Arab teacher scheme is boosting integration
INCREASED STATE-LED efforts to place Arab teachers in Jewish schools are helping to build bridges between communities, according to delegates at a major Israeli education conference.
“The central issue during our discussions was the idea that these teachers are ambassadors of the Arab community in Jewish schools,” said conference organiser and expert on cross-cultural education Kamal Aggbriyah.
Five years ago it was relatively rare to find Arab teachers in Jewish schools except in Arabic lessons. Then, the Education Ministry started a push to get Arab teachers giving lessons in science, maths and English, as there was a teacher surplus in the Arab sector.
At this time, the Education Minister was Shai Piron of the centrist Yesh Atid party, but the push has continued under Naftali Bennett of the right-wing Jewish Home party, who took office in 2015.
Today there are 694 Arab teachers in Jewish schools, and almost half teach general subjects. Around 120 of them attended last week’s conference, which was organised by Mr Aggbriyah’s organisation, Merchavim — The Institute for Shared Citizenship in Israel, the Education Ministry and other state bodies. Representatives of the American and Canadian embassies went along.
Discussions helped teachers process the hard parts of their experiences, as well as celebrating the positives.
A maths teacher recalled cancelling an exam paper after seeing copying, only to see the student who cheated returning later with her mother crying. The mother approached the school principal and said: “This is what happens when you let those Arabs teach.” Another teacher said that she was scared to travel to work when anger towards Arabs was spiking during a period of frequent terror attacks.
But Mr Aggbriyah said that discussions showed that overall, the placement of Arab teachers in Jewish school was having a positive effect, especially as many students had never had any sustained contact before. “This isn’t a oncea-year cultural encounter, this is a teacher who is with a class for two hours every week and ends up taking about all sort of things, from festivals to things happening in the news,” he said.
Mr Aggbriyah said Arab teachers were moving to the Jewish sector because they needed employment, not out of idealism — but quickly saw their school choice as an ideal. He said: “It happens a lot that when teachers have been in Jewish schools for a while they get offered jobs closer to home, in the Arab sector, and they say no, because they believe in what they are doing.”