School Partners
HLA is supported by an array of educational experts and community leaders.
Hebrew at the Center: Advancing Hebrew Teaching and Learning
Hebrew at the Center (HATC) is an educational training and research center dedicated to professionalizing the field of Hebrew-Language education with a particular focus on early childhood through high school. HATC support ranges from empowering teachers to develop expertise in developmentally appropriate second language acquisition to helping administrators and educational institutional leadership clarify vision, goals and assessment tools for their Hebrew programs.
Leaders of HATC were among the first to adapt the Provisional Proficiency Guidelines of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) for use in the instruction of Modern Hebrew. The new Guidelines paved the way for the articulation of Hebrew proficiency goals for secondary, post-secondary and elementary age learners.
HATC has turned this expertise into an innovative professional development program. Typically, professional development for Hebrew-language teachers has been limited to training in a given curriculum. HATC departs from this practice, aiming to transform teachers into independent, critical users and developers of curriculum. Through workshops, mentoring and teamwork, HATC prepares teachers to understand the cognitive process of second-language acquisition; to assess their students' proficiency levels relative to native literate speakers; to set goals for their students; to develop teaching materials, and to create a dynamic learning process that enables each student's progress. HATC's approach to teaching and learning of Hebrew focuses on differentiation and linking teacher work to student outcomes.
Hebrew at the Center, Inc. is supported through the generosity of Arnee R. and Walter A. Winshall and The Jim Joseph Foundation.
PICCS
HLA is the newest member of PICCS: Partnership for Innovation in Compensation for Charter Schools. PICCS is a collaborative of New York City charter schools working together to implement a comprehensive program to recruit, retain, develop and reward top quality teachers and school leaders at charter schools. Led by the Center for Educational Innovation - Public Education Association (CEI-PEA), PICCS provides an integrated series of professional development opportunities for schools to help them establish data-driven decision making, peer-support systems to document and share best practices, and performance-based compensation systems.