Powerful Experience
Prior to today, I was mostly impacted by the Israeli religious sites and the interesting symbolism reflected in many of the stories. As I was standing on an old Israeli military base overlooking the Syrian border, I heard a “boom” and saw smoke rising in the distance from a bomb exploding. As Avi continued to […]
It’s About the Kids
It has been our privilege and pleasure as STEM teachers to visit many wonderful and inspiring schools, colleges, universities and science institutes on this trip to Israel. They differed in many ways. Some places were large, while others were small. Some were public, some private, some had many resources, while others lacked resources. There was […]
Masada and the Dead Sea
I was really looking forward to today and it exceeded my expectations! We left Jerusalem early and headed to Masada in the Judean desert, above the southwest corner of the Dead Sea. The landscape is harsh and the sun is intense. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been for people 2,000 yrs […]
Kids Creating Peace
While reflecting on our first week in Israel, it has become clear that the most important thing I can do as an educator is to facilitate opportunities for students to break down their ideas of “us” and “them”. Our conversation with Maya from Kids Creating Peace resonated with me most, and reminded me of the […]
The importance of names
Everywhere I looked in Jerusalem there were names, names of people. Not only streets were people named but names of people were on buildings and sites incongruous to my mind. We aren’t talking about names of historical figures like Paris streets. We aren’t talking about political names like Washington Mutual Bank or Thomas Jefferson Middle […]