Virginia Easley, an English Language Fellow in Jordan, was a guest speaker at the Civics, Language, and American Civics (CLASS) 2015 Teachers Lead seminar in Ein Gedi, Israel. The seminar was designed to promote mutual understanding, economic growth, and prosperity among both Israeli and Arab-Israeli English teachers in the region, as well as their high school-aged students.
Easley gave two workshops to a group of 30 teachers working the public school system in Israel. Both workshops focused the on Kagan Strategies for Reading, Writing, Thinking, and Team Building Exercises. After a brief introduction to the classroom strategies developed by Dr. Spencer Kagan, both groups of teachers participated in a warm up activity to introduce the “think-pair-share” strategy. Following this activity, the first group focused on using quiet signals as a classroom management tool through a number of hands-on activities while the second workshop catered towards team building and icebreakers that are effective for high school students.
Each teacher was given a group activity and Kagan handouts at the end of the workshops to aid the implementation of these classroom activities. The week-long seminar was part of a public school initiative that teaches students the art of diplomacy in order to prepare them for negotiations and diplomacy in the future.