A New Year for the WASNS Educational System
The new school year opened with a special ceremony for the new first grade class. The 21 new children walked down a red carpet to the stage, where the sixth-grade class welcomed them to the primary school with readings and song.
Their main teacher is Nadwa Jabber. Of the 21, 8 are Jewish, 13 Arab. There are 11 girls, 10 boys in the class.
This year, says principal Neama Abo Dalu, there will be a focus on training the teachers to apply differential education methods in the core subjects. This is a way of ensuring that each child can get the most out of their lessons and that the school, as a whole, can maintain its high level of academic achievement.
The first and second graders will have classes that take them into the forest around the village. There, they will learn about the trees, plants and animals, as well as the ecosystems right next to their school. In addition, the forest will be a place for group activities that will get them involved in communicating with one another and in conflict resolution.
The Language Center, which opened its doors in April last year, is now fully operational, with each class having two lessons a week – one in Arabic, one in Hebrew. The focus is on spoken language, with the aim of ensuring each child will be able to easily converse with all the other children, in either language. To advance the project, the Arabic teachers worked all summer on a program to improve the spoken language skills of the children.
Thanks, in part, to the Language Center and in part to the updated lesson plan, the school has greatly reduced the amount of time the children spend in separate, single-language lessons, so that the classrooms are more cohesive and the Arab and Jewish children spend more time in one another’s company.
The teachers will continue to meet with facilitators from the School for Peace. The aim is to really bring them all into the primary school/WASNS ideology, so that they are teaching not just math and geography, but also teaching the kids the idea of peace. The highlight of the teachers’ calendar is the retreat, in February, in which the teachers work together to brainstorm and plan. This year, the focus will be on the national holidays in May that tend to be emotional days and to divide, rather than join, the two peoples.
There are 190 children in the primary school this year. 108 are Arab, 82 Jewish. Boys and girls are split almost evenly: 96 and 94, respectively.
New Soccer Field
The children came back to school to find that the court that had been paved with crumbling, uneven paving stones had been
turned into a soccer field, complete with special synthetic grass that is meant for games.
This court is the fourth part of the playground renovation, and the field was made possible by a gift, through the American friends of NSWAS, by the Fred Segal Family Foundation.
Soccer is a favorite game for many of the kids, and they had played it on any flat, grassy surface available during recess. As expected, both boys and girls were thrilled with the new field, and they could not wait to start playing.
The kids who choose soccer lessons for their extracurricular classes now have proper field to play on, and we expect even more enthusiasm for these lessons with this new field. We especially hope to get girls interested in the sport. This field will also be great for other kinds of physical activity, including the games days and more.
New Nursery Building
The infant and toddler set finally have a building to call their own. After several years, first in a temporary structure and then in the volunteers’ housing, an older, long, single-story building right across from the primary school was renovated for the nursery. This building is thus now a part of the WASNS educational complex, and it will benefit from the inclusion, including that of the guard who sits opposite.
With two separate rooms, the nursery can now create different schedules and activities for the infant-to-young toddler group and the pre-kindergarteners. The pastel-colored walls and wall decals create a bright environment for the children, and they now have furnishings and shelving designed to their heights and needs. This will enable the nursery to take in more children than previously.
Says nursery teacher Nur Najjar – Elhuda: “It’s wonderful. Its new, inviting and radiates calm, and it feels like we opened the year on the right foot. Everyone is happy with the situation.”
The outdoor play yard will be soon finished and fenced in, and there are plans to turn a second building into a play room with “Gymboree” style equipment.