Hello from Hadera, Israel!
The five of us have whirled through another intensive week of touring
in Israel, focusing particularly on traditional schools in the process
of democratizing. The Institute funds itself largely from consulting,
thanks in particular to their specialty in "democratization" -- a
process of mapping community resources and helping communities (or
schools) define their visions. This past week brought us to a small
public school where several older students created a "democratic track"
on their own initiative, to a young democratic school struggling to
survive in a low-income area, and to a large urban public school just
beginning to implement mentorship and smaller-scale democratic reforms.
The ideas are flowing as quickly as ever, and we're
excited to be gaining tools that can bring small but growing changes to
public schools. We'll continually update our website (still in very rough form!).
As always, please feel free to get in touch with any of us, and let us
know how we can make these updates as useful as possible.
best wishes,
Dana Bennis, Shetal Dandage, Julie Hill, Andrew Chen, and Chris Balme
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