Photo- L-R: Ram Zahavi, Ministry of Education’s Southern Region Director Alon Davidi, Mayor of Sderot Yoav Galant, Education Minister Amnon Eldar Elad Kalimi, Deputy Mayor of Sderot Edi Dagan, School Principal
Officials broke ground recently on the new Gogya school that will be built for AMIT Gutwirth in Sderot, heralding the movement forward and endorsement of educational innovation in Israel following the health crisis.
AMIT Gutwirth Sderot State Jr. and Sr. High School is one of 15 schools that have been selected by the Education Ministry to receive new and innovative school buildings.
Among the 15, five – or a third – are AMIT schools. In addition to AMIT Gutwirth, school slated for funding for innovative school buildings include: AMIT Evelyn Schreiber Jr. and Sr. High School for Girls, Tzvat; AMIT Ashdod Yeshiva High School; AMIT Gwen Straus Jr. and Sr. School for Boys, Kfar Batya, Raanana; and Yeshivat AMIT Nachshon Jr. and Sr. High School, Mateh Yehuda.
The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by education and state officials and included Dr. Amnon Eldar, AMIT director general; Ram Zahavi, director of Ministry of Education’s Southern Region; Alon Davidi, mayor of Sderot; Yoav Galant, education minister; Elad Kalimi, deputy mayor of Sderot, and Edi Dagan, Gutwirth principal.
AMIT’s Gogya schools take innovative pedagogical methods and marries that with complementary, well-designed and modern physical spaces to encourage progressive teaching and learning that is creative, experiential, student-led in some instances, and a wave of the future. Gogya is an AMIT signature that takes teaching and learning into the 21st century
The Ministry of Education had put together a committee that would choose 15 schools that would be renovated in new and innovative ways, officials said. These schools needed to prove that they teach in innovative methods, and how they use the physical space to facilitate those modes of learning. They also needed to show that the teaching staff and principal knew how to best utilize the space to enhance progressive teaching.
The committee was comprised of Ministry of Education experts in the areas of R&D, pedagogy, and building, as well as a team of innovative architects who carefully analyzed each school’s proposal and plan.
AMIT Gutwirth Sderot State Jr. and Sr. High School is a high-achieving school. The whole building will be rebuilt, so all students who learn in the building will benefit from this new and innovative school building.
There are more than 800 students at AMIT Gutwirth Sderot. The school has a 94% bagrut (matriculation) pass rate and excellent scores as well. AMIT runs all the school in Sderot, and as such has brought academic excellence to the city.
