Mental Skills Training for 600 Arab Mathematics and Science Teachers in Excellence Tracks

In preparation for implementing the high-tech matriculation program, the government decided to include motivational activities for students of excellence classes. Initially, the idea was to engage students in informal enrichment workshops and to arrange visits to high-tech companies to inspire their motivation. Now, the Ministry of Education is planning deeper and more professional interventions with students and teachers, in collaboration with professional organizations.

As part of this effort, the government is looking to partner with professional organizations. One of these organizations is Alrowad, a not-for-profit organization, established in 2013 by Arab educators, which operates programs for Arab students to increase the likelihood that they will select science and technology tracks in high school. The focus on Arab students stems from the very low participation of excelling Arab students in the high-tech industry and their preference to study mostly medicine at universities in Arab countries.

Alrowad signed on a 10 million NIS joint venture (the philanthropic portion is allocated by the Klarman Family and Crown Family Foundations) with the Ministry of Education to operate programs that would strengthen the mental skills and motivation of 8,000 students in excellence tracks in 40 Arab schools. In discussion with the foundation, we emphasized that the organization would benefit from strengthening its professional capability in the field of mental skills and would need to build training material and capacity to engage the teachers.

In response, Alrowad is proposing a three-year program, which aims to develop professional capabilities that would allow them to train 600 Arab excellence-track teachers of mathematics and the sciences. In the first phase, Alrowad will partner with one of Reichman University’s centers of expertise specializing in mental skills. Together they will learn the unique needs of excelling Arab students and develop tools and strategies to promote growth mindsets and calibrated motivation.

In the second stage, Alrowad and Reichman will train a cadre of coaches, who will learn how to train teachers. These coaches will then train 600 excellence-track teachers of mathematics and science. The foundation expects that each teacher will be trained for at least 10 hours and will receive ongoing feedback as part of professional development.

* The text above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors / Grant 608