Sep 27, 2016

Yerucham Science Center Staff Trains Miami Teachers

Miami’s people-to-people partnership with Yerucham, Israel, recently celebrated another success when the Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE), a Federation subsidiary agency, hosted a group from the Yerucham Science Center. Ido Frommer, head of the Center, along with two members of the award-winning Yerucham Robotics team, spent a week training and mentoring teachers from Hebrew Academy (RASG), Lehrman Community Day School and Scheck Hillel Community School. The group of six teachers will integrate their new robotics knowledge into their school’s curriculum, which will focus on teaching third-graders how to complete space mission challenges using Lego EV3 and Space Challenge sets. At the end of the academic year, the three schools will hold a competition and robotics festival.

In addition to fulfilling the needs of an increasing focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education throughout local schools, the study of robotics exposes students to a wide variety of problem-solving techniques and interpersonal skills. Shea Polakow, a teacher at Lehrman Community Day School, believes working together to build and program the robots will create a sense of community. “It’s cooperative learning at its best,” she said. Ilana Traub, another Lehrman teacher who attended the training session, added, “It’s incredibly social and collaborative, as the students learn to use their own strengths to move forward with the mission, while also depending on the strengths of their classmates.”

The Yerucham Science Center has one of the leading robotics program in the world, which includes 25 teams and more than 300 participants. Recently, they partnered with the GoBabyGo Foundation to provide specially adapted mechanical toy cars (called Bimba Cars) for children with physical disabilities. “Each car is modified to meet the specifics needs of a certain child,” says Frommer. “We’ve built more than 100 cars for the Foundation.” This video demonstrates how the team helped create a car for Shalev, a five-year-old boy with ALS who can only move his wrist about one inch.

With funding from the Annual Greater Miami Jewish Federation/UJA Campaign, the Miami-Yerucham Partnership has a mission to leverage social, human and financial capital to inspire community engagement and development. CAJE’s collaboration with Yerucham’s robotics program builds relationships between science and technology teachers in Yerucham and Miami. It also enhances educational programming in Jewish day schools by leveraging the expertise of those in Yerucham, in addition to increasing their exposure among the Miami Jewish community.

For more information, contact Dahlia Bendavid, Director of Federation’s Israel and Overseas Department at [email protected] or 786.866.8445.