and hear them one by one at the beginning of the course was crucial. Through their Flipgrid videos, I ‘met’ the students as individuals, but just as…
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International practicum – another learning opportunity
When most teacher educators hear the concept ‘international practicum’, they imagine groups of pre-service teachers boarding a plane and travelling to experience teaching and learning in another country. Teaching faculty from their institution usually accompany them.Since I began my teaching at the Oranim College of Education, I have been involved in two small international practicum projects, and I am about to embark on a larger one. All of these experiences have involved online or local mentoring.My first international mentoring experience involved accompanying two third-year students from Oranim who were chosen to fly to Lucerne, Switzerland, to experience teaching in a high school there. They lived with Swiss families for a…
