Shvilim (Paths)
Shvilim (Paths)
The Challenge
Israel’s education system today is lacking in quality teachers and educators who are driven by vision and want to lead the system into the twenty-first century. Paths operates in the Negev in order to locate and train those educators and to help them become agents of change within the education system of southern Israel. The program brings together students from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities, and this meeting enables them to create new social realities in the Negev.
Project Description
Paths is a training track for educators in social and environmental education which takes place in Kaye Academic College of Education. It uses experiential and experimental learning tools with study frequently taking place outside of the classroom. In this track veteran educators, using this opportunity to complete their degree studies, study alongside young educators at the beginning of their careers. Paths trains teachers to be innovative educators.
The program sees the global environmental crisis not as a crisis of nature but of society; its source is not the relationship between people and nature but between people themselves. There is, therefore, a need to find solutions to the crisis from an educational perspective.
Students graduate the program with the following certificates:
- B.Ed.
- Teaching certificate to teach geography in high schools
- Informal education certificate with a specialization in work with youth in the community or youth at risk.
- Certificate from the Institute for Democratic Education
- Counselor certificate from Keren Karev, the Karev Program for Educational Involvement
Program Characteristics
The program was developed as an experimental program of the Ministry of Education and is recognized as one of the flagship programs of teacher training in southern Israel.
In Practice
The program attracts young people from different sectors of society and residents of the southern periphery, both Jews and Arabs. They learn side by side, through dialogue and cooperation.
Partners: Karev Foundation, Kaye Academic College of Education