School Contrasts

Everyone here (and at home!) asks about school... well, school here is very different than at home. For example we go to school 6 days here instead of 5 days however the number of hours each day is less. In total, we go to school here 31.5 hours and at home it's 32.5 hours. We have to go on Sundays here and there's a half day on Fridays. 2 days a week they get out earlier here but it keeps changing which days, so it's very confusing! Even the teacher confuses it!

All but 1 of my teachers here speak English but not very well. I think they understand a lot more than they can speak. Same for the students.  My homeroom teacher is the English teacher for the whole school.

There are security cameras in every corner of the school here. And the school is gated in, with the gates locked all day except during the start and end of the day.  There is a guard with a gun at the gate.

Kids here are very loud and can be pretty obnoxious to the teachers. They don't raise their hands and constantly interrupt the teachers. They keep changing seats and I have seen 2 fist fights with blood. They don't seem to turn in their homework (but maybe I didn't see it when they did?!) and I even saw one kid sitting in the backseat of his mother's car in front of the school in the morning while his mother was doing his homework in the front seat! Everyone calls the teachers by their first name (you are supposed to, it's not being obnoxious, it's what we all do).

We have periods at school where we have different lessons and different teachers. I have a different teacher for homeroom and English than for Hebrew group ulpan, 1x1 ulpan, science, and tanach (Jewish studies). The teachers get to school after the kids, so it's hectic first thing in the morning! Instead of a bell ringing between periods, for every school bell, they play nursery rhymes instead.

We have 2 breaks each day, one at 9:30 and one at 11:30. I eat my lunch sandwich at 9:30! The other kids mostly bring junk food like these giant pastries or white bread with no crusts and gobs of nutella! Some crunch on cucumbers. After a quick eat, we play: some kids stay inside and basically fight in the classroom, and the rest play outside. There is no playground so we play on the blacktop this keep-away game with a tin foil ball called Prisoner. Many kids have cell phones but they're not supposed to use them during school. Lots of kids live near the school and walk home by themselves but the sign says kids under 8years old are not supposed to but last week, I saw a kid about Ben's age (4) walking by himself with a cell phone!

I am one of the tallest in my grade. The kids look younger than me because they are so much shorter. And also because of the way they act, they seem younger.

I know that Itamar school is just one example of schools in Israel, and I can't say for sure what all Israeli schools are like. Same like Dawson: it's probably pretty different than a school in an inner city.

So these are just some of the differences between Itamar and Dawson schools. Oh and my dad says that Itamar's mascot is the dolphin like Dawson, and even made up a song "We are the Itamar Dolphins" which he embarrasses me by singing in public!