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A humanistic pedagogy:

Rethinking education and envisioning possibilities for transient students

Elite Ben-Yosef

“For most children going to school is as simple as walking around the block. But for

others it is an end of a long and dangerous journey through deserts, war zones and hostile

borders.” So opens Strangers no more the Oscar winning documentary about the K-12 students

of the Byalik-Rogozin school in Tel-Aviv, Israel who come from 48 countries and speak 35

different languages. Although it is otherwise a typical inner-city school serving the local

impoverished population, this school and its predecessor, the Byalik elementary school1, found

themselves at an intersection of global and local dynamics that brought children of work

migrants, undocumented immigrants and refugees to their doors. Above sharing with the locals

the social, economic and political powerlessness and high levels of distress that characteristically

manifest in low educational achievement and high drop-out rates among the children, these

mobile and often transient families traversed cultural (i.e. linguistic, religious, educational) and

social (class, living arrangements, work) boundaries as well as political borders (coming from

other countries, other laws, lacking documentation) rendering them even more vulnerable and

fragile, as Anzaldúa writes about the Mexican illegal migrant (1999, p.35):

As a refugee, she leaves the familiar and safe home-ground to venture into unknown and,

possibly, dangerous terrain.

This is her home

this thin edge of

barbwire.

Sometimes the home ground that they leave isn‟t safe at all and there is a strong probability that

the children experienced trauma there, along their migration/escape route or in the new country

(attachment disruption, hunger, incessant fear).

The challenge facing the faculties of the Byalik school (then) and Byalik-Rogozin school

(currently) was and still is providing optimal educational experiences for their students despite

1 Pronounced bee-ya-leek, this was the original local public school that took in the transient population of locals as

well as those from around the world and where the faculty developed the unique pedagogy to deal with the

educational challenges. In 2005 the school building was condemned for safety reasons and the teachers and students

moved into the local Rogozin school that had up until then served as a middle and high school. Today Rogozin-

Byalik is a K-12 public school serving the local children.

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their amplified needs and the overwhelming adversity and turmoil in their lives. This approach

necessitated a profound rethinking of the concepts of education and schooling and the sagacity of

imagining the possible.

The most human aspect of learning is that it happens in a web of relationships Berritz, 2001, p.75

Background

The Byalik elementary (K-6) school was located on a central thoroughfare between two

large bus depots, several open air markets and amid a bustling sex industry. Heavy traffic

rumbling by all day, horns blasting, stifling exhaust fumes, all accompanied by loudspeakers and

music from the markets predominated the environment. The surrounding neighbourhoods

consisted of old, shabby and crumbling apartment buildings along winding and sometimes

unpaved roads. It started out as a place where impoverished Israeli families lived, mostly those

who were powerless to move out despite government help, or native families who moved

“down” to the area, but these demographics changed with the influx to the country of about 1

million immigrants from the former soviet union, the arrival of work migrants from around the

world (estimated at between 50 to 100 thousand living in the country) and, in the past few years,

refugees from Sudan, many of whom are homeless and living in public parks and bomb shelters

in the vicinity. The relatively low rents and ease of slinking out of sight, proximity to

transportation and the desire to live near others in similar predicaments and from similar

countries and cultures have created a vibrant, culturally diverse though, precarious community.

There is a public religious Jewish school in the neighbourhood as well as a Catholic school in a

nearby neighbourhood that some of the local children attend, but a majority of them attended

Byalik until it was shut down in 2005 and they now go to the Byalik-Rogozin (K-12) school a

few blocks away.

The demographic change at Byalik was substantial and compelling: 52% of the students

were native Hebrew speakers in 1996 but by 2000, only 21% were, while the other 79% came

from 35 different countries and spoke 18 different languages. During the 7 years between 1995

and 2002 the change in countries of origin of the approximately 300 students were as follows:

native Israelis went down from 55% to 11%, Russians stayed around 30%, the number of

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children from the Americas grew from 5% to 25%, Arabs from 4% to 6% and children from all

other countries went up from being 3% to 25% of the school population.

The children trickled in with differing histories, experiences of schooling and language

skills: a7 year old from Ghana with no prior educational experience, a 10 year old from Turkey

who had gone to a one-room school only during winters when there was no work in the fields for

him, a group of Russian kids who had very strict long-day schooling from an early age who

complained that the Israeli system wasn‟t rigorous enough, other children whose education had

been disrupted for long periods due to their family‟s migration, some could not read or write in

any language and all were struggling with Hebrew literacy. Student turnover rates were about

15% yearly with kids suddenly showing up or disappearing from school and relationships with

the children‟s families became increasingly problematic since many were unavailable - some

worked very long hours, others were afraid to be seen in public places least they be caught and

deported and others were just not there.

The original Byalik students came from disenfranchised families that were mostly from

what were culturally considered lower status, Israeli Sfaradi groups. The huge wave of

immigrants from the former Soviet Union was mostly absorbed into communities around the

country and they received government help with education, housing and jobs, but a small group

did not qualify for the benefits; some left and some chose to stay in the country (legally or not)

ending up in the vicinity of Byalik. Then work migrants entered the picture and since many of

them lacked visas and work permits, they settled in this area which provided some measure of

obscurity together with cultural networks of support (i.e., a church, people speaking their

language).

David is an American who organizes pilgrimage tours to the Holy Land from the

Americas. Several months ago he was awakened by the phone in the middle of the night.

It was Israel calling, notifying him that the people in the group he had sent from the

Dominican Republic fit the profile of people who come in the guise of pilgrims and stay

in Israel as illegal workers. The airport authorities were denying them entry to the

country and were going to put them on the next plane back home.

After much argument and discussion, the group was let into the country on

condition they deposit their passports and return tickets with the pastor who was the

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group leader, and if any one of them was absent from the plenum when their trip was up,

the pastor would be denied any future entry to Israel.

The ending of this story leads almost to the front door of the Byalik School.

Within the first three days in Israel, all but one of the people in the group had vanished,

leaving their passports and tickets behind, seeking employment and an alternative to their

past lives. Their children (who will be born in Israel or smuggled into the country) will,

most probably, become students at Byalik. (Ben-Yosef, 2003, p.18)

In the past several years, refugees from the war in Darfur (Sudan) have fled north,

reaching Egypt and crossing the desert into Israel. Some are caught and sent back, others make

it to Tel-Aviv where they try to earn a living. The children/youth find their way to Rogozin-

Byalik.

At first, the work migrants didn‟t send their kids to school because whether they were

born in Israel or were smuggled into the country, they were not citizens and had no papers. Their

parents assumed they were not eligible for educational services, and besides, were afraid of

revealing them publicly least they be caught by police and deported.

Five year-old Eavon was born in Israel to Columbian parents living in Jerusalem For

political and economic reasons she was born in the French hospital in Bethlehem which is

located in the area of the Palestinian Authority (outside Israeli jurisdiction). The only

record of her existence is a birth registration form (written in Arabic and Hebrew - both

languages the parents cannot read). She has no birth certificate and has no citizenship

(Columbian children born outside of Columbia are not eligible for automatic citizenship

in that country). “She cannot be a Columbian citizen because she wasn‟t born there, and

she cannot be an Israeli citizen despite having been born here. Maybe she can be a

citizen of the ocean”, said her father in despair. 2.

Parents chose to send the children to underground “child-care” rooms overseen by

women from the community, enterprises operating under appalling conditions (shuttered, dark

places, no refrigeration for baby food, no heat or cooling, no stimulation and nothing for the

older kids to do, poor or no sanitation). As social workers in the area became aware of the

2 www.haaretz.co.il, Wed., July 17, 2002.

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phenomenon, they sought out these places, taught and certified the caretakers, arranged for toys

and proper health setups, while spreading the word that kindergartens and schools are available

and free. Israel had signed the UN Treaty for the Welfare of the Child so all children living in

the country for over 3 months have the right to free education regardless of the legal position of

their parents.

The principal and some of the teachers set out into the surrounding streets and

markets to look for children who were not attending school and invite them to come to

Byalik. One morning they noticed a little African girl, about 6 or 7 years old, dusty and

forlorn, sitting in the shade of a building, hugging her knees to her chest. Her name was

Victoria, she was from the Seychelles Islands and she didn‟t know where her parents

were. She spoke only a little English and no Hebrew. Inquiries through other members of

the community revealed that Victoria had been living with her mother who worked as a

maid in several homes. From early morning until her mother came for her at night she

was kept in one of the “child-care” rooms. Several days prior to having been found,

Victoria‟s mother suffered a stroke at work and was taken to the hospital. Being an

illegal work migrant, she was not on any population list and there was no way to find or

notify family. When the babysitter saw that the child was not being picked up for two

days, she let her go out on her own to look for her mother. After a night on the street,

Victoria was found and placed temporarily with another family while through the

community grapevine her estranged father was located. He was living in another town

and had a new family but took her in and from then on, every morning father and

daughter took an hour-long bus ride so Victoria could attend Byalik.

The children came from a background of deprivation, mostly economic, sometimes

emotional or cultural. Very many had gone through traumas of loss and being uprooted and

relocated in a new town or foreign land and culture that they were learning to negotiate - some

faster than others. The foreigners were dealing with learning a new language as they tried sorting

out culture and identity issues (so central to meaningful learning) and many were also dealing

with troubled family life: Ohz‟s mother was in and out of mental institutions and this correlated

directly with his performance in school; Dina‟s father was a drug dealer, jailed for long stretches.

Her mother disappeared leaving the child with her ailing grandmother who couldn‟t really care

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for her; Sima‟s mother was a prostitute whose own father physically abused her; Lena‟s mother

was killed falling under the train on their way to Israel and Lena had recurring nightmares of the

accident; George‟s parents (from Ghana) beat him with a broomstick when his school work

wasn‟t what they expected and they explained that they were only carrying out a Biblical

commandment (“Spare the rod...”), Amir‟s father abused his mother in front of the children and

Amir wasn‟t available for learning for two years until the father was finally incarcerated;

Muhammad fled on foot all the way from Sudan suffering extreme hardship, not least of which

was watching his father and grandmother being shot trying to save the kids and then he lost

touch with the rest of his family3... and these are just a few examples.

Many of the foreign children were assailed with fears due to their living outside the law

and the possibility of deportation.

A film crew from Israeli TV followed some of the foreign children at Byalik for a

year. They came out with a documentary that opens with an interview with the father of

Ryan (9) a Pilipino kid, who was caught by police and was in jail prior to deportation for

not having a visa to stay in Israel. Ryan, staying with a friend, was distraught and

explained that on the one hand, his father was his only family and he wanted to be with

him and to do that would have to leave Israel with him, but on the other hand, he was

born in Israel, knew no other place or culture and all his friends were here so he wanted

to continue his life as he knew it... At a certain point in the film Ryan looks directly at

the camera and asks with great concern: “Do they catch children too?”4

Some of the children dealt with absentee parents or parents that worked long and

unconventional hours and weren‟t available to care for them during the days or evenings - they

often went home to empty apartments where they stayed alone or with other young siblings.

Boris had come with his mother from Russia and they moved around from place to

place until they settled, temporarily, in a tiny apartment near the school. “There are mice

in the apartment” he told me, “but we‟re moving soon”. Boris‟s mother gets home from

work at 9PM and from the time he comes home from school until she returns he isn‟t

allowed to go outside because they live “near a big street”. The only thing he can occupy

3 Muhammad‟s story is told in the film Strangers no more.

4 Do they catch children too? is the name of the film

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himself with is playing with the neighbor‟s cat on the staircase as there are no other

children in the building5. On Saturdays Boris and his mother go up to the neighbor‟s

apartment to chat and play cards. “She is too tired to go out to the park”, he said. When

she was sick Boris stayed home from school for a week to care for her.

A humanistic pedagogy

Diversity in schools all around the world has been increasing and with it an awareness of

its huge impact on learning and learners, yet it remains an intimidating concept for many schools

to deal with. There are currently three main pedagogical approaches to addressing student

diversity all based on the ideas of assimilation, adaptation, and acculturation. The first is a

melting pot approach where the focus of pedagogy and curriculum is a hypothetical “average”

learner from a middle class family of the dominant culture to which all others need to assimilate

by shedding whatever makes them different than this “ideal”. In his autobiography, Richard

Rodriguez tells how ashamed he was of his Mexican family, their culture and differences from

the other children he wanted to emulate, so he turned his back on whatever they represented and

went on to become a successful academic scholar. This alienation carried a heavy price that he

only was able to understand later in life when he realized “…the separation I endure with my

parents in loss... the story of the scholarship boy who returns home one summer from college to

discover bewildering silence, facing his parents” (Rodriguez, 1982 p.5).

A second approach to diversity is overlooking it, or as Lisa Delpit calls this: “color

blindness” (Delpit, 1995). Learners are treated as if they were all the same, inside and out, in the

name of equity and social justice (“I love all of my students the same” effusively commented a

young teacher in a graduate class when I mentioned racially disparate drop-out rates in U.S.

schools). But rather than equalize the playing field, this approach maintains the status quo

ensuring that those who hold the power and the cultural capital in a specific society remain at the

helm, while ignoring the unique experiences, abilities, interests and needs of others, all of which

are major factors in learning.

A third approach recognizes diversity and its impact on learning however, this is

translated into action in schools more often than not in tokenism - politically correct language 5 Leaving an 8 year old alone at home is against the law in Israel and since the social services had their eye on her,

the mother told everyone that a Russian neighbor looks after the child in the afternoons. In reality, Boris is on his

own and may go up to the neighbor only if there is a problem.

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and behavior, making room for different cultural norms around the standard curriculum. Mostly

in acts of tokenism, there will be an “International food festival”, “Black history month”, bake

sales to raise money for poor children in Africa… But always, only “acceptable” diversity is let

in: a friend‟s daughter began dressing all in black at the beginning of high school. She was a

good student and well behaved but, nevertheless, was asked to leave the suburban, well endowed

school, and sent to an alternative school known for taking in drop-outs and problem students

from the district.

At Byalik, as the diversity of learners increased the children‟s personal needs and

circumstances flooded the discourse and disrupted teaching and learning activities all around.

Although they were not aware of the theoretical underpinnings, their gut feeling led them to the

realization that the stress, anguish and ongoing upheaval in their students‟ lives hinders school

learning “Trauma fractures one‟s sense of control, connection and meaning” (Sitler, 2008 p.122)

the emotions that form the basis of learning and growing the mind (Zull, ), and feelings of loss

of control and confusion send our minds into survival mode blocking learning anything that is

not related to immediate survival. They knew from experience that no matter how good the

teacher or how smart the child, hunger, fear, depression, confusion, feelings of alienation, all

make for students who are „unavailable for learning‟6. This predicament was further confounded

by the fact that the curriculum in public education institutions in Israel is Judeo and Israel-centric

and mostly incompatible with and irrelevant to the lives of the Byalik students. The faculty

realized they were losing control while not meeting the real educational needs of any of their

students.

Sadly, but luckily for them, since they served a powerless and marginalized population

and although the superintendent was a staunch ally, the board of education usually turned a blind

eye to whatever was going on there, as long as there was no trouble, and there wasn‟t. So the

faculty could rethink and re-envision teaching and learning to meet what they considered to be

the most important needs of their charges.7 Recognizing the diversity, accepting their

6 Based on her extensive work with immigrant children in American schools, Christina Igoa developed an

interdisciplinary intervention approach that evaluates every child‟s cultural, academic and psychological needs,

dealing with each as necessary. The cultural and psychological aspects are recognized as the foundations of the

intervention, pointing to and clearing the way for academic intervention and academic achievement (Igoa, 1995). 7 There was, however, a price to pay for this disregard - for years the Dept. of Education did not fund up to a third of

the students (undocumented=invisible) compelling the principal to stretch the budget very thinly across all the

children. The children who had no identification documents or passports didn‟t exist anywhere “except” in real life;

they were transparent to the system. At Byalik they came up with a solution for registering the children in the Dept.

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circumstances and leaving no room for defeat, they began thorough and persistent process of

examining the concept of education in general, the mandated state curriculum and the prevailing

school pedagogy in order to reconceptualise these to support the needs of the Byalik students.

They approached the discordant state of affairs by problematizing their established practices and

rethinking their traditional priorities, rocking the boat upon their own initiative, “uncoupling

from the familiar… reaching toward the unpredictable, reaching toward possibility” (Green,

2001, p. 68).

How does one do justice in teaching a child who comes and leaves again within 6 weeks

or 6 months side by side with the local kid that goes to the same school for 7 years and is fluent

in the language? What is the moral duty of teachers toward students who are silent, disruptive,

are not learning, not doing their homework, not coming to school or otherwise “unavailable for

learning” during long stretches of time? What are teachers‟ responsibilities concerning problems

the students are dealing with outside of school or non-collaborative parents? Does the school

have any liability to the community that it serves and if so, what are these liabilities?

The resolution was that to best deal with the real needs of every child they would have to

reverse school priorities from serving the system to serving the children: children‟s personal,

physical, emotional and social issues would take precedent to academic literacy goals, creating in

the process a stronger foundation for academic achievement (Ben-Yosef, 2011).

In the long run, we don‟t care how fast a child learns to read or how well he reads. For

that there is always „next year‟. We are much more concerned with how the child feels,

that he has a small corner in which he feels good.

Looking for a uniting concept in which to anchor their developing pedagogy, the Byalik

faculty reached deep down to our most common denominator - our humanity. Amira, the

principal leading the process, described it as an “Ideology of Amendment” which is the belief

that every person and every situation can be amended - brought to a better place, if one is willing

to take action for this purpose; a belief that transforming our world and improving it is entirely

up to us, its human inhabitants8. The Ideology of Amendment at Byalik rests on three keystone

Of Ed., a solution that was practical (the computer accepted it) yet symbolically painful: they registered the children

under an identification number consisting of a chain of zeroes (0000000). 888 An ideology taken from Judaic philosophy. It is the spiritual counterpart of the more prevalent practice of

“Preferential Amendment”, explains Amira. When and where the Dept. of Education decides that the students are

achieving poorly or that their circumstances are handicapping, they provide more money, more teachers, a longer

school day, extra programs, new reading programs, etc., attempting to amend a poor educational situation by way of

material changes.

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assumptions: the equity of human worth, no person is redundant in the world, and every person

has the right to succeed. She explains:

A whole team [of teachers] believes that human beings were born equal and is in search

for any cultural way of aligning their pedagogy with this idea. The whole unique

environment of inclusion and accepting difference, practices of individualized teaching,

focusing on each child‟s needs, giving space to his language and voice… all are

constructed upon this ideology (Ben-Yosef ).

An “Ideology of Amendment through love” is another name for it:

Confronted with an ocean of conflicts and the difficulties and complexities inherent in

meeting the other in the guise of the foreign children, the school team delays judgment

and reiterates the love mantras, while searching for the common and the universal in the

human experience (Bar-Shalom, 2000, p.84).

Steeped in this ideology and appropriating a proactive approach that accepts the given

conditions and circumstances (the children‟s special needs, their diversity and transience,

funding constraints, family and community issues) as a starting point for action, and with the

belief that success for each child and for the teachers is the only option, the faculty constructed a

pedagogy and reconfigured the curriculum so as to leverage the diversity of the children to

enhance everyone‟s learning experiences and move forward.

Implementing a humanistic pedagogy at Byalik

Precedence was given to the most important basic needs of any human being: food,

shelter, safety and love: “Here they first ask how the child‟s time at home was last night and

whether he has food for the day, not how much of his homework he did”. Ella the music teacher,

herself an immigrant from Russia, is usually authoritarian and strict in the other school she works

in, but at Byalik she is more lenient and emotional. She gives them more of herself (“10 times as

much”), warmth they don‟t always have at home, the sandwich she brings for lunch:

If someone in my class comes to school with no breakfast, I give them half of my

sandwich, and if two children are hungry, well then I just try to find something for myself

to eat in the teachers‟ lounge. I can‟t eat if I know that one of them is hungry.

Anat, a veteran teacher and vice principal had been part of the despair as well as of the

processes of change explained:

We emphasize the social and emotional domains, sometimes even more than the

academic domain, because we realized that the children are confronted with so many

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social, cultural and emotional problems, that if we take care of these first we‟ll be

creating a better basis for learning. These children don‟t have the sense of security in

their lives that can release their minds for learning and they become what we call

„unavailable for learning‟. All of our work here is about finding the golden path upon

which we can tread as we teach the children amid all the chaos in their lives (Ben-Yosef,

2003b).

Endorsing the same priorities in academics, the principal assigned homeroom teachers as

many hours as possible with their students because in these classes they use bibliotherapy to

provide emotional support and general humanistic values through literature and Bible stories.

They use culturally responsive texts linking home and school, establishing respect and

strengthening trust with children and parents.

“Forefathers‟ Theater” was a national program integrating Judaic studies and

filmmaking9. At Byalik they adapted the project to their specific circumstances by

asking the kids to choose a „value‟ from the sayings of the Sages and produce it in a

multicultural perspective as an opportunity for finding connections between Jewish and

universal values. The children began with the value of “Give of your bread to the

hungry…” and started telling a story about a foreign worker whose friends noticed that

he was hungry. But they changed their minds when a new child joined the class,

deciding to write about the process of his reception into the group. The value they

chose was “One must welcome every person congenially” and as part of a yearlong

study of relevant topics and issues, they proceeded to write the script for the film, work

on improvisation techniques, act out their script, and the project ended with 2 days of

filming, editing and a final product of a video film regarding the shared human values

of acceptance and friendship.

Benny was born in Israel to his Ghanaian parents who were university exchange students.

Political upheaval in Ghana made it impossible for them to return and without the necessary

documents they ended up in the neighborhood of the Byalik school which Benny attended since

kindergarten. When he was in 5th

grade the family‟s apartment burned down and they were left

with the clothes on their backs. The teachers went into action and raised money for the first

9 This was a national project for middle and high schools. Byalik was the only elementary school in the country

doing the project.

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month‟s rent on a different apartment and networked with friends and relatives to get the family

furniture and other needs.

An overarching priority at Byalik is creating a safe place/space to which the children

come willingly and in which they have “experiences of capability” and success that motivate

them to work, study and achieve more success. A safe space is where kids feel they belong,

where they can let their guard down and trust the adults‟ care, where they know they are

accepted as worthy human beings, where their identities and experiences are verified and upheld,

allowing their brains to open up into a learning mode (Ben-Yosef 2011). The principal explained

the idea :

When you care for the special needs of each child, the very real and unique needs of the

child, and the child feels that even if you were unable to solve his problems today, you

may solve them tomorrow, then the child feels that he always has a chance to succeed,

he‟s always within an experience of capability. The more you deal with and diminish the

child‟s problems, you increase his prospects and possibilities.

The school counsellor told how these ideas are put into action:

There is a little Arab girl in school that we diagnosed as having a severe learning

disability and we really should send her to the special education school, but we‟re not

letting her go because she is too weak. We know that she‟ll feel comfortable only with us

so we want to continue raising her here. At the special education school there are almost

no Arabs and they probably won‟t know how to care for her, or might even abuse her.

There she will be incongruous, and here she isn‟t. She belongs” (Ben-Yosef ).

And then there is the care and love through which everything else can be achieved and

imagined. The “caring teacher‟s” role is to initiate a relationship with the student followed by an

involvement in the student‟s welfare. This relationship should create “emotional displacement”

as energy flows from the teacher towards the student, her projects and her needs (Noddings,

1992). When the teacher overtly conveys her acceptance and confirmation of the “cared-for”

child, the child will usually respond by showing a willingness to open up and “reveal her/his

essential self”, creating a reciprocal relationship of caring (Valenzuela, 1999).

“We communicate through hugs”, says Annie about her new Turkish student who doesn‟t

know Hebrew yet and despite repeatedly coming down with lice because of the physical contact

with the children, teachers are not deterred from continuing the practice. A teacher told about her

relationship a disruptive and hyperactive 3rd

grader,

You can‟t imagine how much trouble Sara gave me last year. She was driving me crazy,

bothering anyone who stood by her, disrupting every session, until I understood that I

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have to approach her through hugs. Words alone didn‟t work. Since then, she has

become my best student. These days when she has trouble with other teachers she runs to

me for comfort.

The home economics teacher takes 2 buses each morning to come to school:

Last year I was offered a job at a school near my home with a higher salary and less

hours, a job that would have been more convenient for my family, but I found it too

difficult to leave. I like being here. I like the administration, the team of teachers, the

children. Many teachers teach for the salary. I work here because I love the children.

Walking through the library, I bumped into a group of 6th

graders hanging out. Did

they like coming to school? Everybody said yes, because it‟s boring at home when all

your friends are at school and there‟s nothing to do. Oleg who came from the Ukraine 18

months ago and his family and home situations happen to be among the best in school,

offered the following story: “One Friday morning my mother asked if I wanted to come

with her to the amusement park or somewhere else nice, because she didn‟t have to work

that day, but I told her that I would come with her another day when there is no school

because I didn‟t want to miss school, not even for an amusement park!” Nisa said: I get

up in the morning and go to school happily, but when we have vacation I scream at my

mother that I want the vacation to end so I can go back to school”. Robin, a short 2nd

grader from the Philippines, tilted his head back, looked up at me with sparkling black

eyes and said: Byalik school? I love it the most. And my teachers? I love them the most

too”.

It isn‟t always easy nor is the process perfect:

I can‟t say that I love all the children. I don‟t know if I would use the word „love‟. It is a

strong word, but I have never yet bumped into a child that I don‟t like. Sometimes I get

angry but that quickly passes. Take Gabrielle, for example. Very often she drives me

out of my mind but then she jumps up into my arms and we hug each other.

An outcome of the caring human relationships is the care the children show for the school

itself. 10

When 3rd

graders Iris and Evette were explaining their role as cultural brokers, one of

the things they mentioned that they tell new children - after advising them about which food they

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Research shows that when kids care about the setting they‟re in, they‟re happy and their achievement goes up”,

said Professor of education Karen Stout (Lehigh University, PA) in an interview to The NY Times Education Life,

January 13, 2002, p.15.

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should bring for breakfast and not to hit other kids - is not to litter and not to break things in

school. And the building displays this concern. It is clean and tidy.

Giving everyone attention at Tel-Aviv extends to the children‟s parents as well. At first,

only parents whose children were experiencing difficulties were asked to attend the parent-

teacher meetings. When examining this practice, the teachers realized that they were prioritizing

their own needs (less work) before those of the parents (being involved in their child‟s learning

and progress). Consequently, they decided that it was their “...duty to serve the needs of the

parents despite the extra work it entailed. Today every parent is invited to the meetings”.

The school counselor does limited psychological intervention while the complex cases

are referred to a (free) psychological clinic in an adjoining town but she learned that the parents

were not using the psychological services either because it wasn‟t an accepted norm of behavior

in their culture, or they were embarrassed to do so or, sometimes, they just didn‟t have the time

to go. So she began a totally hopeless campaign to have the municipality open a psychological

clinic on school grounds based on her feeling that the parents would be more comfortable

coming to school for these important services. The principal, who had strong connections in city

hall, backed the counselor‟s efforts but they were both told not to waste their time. There was no

money in the city for more important projects, and most of Byalik‟s kids didn‟t even exist

legally, anyway. But they persisted and won. A part-time psychological counseling center was

opened on campus.

Academics

The structural concepts upholding pedagogy at Byalik were put in place to give the

children more control over their learning in order to increase motivation and success. The

overarching idea was inclusion and several intertwined trajectories were employed to this end:

1. Focusing on the individual learner;

2. A flexible curriculum centered on “take-away” skills;

3. Enabling success.

Inclusion

Rather than focusing on facts and details, the Byalik curriculum was grounded in the “big

stories”: Hanukah was celebrated as a festival of lights that all children could partake in,

Passover as a celebration of spring and freedom, and Purim as a fun time for everyone.

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The 1st grade teacher was talking to her students, half of whom are African, about the

approaching holiday of Purim, a holiday based on the Biblical Scroll of Esther

commemorating a victory of the Jews in Persia against those who wished to annihilate

them many centuries ago. The outward customs of the Holiday consist of dressing up in

costumes, exchanging gifts of sweets with each other and with the poor, and being happy.

”Is Purim an important holiday?” she, loudly and rhetorically asked the children.

“Yes!” they all shouted back.

“Do you know why it‟s so important? Because it is suitable for every person. It is

suitable for Joanna from Ghana and for Eemreh from Turkey. On this day ev-v-verybody

is happy and every child in the world can be happy, no matter where he comes from!”

A similar, slightly more sophisticated exchange, took place in a 4th

grade classroom:

When they were talking about Purim the teacher asked the children about similar

celebrations in their countries. Then she said: “Today you have taught me about

yourselves and I found parallels between our cultures. Did you learn about parallels

in geometry? Where are there parallels in what we have just talked about?”

Someone calls out: “Between countries”.

Teacher: “Wonderful! There are parallels between the customs of Purim in Israel

to your own. How are they similar? Everyone dresses up in costumes, but each

nation does it at a different time. Camillo (from Columbia) mentioned the custom of

giving gifts. Is there something similar that the Jews do?

Nava (from Israel): “Meeshloach manot”.

Teacher: “Yes. In Israel we give food and money during Purim. The reasons for

the holiday can be different, the reasons for giving gifts can be different and I don‟t

know them for other holidays, but these parallels show us that all people are equal

and similar”.

A pedagogical note: the Purim celebration in school was an all out success, so much so that

the faculty decided to celebrate again the next day (unheard of in any other school or public

institution), reasoning that these children have so few celebrations in their lives, why not give

them an extra day of fun and happiness!

And parents responded well to this curriculum:

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There are children here from many countries, something that increases the knowledge

and widens the horizons of our children. For example, this year at Hanukah my daughter

came home having learned about Christmas and Ramadan also. These are things that I

myself don‟t know about and was happy to learn and I think it gives the children a great

deal.

Focusing on the individual learner

Meaningful dialogues are the opposite of silencing and are the practice of taking the

time to talk with each child, discuss her learning and plot a path for future progress together.

“Part of what is learned in dialogue is interpersonal reasoning – the capacity to communicate,

share decision making, arrive at compromises and support each other in solving everyday

problems“ (Noddings, 1992, p. 53). It is a tool used to teach the children skills of interpersonal

communication, making them aware of their own learning process, giving them a sense of

confidence that they know what is good in their own situation and that they can help themselves

and direct their own learning. “A child who can recognize her own strengths and weaknesses,

who can reflect on these and accept help, will be more securely engaged in the world and thus

able to risk new experiences” (Eishold, 2001, p.32). Additionally, students are encouraged to

develop positive personal identities through interaction with their teachers.

The dialogues appropriated a “no fault approach” purporting to find solutions that

everyone could live with and move forward as best as possible. Teachers made decisions with

the children, consequently teaching them how to communicate constructively.

David was misbehaving in math class. The teacher complained to his homeroom teacher

Emy who sat down to talk with him. David complained that he hates math, can‟t stand being

in the class and that‟s why he has become so disruptive lately. Emy tried to find out where

the distress came from. They talked about whether he doesn‟t like the teacher; maybe the

time of his math class was too early or too late in the day or maybe it was right after the

morning-break soccer games that take much of his energy (he‟s the captain of the team);

might he be in a group that is too difficult for him? Finally they figured out that there was

a child in class that made David feel inferior and incapable, leading him to clowning and

disruptive behavior that, David hoped, averted the focus from his math (in)ability to his

17

behavior. Emy and David decided together that the best action at that time would be for

him to change math groups temporarily. David chose a lower group where he thought he

would feel less stress and more comfortable.

Personal assessment is the antithetical practice to comparison. Every child at Byalik was

assessed only according to her own process and progress. Every 2-3 months the teacher would

meet with every student and look at the progress made and create new goals for the coming term.

Originally parents were to be involved in these meetings but this proved undoable due to parents‟

issues and was left to the teachers and students. Report cards were sent out in one of 7 languages

and detailed the child‟s progress.

Once a year on Arbor Day, certificates of excellence would be given out to 4-5 students

of every class in a school-wide ceremony. These certificates were for outstanding progress in

something: i.e., coming from behind and managing to catch up with the class in math, opening

up and making friends in the new environment, changing behavior from being disruptive to

behaving well...

A flexible curriculum centered on “take-away” skills

Teaching transient learners is a challenge for teachers on two levels. The first has to do

with the student‟s mobility and the fact that there isn‟t a horizon for planning long term

teaching/learning processes. The second concern is what can be given to the children at their

current school that they could make use of in any other educational setting. So they decided to

focus more on learning skills one of which was doing research on a topic and presenting it to

others.

The 6th

grade teacher had to teach the children history and while she wanted the topic to

interest all of them, there was no material she could find that would be relevant to 20 kids

originating from 10 different countries whose Hebrew language skills ranged from

nonexistent to age level. School pedagogy urged her to emphasize study and research skills

focused on pertinent content and she was well aware of the idea that interest and a

meaningful purpose spark motivation because “learning flourishes when teachers incorporate

the resources, histories and experiences of their students and their communities into the

curriculum” (Beykont, 2001, p. 55). Consequently the teacher asked the children to discuss

the issue with their parents and come up with a historic personality, place or topic they would

18

like to study, a topic their parents were knowledgeable about and could help them with, thus

affirming her students‟ diversity, validating their family and community knowledge and

giving all voices power and space.

The kids came back with an incredibly diverse agenda: Simone Bolivar, Stalin, the Six

Day War, the Dominican Republic, Moldova, Lenin, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Kiev. From there

they set out to do research, put together a digital and an oral presentation in class. Children

who didn‟t speak Hebrew presented in their native language and peers translated for the rest.

When Omer was asked why he chose the Ukraine and the city of Kiev for his study he said,

“Because I was born there and it‟s the capital”.

Enabling success through grouping and different learning experiences

In the spirit of helping students succeed in their learning there is no comparative testing

in school, only placement tests are given with the aim of providing teachers with information

about where the students are academically so they can adjust their teaching.

Personal schedules were unique to Byalik since it is an elementary school and this is

typically a practice for older kids. But the vice principal went to great lengths to construct a

schedule that would provide each child with the right classes for her needs: specifically the best-

fit levels of Hebrew, math and English. This led to the use of ability grouping for the benefit of

the children. How did this work? The groupings were flexible and children were placed in or

moved between groups at their request with the teacher‟s approval, taking into account the

child‟s abilities and circumstances at the time. A student remarked:

Other schools don‟t have groups like we do and I like it here because let‟s say I was in a

class with children who know math well. Who would the teacher talk to? Of course she would

talk to the children who know and wouldn‟t pay attention to me!”

And another said:

“I don‟t mind at all [being in the lower group] because sometimes you‟re in a higher

group and sometimes in a lower group and you can change groups if you want to make the

effort, but I don‟t always feel like making an effort”

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Contesting the practice of giving students “more of the same” 11 in their areas of

weakness (more math problems or more language classes) and usually getting them nowhere,

the faculty decided to create learning opportunities that were different from what the children

were used to, possibly changing their conceptual frameworks and thinking processes while

trying new activities that may hook them into an aspect of learning that they hadn‟t yet been

exposed to:

“[Our aim was] to create different learning spaces within school. „Learning spaces

based on a humanistic approach‟ as they are called in the Department of Education.

These are learning opportunities they will not meet with if we don‟t create them here.

And there is no content definition for this concept so we thought of creating for the

children different environments that will lift them to new places and will do so with [the

children‟s] own tools and passions, without the formality of a teacher. Thus we would

create for them a very broad process of change...”

The outside world was brought into the school and intertwined with the students‟ lives so

it was no longer life in school vs. life in the “real” world, but rather a linking of the two. The first

project for advanced computer and networking skills related to the school‟s struggle with issues

of math and language learning. They were taught HTML, created their own web pages, worked

on a communal project of commemorating school alumni who were killed as soldiers in Israel’s

wars, ended the year learning algorithms and flow charts and began computerizing the school

library. The instructor came from a hi-tech company, a young man with a shaved head, one

earring and round glasses. He represented a person the children would never have meet up with

on their own so, in actuality, they could themselves become, for 3 weekly hours, “computer

geeks”.

“The products of this program are unbelievable. Children who couldn‟t learn the 9 times

table were learning algorithms and developing logical thinking skills to work with HTML.

Not to mention that both HTML and Access are languages based on English so the children

had to learn English in order to use them. The changes in both math and English among the

kids is dramatic. The children‟s attitude towards these subjects changed completely because

they suddenly understood how much they need them”.

11

Dewey comes out strongly against those who think better education means giving the children more of the same!

(Dewey, 1964/1974).

20

Ofer, was a child with a dismal attendance record, always late when he did show up, but

in the new computer program he had become an expert on burning disks. Since then he has been

arriving at school every morning at 7AM refusing to go home in the afternoon until the lab

closes at 6PM.

In this same vein, the school bussed groups of children to the local cultural center twice a

week to let them participate in arts, music and sports programs which were open and free for all

children. Since the foreign parents couldn‟t take and bring the children home from the center, the

school took it upon itself. They also somehow stretched their finances to serve a subsidized lunch

at school12

and created an after school club to help kids with homework and keep them

supervised for a few more hours so they won‟t be alone at home. For several years, with the help

of community parents, they operated an “Escolita” - a Sunday school for Spanish speakers to

teach and preserve their language skills.

It isn’t easy

Annie tells of little girl in her 1st grade class. Her mother came from Chile and

had been working in Israel while the child was raised in Portugal by her grandmother.

The mother had a baby here and the girl was sent for, arriving in Israel after not having

seen her parents since she was 2 years old. She was thus faced with several daunting

problems – being separated from her grandmother and her native environment, having to

get used to her parents and new sister, getting used to a new environment with a new

language and starting 1st grade – all at the same time. “No wonder she was unavailable

for learning!” said Annie.

“She was very quiet and introverted. She wasn‟t learning Hebrew, didn‟t talk and

couldn‟t read. It was very difficult to get through to her on any level. So I left her alone

for 6 months in terms of academics but tried to make her time in class pleasant,

reinforcing her emotionally and socially. I wanted her to like coming to school. Towards

the end of the year, I felt she was beginning to become ready to learn so I would sit with

her every day, one-on-one. But in 2nd

grade she was still not speaking or reading

Hebrew. It seemed that she had some kind of emotional blockage that wasn‟t letting her

open up”.

12

Schools in Israel do not normally serve food.

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Suddenly, toward the end of the 2nd year, the girl began talking and reading. She

developed into a happy, smiling, studious child. “We were happy realizing that all our

efforts and patience bore fruit. And in 3rd

grade, she was already in full bloom”.

“And then one day she announced that they were leaving. I was very sad. It is so

frustrating to know that you invest so much work and energy and emotions in a child and

someone other than you is going to enjoy the fruits of your labor”.

Conclusion

In the film Strangers no more Muhammad says that now that he has graduated, he is

heading back to Sudan, to his village where he hopes to establish a school and provide the

children there with an education and possibilities as he himself was given in Byalik-Rogozin.

Plurality and diversity were the challenge that became the essence of the Byalik School:

multiple countries of origin, multiple cultures and value systems, multiple languages, multiple

educational backgrounds, multiple literacies, multiple home and family issues, multiple needs

and multiple approaches to dealing with these needs. Yet despite the enormous diversity among

the students and their greater than usual needs from the school, the faculty found ways to address

their students‟ individual educational and personal needs with a holistic and inclusionary

approach that maintains the diversity, addresses disparity and celebrates the cultural multiplicity

within a least-oppressive, unified humanistic pedagogy. They have cast aside the melting-pot

approach that sees differences as stumbling blocks on the road to literacy and appropriated a

pedagogy of fusion that brings together the diversity and polyvocality of the students in a jazz-

like composition of variation and unity, directing and enriching the learning process. They have

developed a pedagogy that is essentially creative, daring, critical and reflexive, aiming to be a

pedagogy for transforming education to produce students who will themselves grow up and

change the world.