Real Voices 2023｜NPO JEARN

Ruty Hotzen

iEARN Teacher
GESHER Kfar Shmaryahu Elementary School

Israel

Ms. Ruty Hotzen from Israel

What school or organization are you working at?
If you are a teacher, how many years of experience do you have as a teacher?

Let me start with some words about me. I was a teacher for 36 years. Now I do not have “my school” or “my class” and this report will be about some classes and some schools in my country or in my project.

If you are a teacher, what subject do you teach? How many students are in your class?

The name of my (last) school is: GESHER Kfar Shmaryahu Elementary School. It is in Israel in the middle of the country. It is a public school as most of schools in Israel.

This 6 years school is for 3 communities: two villages and one Kibuttz. It has almost 300 students. When I was a teacher there, I was a science teacher and I used to teach Biology and Chemistry.

What is the compulsory education system in your country?
In Israel it is compulsory system 5-18 or K-12. One year in kindergarten and 12 years in school.

When does the school year start and end in your country?
1st of September till 20th June.

How many years of experience do you have in iEARN?
What iEARN projects have you done with your students?

17 years of experience. Projects I have done:
Talking Kites, Daffodils and Tulips, and Learning Circles.
Talking Kites in the footsteps of J. Korczak: I love this project and I created it because J. Korczak is my hero. I hope students and teachers around the world will get to know Korczak and especially about children’s rights.

Daffodils and Tulips: I love this project and I created it first as I was a biology teacher. It allowed any K-12 student to take part and even any individual to take part from home. It is a great PBL project.
Learning Circles: Another great project to start with iEARN and to see what is collaboration project.

Students from Georgia planting their bulbs

Daffodils and Tulips Project
We hope that our bulbs will survive winter
and delight with their flowers in the spring.

Students from Turkey in their green house

Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your school or your students?
Were there any major changes?

Students took classes on Zoom for one year and when they came back for “normal” school life it was step by step. From that time, we, the teachers, learnt to work with small groups and with more collaboration between groups learning in the same class, or by mentoring--elder students to younger ones.

Regarding the use of ICT, is One-to-One PC being done in your school? Do your students take those devices home? Do you use them for online classes?


Students in my school have their computers. Most of the students in Israel have PCs or tablets or the municipality help them to have. They use computers for making presentations, looking for data in Google, and communication with others in their community or around the world.

Could you give any messages to teachers in Japan?
Let us collaborate by doing projects.

*****
The iEARN Teacher interviews are part of a series of articles by JEARN entitled "Connecting The World! Teachers Network News" starting with the January 2023 issue in a Japanese monthly magazine for educators, Cresco (Otsuki Shoten Publishers here).