Laptops for every student?

by Andrew Wilson

Dear Colleagues,

I started teaching over twenty years ago, and since then, both as a teacher and a parent, I have seen many projects come and go. I'm sure I'm not alone in this ;)

Some projects were baked to perfection, some were so burnt that they were indigestible, while others, sadly, were quite half-baked. I have no doubt that they were all proposed and implemented with the best of intentions, and I mean this most sincerely.

I recently read an article (I'll include the link below) by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich in the JP about proposed plans for 'school computerization'.  Meir Shitrit, Knesset Science and Technology Committee chairman, is quoted as saying "Parents spend hundreds of shekels annually per pupil on buying schoolbooks, when an inexpensive laptop can be bought and used to download all the books from the Internet." The article then goes on to say that there will be an investment of a billion shekels to buy a new computer for each pupil.

Later on, Gila Ben Har predicted that "parents will pay half the cost of a digital book and will be able to purchase a laptop in easy installments for their children" - which slightly contradicts what MK Shitrit said, but never mind. First of all, if parents are expected to pay for the laptops in easy installments, I can already see the difficulties. At our school, there are many families who cannot afford to pay the regular school fees, never mind intsallments for laptops. Secondly, whether these laptops are supplied by the Ministry of Education or bought by parents, the problems are numerous. Our school buys books and lends them to students. No matter how hard we try to keep those books in good shape, there are always books which arrive back at the library in a very sorry state. There also those that disappear into thin air, and I understand that it is difficult to get parents to pay for their replacement. What will happen when a student breaks, drops or loses his laptop? Will the ministry repair or replace it? If not, I can't see parents doing this. Thirdly, let's assume students come with their laptops. I'm no computer expert, but if hundreds of students use the Internet at the same time, is is possible that this would put a strain on the infrastructure at some point along the line? Our school has one technician - I'm sure he'd be driven crazy in a very short space of time by requests from teachers and students to fix various problems. Finally, I have worked with students using the Internet in our computer room on several occasions and every time I have caught some 'poor lost soul' who found his or her way into Facebook  (or worse!) during the lesson. Imagine being in a class with forty students with their noses deep in their laptops. How much work do you think would really be done?

I also wonder how Ms Ben Har arrived at the conclusion that parents will pay half the cost of a digital book. Assuming that she means that digital books will cost half the price of a regular book (the phrasing is ambiguous in the article), I can't help comparing this to Kindle prices which are not so very much cheaper than regular books.
The article informs us that the ministry "will soon issue a directive to all curriculum developers that their work must be produced as digital as well as printed product". If every student has a laptop, etc., etc., then why do we need printed product? I hope it is not because they foresee problems in certain parts of the country (often referred to as "the periphery")...

It is very easy to stand on the sidelines and criticise, and that is not my intention. While not being a computer wizard, I would hope that I am not totally Neanderthal either. I personally like to teach from a book. I am aware of the need to use computers in school, and of the fact that they can complement books perfectly, but do we need to decide that every subject that is taught in school has to go over to complete computerization? I think that as far as English is concerned, the computer is a great tool. If there's so much money 'up for grabs', why not invest it in Interactive White Boards? At the moment, our school has one which is used only for designated classes. I would love to learn more about them. If we use IWBs, this will allow us to have each student focused on the same thing rather than each student working from his own laptop. My guess is that it would be more communicative, and less expensive.

I thought very carefully before writing this mail since, as I've already said, I'm not a computer expert, and it is possible that I have totally misinterpreted some points. If so, I'm sure someone will put me right. However, if there is something in what I say, it seems to me to be a (very expensive) recipe for disaster...

Andrew Wilson

Link for the article: http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=203044

English Tutoring in Israel Today - Competing in a Tough Job Market

by Allan Hirshey

Over the past several decades, the supply of English teaching professionals in Israel has not only caught up with, but has exceeded the demand.  This has resulted in a flood of mostly unemployed English teachers, trying to find jobs in an already over-crowded English tutoring market.  The latter is now strictly a buyer’s market, with no end in sight!

         

The underlying causation factors can be summarized as follows: the large number of local teacher training colleges/universities with English departments, pumping  out hundreds of English major & teacher graduates annually; the same institutions offering  one-year English tutor certification programs, designed for older professionals seeking career changes; the steady influx of “Anglos” toting B.A. and M.A. degrees in English education, exacerbated by the sharp downturn in the global economy;  and even the number of presently employed English school teachers seeking additional income, via the tutoring route.        

Consequently, if you want to stay “a cut above the competition”, here are some   points to remember:

1.     Hebrew Language Proficiency – the lower the age of your student target group, the higher the Ivrit level you’ll need.     

2.    Educational Qualifications - relying on only a B.A. in English education isn’t realistically competitive.  You’re either going to have to beef up your education level to an M.A. and/or obtain instructor certification in perhaps one or more of these specialties - ELS, TOFEL, or SEN . 

3.    Marketing Strategies - maintain updated CVs, personal references, & business cards. For starters, volunteer your services at local community centers and schools.   Post tutoring flyers on neighborhood bulletin boards, and keep checking the JANGLO, ETNI, & similar websites for job opportunities. 

4.   Knowledge of Local Pay Rates - don’t be caught off guard.  Know in advance what the remuneration standards are in your catchment areas for groups & individuals.  In this regard, be flexible & sharpen your negotiating skills.  You’re going to need them!

5.   Technical Expertise/Skills - bonding effectively with younger clients is critical.  This is especially true if their parents are “arm twisting them” into being tutored.  Strengthen your bonding expertise by studying & practicing psychological techniques.  NLP is a good example.         

6.   Psychometric Readiness  - develop & maintain your own system of written tests.  It’s not uncommon to get insufficient client feedback from apathetic classroom teachers.     

7.   Reference Materials -   invest in and build up your own personal library.  There’s tons of free material on the “net” you can download & file away.  

8.   Office Technology - in addition to a PC, owning your own copying & fax machines save time, money, & also increases work efficiency.   

9.   Work Environment – minimize noise & window space.  Loud colored walls & pictures can also cause distractions.  Position wall clocks behind the student.      

10. Creative Entrepreneurship – think of starting your own English tutoring business, wider in scope, with one or more partners’ (each having own specialty & separate network of contacts).  Of course, check out the potential revenues & expenses – this might be a way to go!     

With that said, focus your attention on yourself rather than on the competition.  Don’t be discouraged, and don’t give up.  Always maintain a positive attitude.  If tutoring English is really your passion- GO FOR IT!

Information about Allan Hirshey, the author

I ‘m a native Baltimorean & retired “Fed”, with a 30+ year career span, now living with my wife & four children in Jerusalem.  Having B.A., L.L.B., & M.S. degrees enabled me to “wear many hats”, during my working career.  Some of these positions included lecturing in accounting at a local community college, developing legal cases for Medicare/Medicaid fraud prosecution, and directing the U.S. Public Health Service’s Hill Burton hospital loan portfolio (San Francisco RO).  I also managed the reimbursement operation for the Community Mental Health Centers Program, a national outpatient mental health program, administered by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (Baltimore, Central Office).  

After making aliyah, I decided to begin a new career.   Accordingly, I obtained professional counseling and English tutoring certificates from Refuah Institute and the Natanya English Center (under AACI auspices), respectively.  Presently, I provide voluntary counseling, including Reality Therapy, to yeshiva students. Additionally, I do English & basic math tutoring.  I also learn in a yeshiva half a day.  Express Tutoring is the name of my formal tutoring service, & business English is my specialty.  A few years ago, I developed a “Business English 101” course for an Israeli teacher’s college.

During my spare time & in order to maintain my sanity (whatever’s left) , I play tennis, write articles, listen to a variety of musical selections, do genealogical research, occasionally attend NLP workshops, and enjoy babysitting with my grandchildren.      

    

Teach SPEECH on the college level

By Dr. Jenny Weil

Open any Israeli newspaper and the employment ads are likely to read :”Fluency in English and Hebrew required.”  Most EFL (English as a foreign language) courses at university level unfortunately do not stress public speaking.  Most classroom sessions are spent on reading comprehension and on some writing.  These are, of course, two very important aspects of language learning.  But, in my opinion, these two pale when comparing them to the ability to express oneself in the target language.  In addition to my college teaching, I taught at INTEL and at every session some engineers were absent.  I thought that perhaps my teaching lacked brilliance, but, no.  After inquiring about these absences I was told that they were overseas, England, America, South Africa, France, etc… giving lectures on their new technical advancements.

Bryden and Scott  state in their book”The Art and Science of Public Speaking” that taking a speech course  encourages students to think of their speeches as opportunities to become opinion leaders.  These are people who influence others to adopt innovative ideas, products or processes.  Let’s be honest, some of the most successful entrepreneurs got to the top, merely by their power of speech.

Not all college students will end their education after their B. A.   Hopefully, many will continue their studies for an M.A. or a Ph.D.  Here in Israel, many of the students need to work while continuing their studies. To facilitate this process, they will have to get all kinds of jobs.  So, as I mentioned in my first sentence, fluency in English is a must.

A few years ago, I was lucky to be able to teach a speech class in my college program.  The students were elated and felt confident when speaking in the target language.When one of my students, Amikam Levy, was chosen to become the ambassador to Vietnam, I realized even more than ever before that putting an  English oral communication class into a university curriculum was crucial.

Over 2500 years ago King Solomon understood the power of speech by stating his famous quote from proverbs 18:21. “The tongue  has the power of life and death.”  Throughout history  this sentence has proven to be true.  I think that the most recent example is the meteoric rise of Barack Obama, mainly on his exceptional rhetoric skills.

I am calling the Council For Higher Education in Israel to reprioritize and to make an English communication class mandatory to receiving  a B.A.  Let my people speak (in English)!

If I could do it all over again ...

by David Lloyd

Now there is a loaded title. So many things to consider. But let's narrow it down. To our decision of  becoming a teacher.

"Why DID I do it?"

How many times have you asked yourself that question? Can you really remember the answer? Was it a labour of love? A matter of convenience? Did you always want to be a teacher, or like me, thought that this was the last thing you'd choose to do, and then one day, it just felt right.

I guess, looking back, it was much better than continuing to milk cows on a kibbutz. Although it was much easier to manage a few hundred cows through the milking barn, than manage a classroom of 20 to 40 unruly students. Beating them with a plastic rod to spur them on was clearly frowned upon by the principal. I imagine it still is.

Maybe the burning question shouldn't be "Why did I choose to become a teacher?" but "Why did I stay in teaching, when I finally knew what it was all about?"

Five years ago, we put up a poll - "If I had a chance to do it all over again..."
51% chose - "I would choose a different profession."
while the other 49% stated, that despite everything, they would still choose to be a teacher.
Should this surprise us? And if so, why? Because so many teachers would choose this profession all over again, or because more than half would never choose it again?

It would be interesting to post  this poll again, here on the ETNI Blog. Has anything really changed in the last five years. Any bets?

I receive many emails from people who want to come to Israel to teach, or people already in Israel who have decided to make a career change to teaching. I don't know how to best answer them. Warn them of the dangers? Encourage them on? I used to send them on to the ETNI list, but I found that teachers were scaring them off. "Are you crazy! Do you know what we are paid? And don't expect anyone to respect you, not to mention the violence!" So I now usually first point them to the "Teaching in Israel" WORD file that the English Ministry has put out and suggest they contact the Chief Inspector in order to receive any further official information. And then, at the very end, slip in the suggestion of their writing also to the ETNI list.

The thing is - English teaching has become a huge commodity throughout the world. Kids, just recently out of their teens, with little, or no English teaching background, and not even a work visa, are teaching in places like South Korea, where there is a dire need for English teachers. The ETNI Advertisement Board is bombarded daily by schools in China and Taiwan that are looking for native English speaking teachers. I have blocked such postings, because their appetite for repeated postings is insatiable, and Etniers have complained. Although, I must say, the idea of going to China or Taiwan to teach is tempting at times ...

So, what DO you get out of teaching? Are there days when you feel that this is your true calling? That you have made a significant difference in your students' lives? And then other days when you ask yourself - "What was I thinking?"

Should I come back and ask you this same question, tomorrow?

If we could do it all over again ...

Is Grassroots a dirty word?

by David Lloyd

Teachers have been greatly empowered over the last twenty years. This first started with a group of mavericks who stumbled across a new tool, something called the "Internet". I say "stumbled across" because -  up until the end of the 20th Century - no one in the Ministry of Education seemed to realize that the Internet existed. In the now infamous "Tomorrow 98 (Mahar 98)" campaign set up by the Israeli Ministry of Education to - among other things - computerize Israeli schools, there was only a half page mention of the Internet, in what was otherwise a very long and detailed document.

Actually, it wasn't so much that the Ministry of Education didn't know that the Internet existed, but rather it felt that this was a bad dream which would hopefully fade away. Why did they wish it away instead of seeking to harness its clear educational promise? Because it threatened the whole infrastructure on which the Ministry of Education is built - "top-down management" - in which a few at the top decide on policies that will dictate to all those below.

The rapid spread of Internet use didn't just threaten the authoritative control Ministry of Education, but also that of all types of organizations which, until then, had a monopoly over the distribution of information in their field. As Sir Francis Bacon once said - "Knowledge is power" - and the people in positions of authority had learned how to hoard knowledge in order to achieve and maintain power.

When I first presented the idea of a virtual English teachers' network to the CALL ("Computer Assisted Lanaguage Learning") Ministry committee in 1995, one member of the committee responded to my idea of having teachers share lesson plans and teaching ideas over the Internet by saying - "Teachers shouldn't do this. This should be left to us professionals."

Well, there was a reality check. Here I had thought that teachers were professionals. What constitutes a professional, then? Here we are, after going through teacher training, some of us have worked in the field for over twenty years ... when can we be considered professionals? Or is this something a teacher can never achieve in the eyes of the Ministry?

I was very fortunate at the time. Although the members of the committee didn't believe that a virtual English teachers' network could ever happen, for most teachers at the time didn't even have a computer at home and teachers ... well ... teachers weren't used to doing things for themselves other than following the suggestions laid down in teacher guides and ministerial commands ... I knew differently. I realized that there was already a rich infrastructure in place through which English teachers traded information about their teaching styles, lesson plans, and new ideas. This infrastructure was called ETAI (English Teachers Association in Israel) which, at the time, ran one or two conferences during the year where English teachers presented their ideas to other English teachers. A real "grassroots" organization. I remember hearing teachers say at the end of such conferences - "I wish we could have this sort of thing every day, and not just once or twice a year." And I thought to myself, "Why not?" At the time I had introduced the first Freenet into the Ramat Negev region and had set up the first website in Hebrew for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing aimed at serving as a framework for mutual assistance. Why couldn't I introduce this experience of a virtual community to English teaching as well, especially since teaching was my main calling.

And so ETNI came into being. And I truly believe that virtual grassroots movements, such as ETNI, have led to a greater democratization of the process. And although the Ministry still kicks and groans, it has been forced to recognize this new world and try to adapt itself to the new reality. Official information is no longer found at the end of dusty corridors, but can now be accessed at the click of a mouse. No longer are we totally dependent on information and ideas that are officially dished out - we have access to other sources. And there are many examples where teachers have had a say in new policies (such as the creation of the New Curriculum, where the Ministry asked for teacher input through the virtual airwaves) and where teachers have managed to successfully challenge Ministry policies which didn't take the teacher's input into account (such as the new Literature program and the decision to abolish the Immigrant teacher program).

So, although there are people who still cringe and shudder when they hear the term "grassroots", all in all, I think this term has served us well.

Teaching English - are you alone?

by David Lloyd

We have all been there. We enter the classroom, close the door, and are all alone. Alone with 30 to 40 students regarding us with a mixture of suspicion and apathy. "Entertain us!" their cry silently rings out. And then their eyes fade away into grey and we have lost them for the next hour.

There are days when this is the greatest profession on earth. Where we feel that we have singly made a significant difference in their lives, and have done much more than simply teach English learning strategies. And then there are days when we wonder why we ever believed we could be a teacher.

We finish the day and go home, left with many questions unanswered. The teacher's life is often a very lonely one. We wonder at times if we are the only ones experiencing such self doubts and facing the daily challenge of enriching our teaching experience.

One of the reasons for creating this virtual network for English teachers is to help us through this. Our belief is that every teacher, no matter what his or her experience, has something to offer - something unique to say. Through listening to each other and working together, we will not only not feel alone, but will turn our teaching into a much more meaningful experience, both for our students and for ourselves.

We hope that you will take an active part in the deliberations.