Our School
Our school is one of a kind, dedicated to serving a diverse population of students. Yarden Regional Comprehensive School is located in Ma'aleh Efraim and serves the population of The Jordan Valley and Maáleh Efraim. Since our school is a regional school, the Junior High and High School students may need to travel as far as 45 min to an hour in order to arrive at school.
Taking this into consideration, this year we decided to start classes at 8:45, instead of the standard 7:45, simply because our students would leave their homes at 6:00 am in order to make it to the first hour.
This is just one a the many examples of how our school tries to meet the needs of all students, and create an atmosphere that is easier to learn in, and we all know this is not an easy thing to generate these days.
The English Center
As far as our English Center goes, we are very lucky in having a Language Center in the school. This year there are no high school students studying Arabic, so we basically have the room all to ourselves, and we have conquered! Projects on every board in the room, a television, we can also set up the projector if a student needs one in order to present her/his project. The major difficulty is that the room is very small, and there are only 6 computers in it, so we cannot teach a full class in the room, merely present projects, show videos and so forth. Students, at these events, sometimes end up sitting on the floor, or two to a chair, which adds to the general ambianceJ.
Our non-readers group have benefited from use of the room, since most groups are very small, and they use the computers often.
We have set high standards for ourselves, for our students and for the Administrator and computer technician, in order to keep our room in working order (no one is allowed in without a teacher present, the door is locked when the room is not in use, as are most computer rooms in schools lately). We have most of our staff meetings (every Sunday, with a nosh), and our "stuff" stored here.
We love our Center, and hope to branch out into different sections of the school and spread the word that English Rocks!
~ Sandra Keren
sandrakeren@gmail.com