The Municipality of Haifa plans to implement components of quality teaching in mathematics and the sciences on a city-wide scale
Seven years ago, the municipality of Haifa embarked on a city-wide program designed to prevent an emerging decline occurring nationwide in the number of high school graduates of 5-unit mathematics and physics. Haifa, which typically excels in these areas, set a goal of further increasing the number of graduates by 25%, and to do so it established an intervention program for students in ten out of its 35 high schools, with an additional investment of 2 million shekels per year. The program provides 2,000 students with after-school supplementary lessons and enrichment activities, such as lectures, visits to laboratories, industry and academia, in partnership with the local universities, hi-tech companies, and science museums.The program is managed centrally by a municipal department established and designated for this purpose, named the Department for Strengthening Education in Haifa, together with the Neve David Community Center, which won the tender to serve as the administrative and financial operating body for special education projects in the city.
After seven years, although the program has not been able to increase the rate of high school mathematics graduates, it has successfully contained the dramatic decline seen elsewhere in the country. In physics, on the other hand, they have seen an improvement of 17%. A year ago, Haifa decided that in order to reach the target in a sustainable manner, it is imperative for them not just to intervene at student level, but to invest in teachers and classroom teaching quality.
In order to do this, they took some initial steps last year by establishing learning communities of teachers, and have now turned to the Foundation and its programs for assistance in implementing components of high-quality clinical teaching. These components would include:
In these communities, teachers will also learn how to help their schools create a support network around the learning of each student by designing a coherent school-based support system, engaging the principal, the school staff, the counselors and the parents.
Partnering with this effort would be an opportunity for the foundation’s programs to work together in collaboration and alignment with each other; and help them prepare for wider scale implementation. The foundation will be able to explore how its clinical teaching strategy is implemented on the ground and to gain hands-on experience in collaborating with a municipal program to increase excellence in math and science education.