By Dr. Amnon Eldar, director general of AMIT
We’re living in an age of increasing personalization: Everything from medicine to shopping to what you’re watching on Netflix has grown increasingly tailored to individual needs, and the same is true for education. There is no more one-size-fits-all approach to educating children because no two children are alike in how they learn.
The AMIT network educates 35,000 children in 33 cities across Israel. Each of these children has his or her own strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, goals and challenges. Our approach to educating them has always been a holistic one that takes into account these different considerations in an effort to get each and every child to realize their potential and, ultimately, embark on a path to success.
This approach to individual achievement and fulfillment extends to our teachers, principals, and administrators as well—and a select few of them, myself included, are currently participating in a pilot initiative to develop what we call a “personal and professional growth plan.”
We at AMIT understand that each person is composed not only of their skills and abilities, but also their emotional and psychological components—all of which impact their individual growth and success (or lack thereof). As part of this pilot, the members of two groups (14 AMIT principals in one group and 12 administrators in the other) are taking part in a process that begins with a diagnostic analysis and personal/professional soul-searching.
This process asks participants to reflect on questions such as: What are your goals? Did you achieve them? If you didn’t, why not? What challenges or difficulties do you face and why do you think they exist? The answers allow room for participants to share their successes and their failures, and also serve as the foundation for each participant’s personalized growth plan.
After this stage of self-reflection, each participant meets with a mentor to help develop their personal and professional growth plan—and then they set off on their journey. At the same time that this individualized work is happening, there are also group sessions for participants who face the same issues (for example, challenges with work-life balance, burnout, or poor time management). This creates a built-in support system that enables participants to learn from one another and also shows them that some obstacles are universal, even if how they handle them is uniquely individual.
My colleagues and I, the guinea pigs for this process, will each get a personalized growth plan that we will work on in the coming months, and in a year our goal will be to expand this approach to the hundreds of principals, then the thousands of teachers, and ultimately the tens of thousands of the AMIT students in our network. Each one of them will get a tailor-made plan to help them achieve personal success in a way that answers their personal needs and suits them best. We believe that together they will make our collaborative learning communities stronger and better equipped for life in the 21st century.
