Charlotte Educators Return from TALMA Summer Experience in Israel

November 2023

The Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte is commited to provide our community with multiple opportunities to engage with and learn about Israel. As such, Federation invests in programs and agencies that offer high-impact Israel engagement and education.Through our overseas allocations, Federation not only demonstrates its global responsibility of Jewish people, meeting the needs of Jews worldwide, but also connects our Charlotte community to Israel and her people.

One such program is TALMA, an English immersion program for low-income Israeli elementary schoolchildren and a fellowship for teachers looking to gain teaching experience abroad and to get to know Israel and its people. Federation has been supporting TALMA with a grant for the past two years. TALMA provides teachers an opportunity to co-teach English in high-need schools in Israel and attend learning and leadership workshops.

“The Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte is proud to partner with TALMA to support this special opportunity for Charlotte area teachers to be immersed in Israeli culture and history and build tools and relationships in a diverse educator community,” said Tair Giudice, chief impact officer at the Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte. “Programs like TALMA are key to strengthening connections between communities in the U.S. and Israel, and the benefits for both participating teachers and students are invaluable.”

Two of the Charlotte-area educators who participated in the TALMA Summer Fellowship include Leslee Melgar, a 6th grade English Language Arts teacher, and Rashida Freeman, a TESOL teacher for a virtual high school and an adjunct ESL professor at a local community college.

Though neither Melgar nor Freeman is Jewish, they saw TALMA as an opportunity to grow as educators and gain insight and perspective into teaching in unfamiliar environments.

“This past summer I experienced being in a classroom in which I was teaching English but didn’t speak the students’ native language,” said Melgar. “The students were very sweet and tried teaching me words in Hebrew. This experience gave me some insight on how it feels to not understand or be able to speak a language when everyone else does.”

“I learned that classroom management looks different across cultures,” said Freeman.

“With that in mind, I was able to relinquish some of my control and allow students to learn the way that is best for them. I also noticed that allowing the students to teach me was rapport building, and they were eager to learn because they were also given the opportunity to teach.”

Creating this type of environment where both teachers and students can learn to embrace their cultural differences and learn from each other is an essential part of TALMA’s mission.

“Inclusivity is one of our core values; we serve Israeli students of all religious and ethnic backgrounds, and our teachers are diverse as well,” said T’helah Be-Dan, TALMA’s deputy director of North America and a Charlotte resident. “By including educators who may not have religious or familial connections to Judaism, we offer them an opportunity to get to know Israel and her people firsthand. This can help to push back against falsehoods and misconceptions that people can have about Israel and/or Jews, helping to create allies in the fight against antisemitism.”

For more information on TALMA, please visit www.talmaisrael.com.