How We Got Here
AMIT has received recognition in the press lately for the educational innovations we are making in Israel to propel our students for success both tomorrow and for many years to come.
Today, I want to share with you the role that AMIT’s Research and Development (R&D) process plays in building all the individual components that go into our integrated educational approach. Although R&D is something one more closely associates with corporate high-tech than education, at AMIT it is key to our developing, identifying, and adapting programs we believe will have a positive impact on our students in Israel. Our R&D doesn’t occur in an ivory tower; AMIT schools are our incubators and our programs are always student focused.
We begin by asking questions: Where are our students’ performances not as strong as we would like them to be? What are the skills we want to work on? Do programs already exist to address these shortcomings? Since The Evan & Layla Green Family Foundation Gogya methodology’s inception eight years ago, we have canvassed the world to find companies, schools, and nonprofit organizations doing innovative work that either have a specific application or way of thinking that is useful for AMIT students or teachers. Each year we bring groups of educators and principals together to see these programs firsthand and evaluate them for a fit to AMIT.
When we started Gogya, AMIT worked with architects and neuroscientists to improve physical spaces and understand mental processing, all to facilitate learning. On subsequent trips to Kansas and Detroit, we saw how open spaces could be used to effectively create personalized learning experiences. We learned a lot from New Classrooms, an organization that works on personalizing math learning for underprivileged students across the U.S. Our Chana & Yisrael Malek, z”l, Educational Ecosystems program, where we break down classroom walls and bring in the real world, started with a visit to Kansas City where we saw real world, 21st century skills developed in Ecosystems centers at the CAPS (Canter for Advanced Professional Studies) and Shawnee Mission Center. But our innovative programs don’t only come from other schools. We learned about skill development from the selection process the Israeli army uses for first drafts. At the Ford factory in Detroit, we saw teamwork and collaboration initiatives that could be used, with some modifications, in our schools. The process of ongoing innovation is an intrinsic part of AMIT’s Gogya methodology.
Sometimes, after scanning the world, our experts can’t find the solutions they are looking for. A few years ago, we realized that while some skills were intrinsic to course work, (i.e. critical thinking in social studies; creativity in art), we weren’t teaching the full range of skills ̶ entrepreneurship, flexibility, curiosity, independent learning ̶ our students will need to be successful in the world. For students from disadvantaged homes, school is often the only place they’ll learn these skills. Starting last year, our R&D team held a series of conversations with an advisory committee composed of experts in high-tech, finance, communications, cyber, academia, the military, and psychologists to define “need to have” skills. Our internal team then developed a teaching model for each skill using apps and content design which was presented to the advisors. When I was in Israel last month, I participated in discussions where the advisory group provided feedback on how close to the mark we were and what needed to be improved. Our goal is to pilot this program in a few of our schools within the next year.
What I see as unique about AMIT is that we are building a holistic system of educational innovation by picking “first in class pieces” where we find them and developing them when we don’t. We assemble them in a way that is responsive to both students and teachers. This is how we are creating an educational revolution in Israel.
