Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel recorded several memorable achievements during the 2010-2011 school year.

First High School Graduation
The most exciting event of the year was the graduation of our first high school class. Fourteen students, half of them who started at the Hand in Hand kindergarten 13 years ago, successfully completed their studies. The ceremony was held on June 29, and was not only historic but very emotional. Speakers included Shalom (Shuli) Dichter, Hand in Hand executive director in Israel; Dani Bar Giora, director of the Educational Authority of the Jerusalem Municipality; Raeif Omari, principal of Hand in Hand’s high school; Nurit Gordon, representative of the Max Rayne Foundation; and Nadim Shiban, representative of the Jerusalem Foundation. All the speakers praised the graduates as pioneers living out the dream of integration and equality as reflected in the Hand in Hand motto “Learning Together, Living Together.”

New Leadership
After 14 years, Amin Khalaf retired as president of Hand in Hand and was succeeded by Shalom (Shuli) Dichter. As one of the cofounders of Hand in Hand, Amin created and maintained the vision of a school system that could impact and transform society. Shuli is a well-known civil-society activist in Israel who previously served as co-executive director of Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civil Equality, as well as an advisor and consultant to various Israeli government offices, including former Minister of Minority Affairs Avishai Braverman. Shuli brings to Hand in Hand a deep understanding of the challenges of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, as well as new energy, enthusiasm, and a network of contacts who can be mobilized to realize the potential of Hand in Hand.

This past year also saw a completely new team of principals and assistant principals, generating a new spirit of cooperation between them and the head office. Dr. Inas Deeb, who joined Hand in Hand as Chief Education Officer a little more than a year ago, deepened her involvement in all aspects of curriculum planning and implementation across all the schools; she was essential to the effective transition of the principals.

Emphasis on Curriculum and Academic Excellence
The decision to create the role of Chief Education Officer, and the selection of Dr. Deeb as an outstanding educator to fill that role, demonstrates the renewed commitment by Hand in Hand to educational excellence in all its schools. While educational excellence is never achieved overnight, we were gratified that this year’s 11th-grade class in Jerusalem received the highest scores of any 11th-grade class in the city in the all-important civics matriculation examinations.

Dr. Inas Deeb has been working to re-conceptualize the way the Hand in Hand curriculum is developed and implemented. With Shuli’s support, she established a curriculum forum composed of one Arab and one Jewish teacher from each Hand in Hand school; this forum also included representatives from the independent Hagar School in Beersheva (which Hand in Hand helped establish). The forum’s task is to accumulate and formalize the knowledge and practices of core subjects taught at Hand in Hand schools: social studies, the three religions, multiculturalism, bilingualism, citizenship, democracy, history, community and more. The forum has been meeting since March 2011; the first version of a unified curriculum for each grade will be drafted by December 2012. Hand in Hand is now seeking resources to hire additional educational specialists to work with Dr. Deeb and to follow up on the implementation of the curriculum, making constant adjustments to it, as well as to train teachers and add new methodological approaches and skills to the teaching staff.

Distinguished Visitors
Hand in Hand schools are favorite sites for visits by celebrities and political leaders, both from Israel and abroad – probably because, in the midst of all the challenges Israel faces today, Hand in Hand schools show the hopeful future that Israel can have. Perhaps our most famous visitor this year was Shakira, the Colombian born singer with millions of fans around the world. She came to Israel to attend a presidential conference on education at the end of June. She visited the Jerusalem school, singing to the students and encouraging them to lead lives together. In addressing the children, teachers and parents, Shakira said:

"My visit to Max Rayne school today here in Jerusalem — an inspirational school where students learn together, across all divides, speaking both Arabic and Hebrew, learning and playing together without difference — only reminded me, once again, that the most crucial decisions we can make for a better tomorrow concern how to raise and educate our children."

Another memorable visitor, to the Wadi Ara school, was Member of Knesset Tzipi Livni, head of the Kadima Party and leader of the opposition. MK Livni told the school:

“The idea and reality of the school fill the heart with warmth and hope that we can live a life together, especially at this time when there is so much tension,” she said. “They are doing a great thing at this school.”

Notable Special Programs
In the Galilee school, a new program emphasizing musical skills and music appreciation delivered outstanding results. A choir and band were formed and have performed in several locations this past year. A debka folk-dancing group has been featured prominently in many community celebrations. The parents, with the help of a Hand in Hand community worker, organized a year-long program of lectures, plays and activities that have drawn the adult population increasingly together.

At the Wadi Ara school, a Tu B’shvat program attracted 450 individuals to plant trees and build up the garden; 500 people attended the end-of-the-year party featuring exhibitions of work from the children, including a special art project with the Tel Aviv Museum. A highlight of the academic year was the Young Doctors Program, in which 4th to 6th graders’ studies of the heart culminated in an operation on an animal heart. The new administration was very successful in getting all the parties – parents, teachers, Ministry of Education, local municipalities and Hand in Hand staff — to work together to strengthen the school.

For the last three summers, Hand in Hand has sponsored an English day camp for its junior high students. This year almost 50 students, including 7 Jewish students from other schools, attended the camp located at the Jerusalem campus. Thirteen counselors from America and one from Hungary volunteered at the four-week camp, which encouraged the kids to speak in English, a language taught from the 3rd grade on but not always spoken by the students. By the end of the camp, the kids insisted on writing in English in one another’s summer yearbooks.

Continuing and Emerging Challenges
While our schools continued functioning at a high level, Hand in Hand faced two major challenges this past year: maintaining and increasing enrollment of Jewish students and obtaining the necessary resources to expand our network.

We have learned that to maintain Jewish enrollment – especially after 6th grade – we must offer an educational program that is better than the other choices available to Jewish students. Parents who believe in the message of Hand in Hand are much more willing to enroll students in elementary grades for the social experience and as a statement of their commitment to their beliefs. However, once children reach junior high school (grade 7), academic and career-oriented factors become more important. Although Hand in Hand has an extraordinary reputation for its groundbreaking philosophy and educational model, it does not yet have an established academic reputation at the highest level. Moreover, because Hand in Hand has been growing grade-by-grade for the past 12 years, each year has created a new set of challenges and uncertainties for parents. So it has been difficult to persuade Jewish parents to continue their childrens’ enrollment past 6th grade, and we were disappointed not to have any Jews in our first graduating class.

However, there is some good news on this front: The parents of currently enrolled Jewish students in Jerusalem expressed a strong willingness to keep their children within the Hand in Hand framework. After much encouragement and a renewed emphasis on excellence, almost all of the Jewish 6th graders are registered to continue into Hand in Hand’s 7th grade in September 2011. This is a breakthrough. Likewise, in the Wadi Ara school, where we had experienced a drop of Jewish children enrolled at the kindergarten in the past two years, we have seen a turnaround and the number of Jewish children registered for kindergarten this year has strongly rebounded and now stands at 50 percent of the class.

Our other continuing and persistent challenge is to raise the financial resources needed to maintain and improve our existing schools, and also to expand to new areas and in new directions. Even though the Ministry of Education stipend provides nearly half our total annual budget, we have no financial reserves or long-term major donor commitments that would enable us to plan for the growth of our schools and our programs – growth that we believe is both achievable for Hand in Hand and important for the future of the State of Israel.