Nazareth (Natzeret)

Yesterday I spent the day in Nazareth (in Hebrew- Natzeret). Nazareth is the home to the Church of the Annunciation and the most vibrant Arab city in Israel. Being such, Dirasat, the Arab center for Law and Policy, which Dr. Jabareen is head of, is located there.


I spent the day with Dr. Jabareen in the Dirasat office, reading interesting articles and talking, and then at 4pm we proceeded to attend a gathering to celebrate the beginning of a Dirasat research project on Arab teacher training in Israel. The gathering had a majority of Arab participants who are educators in different capacities at the various colleges around the country, as well as a few Jewish educators. After a nice introduction by Dr. Jabareen and Dr. Ayman Agbaria, who is in charge of this specific project at Dirasat, each participant presented his, her, or their research (some were doing joint research) proposals, whose findings will later be combined in a book which will be published by Dirasat on the topic.


Some of the topics included:

• Positive and negative experiences of Arab students- Conclusions for teacher training
  
• Arab teacher training policy in Israel for dealing with students in distress and crisis
  
• How the pedagogical counselor perceives his/her position
• The limited number of Arab women candidates to teacher training colleges
• And many more...
  

We ended the evening with a nice dinner at a local restaurant. To be honest, I think the things that were discussed at the dinner are the ones that stuck with me most. We found ourselves sitting Jews with Jews and Arabs with Arabs; Coincidence? Most at my side of the table (let's see if you can guess on which side I sat) didn't think so; Ironic? I would say so!

To a question I posed as to why none of the research topics discussed the dealing from "above", that is, from the Ministry of Education (MOE) and other such bodies, with the problems Arab-Israelis face in the teacher training process, I was answered that "there is nothing to research; the MOE doesn't deal with anything". This I found to be a very pessimistic and unfortunate answer.

I left the restaurant with a good feeling of optimism of what people such as the ones who attended this gathering want and can do, but also with an acknowledgement that there is indeed still much to be done, especially from "above".

View of Nazareth

College educators meeting