What is involved in the pioneer program?

Separation into educational streams, creating a structured separation between children and educators in the various populations within Israeli society – there are simply no meeting points. Recently, with the entry of schools and pioneers from the various sectors into the Educational Pioneer Program, an interesting phenomenon has started taking shape before our eyes. So we decided to take it another step forward.

What is involved in the Pioneer Program?

In the Educational Pioneer Program, which works with schools of all streams, a flourishing field of cross-cultural exchange has been generated, when pioneers – who are teachers in training for future management positions together underwent a 5-year training process. When we saw the results of the meeting we wondered: what else can we give them that will take them forward as they each return to their separate schools? What else are we able to contribute so that they will discard the pattern of separation that the separate streams have created?

We are not afraid . . .

“We are not afraid of the tensions in an encounter between the sectors” says Ayala Luyckx , the Director of the Pioneer Program, “We need to take advantage of the opportunity that has presented itself due to the fact that the Pioneer Program operates in secular, national religious, Arab and the Bedouin circles. Therefore, the Pioneer Program team of R & D at the IDE began to develop a pedagogical model for shared life to deal with the central challenge –  the lack of daily encounter between the different populations within Israeli society”.

“We want to develop a model that can be used by other sections of the Institute and will serve other needs” continues Ayala. “We want to maintain a dialog that looks the difference in the eye and talks about it. We want our instructors to have tools that will enable them to cope with these tensions”.

Entering the development stage

The team that is involved in the R & D process at the Institute hopes that as early as next April they have a result that brings good news and practical tools for connecting populations. This will be a model that could exploit the latent benefits of a diverse society, without ignoring tensions and intercultural differences. The goal is to train the pioneers so that the positive experience they experienced during their training will be conveyed onwards, to help to them cope with “real life”. In addition, we will use the model during work with school administrators themselves who have participated in the program, in the hope that they will bring it with them into life at school.