• activities,  Digital tools,  Diversity,  International collaboration,  pre-service teachers,  relational education,  teacher-education

    GatherEd: Learning and Creating Global Teacher Education

    May 17, 2023

    What does GatherEd mean to me? For the second time, GatherEd has provided an opportunity to halt the everyday race, always loaded with local worries, administration, tasks and surroundings, to zoom out of routine and into crucial issues from a different perspective. GatherEd means a chance to grapple with the complexity of education in a changing global reality, collaboratively unpacking terms like multiculturalism and multilingualism. GatherEd has given me the space to think about global teacher education, digital responsibility, inclusion, accessibility and democratic competencies alongside dedicated colleagues from Norway, Iceland, Greece, Spain and Israel. I am grateful for the invitation to attend my second GatherEd workshop at the University of…

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  • activities,  pre-service teachers,  relational education,  teacher-education,  Teaching,  Writing

    Nice to meet you: Letters and questionnaires for building relationships with students

    November 2, 2022

    Teaching and learning are relational processes; building significant relationships in large classes requires planning, time, and hard work. Showing genuine interest in who my students are as individuals is crucial in developing trust and a feeling of safety in my classroom.  At the beginning of each academic semester, I make sure I allow my pre-service teacher students at the Oranim College of Education to introduce themselves to me in different ways. I devote most of the first lesson to an introductory letter in a few of my courses. In the past ten years or more, I have been following a strategy I learned from Professor Julian Kitchen from Brock University…

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  • Assessment,  pre-service teachers,  relational education,  teacher-education,  Teaching

    “More than the calf wants to suck the cow wants to suckle”

    June 22, 2022

    It’s that time of year again – assignments, follow-ups, reminders, and grades. It’s the time of the year when I look at my Google Sheets for each course, fill in the grades from recent assessment tasks, and organise the data. This is often the period when it becomes evident that one or more students will fail the course.  Nothing is a surprise here. Students who are behind or are at risk of failing have had numerous ‘nudges’ during the semester. They have had warnings that they are close to the attendance quota cut-off mark, can’t miss additional lessons, or have received emails that they haven’t submitted work. These messages always…

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  • Digital tools,  pre-service teachers,  relational education,  Teaching

    Giving students a choice: A win-win situation

    January 6, 2022

    “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets “We make our choices; then our choices make us.” Anonymous Giving students a choice is an effective way of differentiating my teaching. In my experience, student choice increases involvement and engagement in the course, elevates motivation and reduces stress. When learners read a list of options and identify ones they can achieve, they experience a sense of “I can do that!” empowerment. Granting choice in academic contexts also prepares learners to take responsibility for their progress. Additional benefits are learners knowing their strengths, exploring…

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  • Online Education,  relational education,  SEL

    Weekly emails: Helping students stay on track

    September 28, 2021

    Throughout the last academic year, I sent students weekly emails in each of my courses; I aimed to keep students connected during the period of extreme social distancing. Some of my courses were asynchronous, some were synchronous (via Zoom), and others were a flipped classroom format (asynchronous study units in preparation for synchronous classes on Zoom). I spent time and effort creating those emails and was determined that they wouldn’t get lost in the tsunami of correspondence that students receive from the college and beyond. I am happy to report that in interviews for my research, I heard from several students that the emails were helpful and supportive during the…

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  • relational education,  Teaching

    Pondering plagiarism: 30 questions

    February 10, 2021

    I spent last week grading assignments. In one course my task included a choice of content and questions. I was almost at the end of the forty-plus papers when I encountered one different in structure. I was annoyed to see that the student hadn’t followed my instructions. ‘Why didn’t he read the instructions; they were crystal clear? What didn’t he understand?’ I asked myself while reading. I decided to ignore the structure of the paper initially and to concentrate on the content. As I read, I could sense that the student hadn’t written the piece. Even though the course was a-synchronous with little inter-personal communication, I could feel something suspicious…

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  • Online Education,  relational education,  teacher-education,  Teaching

    Building community through student choice

    January 25, 2021

    I have just finished teaching ‘Rhetoric Skills: Theory and Practice’. It’s the first time I have taught the semester-long course for first-year BA and preservice teachers and retraining students studying towards their teaching certificate in EFL. Due to the college closure and three periods of lockdown during the semester, I taught the course online. I have already written about my informal meetings with some of the students here. The cohort made up of 42 students was heterogeneous and included students from many Israeli cultural groups. Meeting with Jewish students, both religious and secular, Christians and Muslims from a broad geographical radius in the north of Israel, made the experience richer…

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  • Online Education,  relational education,  Teaching

    Is reaching out to each student viable?

    January 11, 2021

    This week, a fortnight before the end of the semester, I wondered about one of my students. I wasn’t sure that he is up to date with the tasks, although he certainly was earlier in the semester.   I began scanning the units of individual work to check on him. I was right! I saw that he stopped doing the tasks a few weeks ago. Is there a problem? Maybe he is sick or in quarantine? Questions were racing through my head, and then it dawned on me that there might be other students in the same position. Going through the lists of tasks and student names, I decided to write…

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  • Online Education,  Teaching

    I’m giving an inch, are they taking a mile?

    December 1, 2020

    2020-2021 is an unprecedented academic year. Students are dealing with serious issues which significantly influence their study. Many of my students have taken on work as teaching assistants in jobs offered by the Ministry of Education in their effort to divide classes into “capsules” and rapidly increase staff numbers in schools. Many are working in other sectors to support their families or to catch up on long periods of unemployment. Some students have been unwell or quarantined, and many are caring for family members. Other students are still finding it challenging to adapt to online learning and are discovering that every task takes them a lot longer than it should.…

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  • Online Education,  relational education,  Teaching

    Cultivating learning relationships from afar

    October 22, 2020

    Last night I didn’t sleep well, I felt under pressure, anxious, unsettled. This morning two of my teacher-education courses opened online.  As I tossed and turned in bed, I thought about the two groups of students I would meet for the first time on my screen today. I wondered how many would find the link to the Zoom session, how many would win their battles with the internet infrastructure in the regional areas of northern Israel. I wondered how many would be preoccupied with the current financial, social and health problems connected to the pandemic. I tried to imagine myself beginning a new academic year as a student in today’s…

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