By Linna Ettinger
The Haifa municipality runs many centers that exemplify the importance of treating education holistically. Education for the child is not and should not be limited to classroom time. Rather, education should be a combination of parent centered education and enrichment centers, such as art and sports. Unlike in the US, where young children enjoy sports on an individual basis, in Israel, enrichment centers are explicitly mindfully designed by the Ministry of Education with a coordinated goal in terms of shaping the behavior of their youngest citizens. Also, the parent centers in Haifa are needed because of the high rates of immigration and consequent unevenness in child rearing skills and economic status, with the goal of raising the ability of all parents, regardless of cultural background, to raise their children to be resilient, creative, adaptive, innovative, and mindful.
Our first visit today was to the Tennis Center in Haifa. Forty years ago, six men had a dream to build a tennis center that would be available to children regardless of their economic background. They went to the US to raise funds and came back to Israel with $300 million and were able to build 14 Tennis Centers around Israel. Together, the 14 Tennis Centers serve 20,000 students. There are four programs that the Tennis Centers offer:
- "Embrace" - a program designed to help At-Risk Youth. The game of tennis teaches many life skills including good manners, sportsmanship, and following the rules through the culture of tennis. Homework help is also offered to these youth.
- Special Needs - this program is designed to bring out the best in special needs kids, and to help them become independent.
- Coexistence - a program that integrates Arab and Jewish kids starting at an early age
- High Performance Program - a program to promote those who are talented tennis players and have potential to compete on the national and international level.
We gave the tennis center some gifts, including a Patriots Football.
We enjoyed playing tennis with the children and with each other. We are not permitted to post the children's faces on social media.
The Tennis Center is a great example of intentional education with the overall goal of building a better society by building up each individual regardless of their socio economic background.
Our next stop was a Traffic Safety Center, which is in operation for the elementary school children but is currently being expanded to include Gan (preschool and kindergarten) children. The Traffic Safety Center addresses the high number of traffic accidents and crashes on the highway, which is a national problem. The decision of the government to fund a Traffic Safety center for all schools in Haifa to send their children to for a certain number of hours per year. The director of the Gan Traffic Safety Center, Orna, showed us the setup of the center even though it has not opened yet.
In addition to teaching the children catchy songs about buckling seatbelt, about crosswalks and not to disturb the driver, there is a mock road where children can learn to function in a pretend town with shops, money, shopping cards, strollers, and bikes (instead of cars).
We were also fortunate to share our learning with teachers from Tel Aviv's English speaking preschool, City Kids, and also David Brody, Adjunct Faculty of Hebrew College, from Jerusalem. The work of the Traffic Safety Center has such potential to save lives and prevent accidents.
We also were privileged to visit Parents at the Center, a collaboration with CJP's Boston Haifa Connection and Women's Philanthropy, located in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood, and were able to contrast it with Horev 14, a parent center in a higher socioeconomic neighborhood.
We were so impressed by the thoughtfulness of the Haifa Municipality, that designs programs that aim forward in time with regard to the kind of citizens are being shaped and molded. The work that we do in the US should emulate the thoughtfulness demonstrated by Haifa's Ministry of Education.
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