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 month and received close guidance from a Swiss teacher. My role was to mentor the students before they left Israel, while they were away, and in summarising their learning on their return. Neither of the students had been in Switzerland before, and neither had I; none of us spoke German.
I learned about the Swiss educational system through the descriptions I received from the students, the pictures they photographed and shared with me, and through their writings. As I read their reflective journals, I asked them questions, and they elaborated or asked their mentor teacher for more information. I was learning about the resilience of our pre-service teachers, their social-emotional abilities, and about their aspirations as teachers.
It was interesting to observe what elements of Israeli culture the students (one Jewish and one Druze) chose to share with their Swiss students. I was proud to see how they represented the college and our country. I won’t forget the videos of the Swiss high-school students having a Debka dance lesson in the schoolyard – the enjoyment mixed with surprise on their faces said a lot.
My second experience with an international practicum was in the other direction. I mentored a pre-service teacher from Lucerne who came to Israel for a month. The student stayed with an English teacher on a kibbutz and taught at the regional high school. My mentoring involved coordinating the practicum with the school, communication with the student before her arrival and visiting her at school weekly. Observing Israeli education through her eyes was fascinating. I enjoyed her reactions to the casual relations between teachers and students in the school, her disappointment at the influence of the arts, her motivation to grab any opportunity to teach, and the beautiful relationships she developed with the students eager to speak in English.
This week I embark on a broader international practicum program. You can read about the program initiated by the Oranim International School here and here.
I will be mentoring four practising Jewish studies teachers who are completing their teaching certificate through Oranim. I will meet each of the students weekly, and accompany them as they explore their classroom practice, learn new ways to motivate and engage their primary school students, try a range of new planning and teaching strategies, and search for solutions to the challenges they face in their classrooms.
I am sure that this will be a challenging and enlightening experience for me too. I will need to learn as much as possible about the educational contexts and the institutional cultures in which the practicum is taking place. Each teacher is working in a unique environment and comes from a particular background. It is clear to me that in the beginning, I will be listening, observing, asking questions and thinking hard about what I have to contribute to their professional growth. Part of the challenge will be exploring my assumptions about classrooms and teaching and connecting my own experience and knowledge with the situations which arise.
This will be a unique opportunity to engage with two Australian schools, a Bulgarian school and a Hungarian school. Each pedagogical discussion will allow me to look at the familiar and the known and to question my professional practice. I will need to think hard about the language I am using and will need to continually check whether the teachers and I are using terms in the same ways.
The new academic semester begins in a week, and this international practicum opens this week. It brings with it a special kind of excitement as it is personal and individual. I mostly won’t be preparing materials and structured lessons in advance; rather, it will be the generation of an intensive ongoing dialogue with each student.
