Teachers on the Bar 2015 – Second Series of Public Lectures by Mathematics and Science Teachers from the Trump Foundation’s Portfolio Demonstrating Clinical Teaching
The Trump Foundation’s strategy aims to nurture clinical teaching of mathematics and the sciences, which strives to give a personalized response adapted to each student in a large heterogeneous classroom. We work to instill this practice through learning communities of teachers, led by master teachers, which utilize classroom evidence via video and diagnostic assessments.
This professional approach uses concepts and jargon which address practitioners in the education field. However, since the launch of the foundation, we have been seeking ways to improve the common perception of the teaching practice, and to expose the public to how clinical teaching can benefit the instruction of mathematics and science, using mainstream language and appealing methods. We do so in order to encourage the public to appreciate the high professionalism of great teachers, and to attract potential excellent candidates for teaching these subjects.
With this in mind, and as a part of a series of public-oriented projects, the foundation approved a 150,000 NIS grant in 2014 to the newly established organization ‘WIZE’ for a program, titled “Teachers on the Bar”. The program consisted of 25 lectures by outstanding high school science teachers in popular pubs and bars in the major center and northern cities of Israel. 3,000 guests participated in these lectures and an additional audience of over 250,000 people viewed the taped material via digital media. An unplanned outcome is that 75 people who listened to the lectures have contacted the foundation’s programs expressing their interest in training as mathematics and science teachers.
The project has attracted great interest, and has even led to a small number of independent collaborations between WIZE and foundation grantees, who have recognized the potential of the format for achieving their respective goals; for example Teach First Israel organized a number of lectures by TFI teachers at bars, as part of their recruitment process. ‘Teacher’s Day’ hosted a number of events in collaboration with “Teachers on the Bar” as part of their annual celebrations, and the Taub Center has joined forces with WIZE on a public lecture series.
This has led us to realize that this project has threefold potential:
Such an effort could help our grantees amplify their recruitment and marketing objectives, while feeding into the foundation’s broader goal of raising public awareness around the importance of clinical teaching and a basic understanding of its components. In discussion with WIZE, they are now proposing to produce an additional 30 events over the next year, which will feature master teachers from our programs. These master teachers will present their methods of teaching in an inspiring way, presenting best practices, and walking the audience through the way they customize their teaching to different learning styles and thinking modes of students.
This year the geographic scope of the lecture series will expand beyond Tel-Aviv and Northern Israel, and it will reach the South and popular venues of religious people as well, reflecting the foundation’s efforts to include additional communities in its programs. As in the previous year, the lecture series will be accompanied by media exposure specifically targeting potential teaching candidates, in collaboration with Higiya Zman Chinuch, the social media community. All lectures will be videotaped and uploaded to Youtube.