In association with ORT Israel
ORT Shimon Peres School is located in Yokneam – a city that attracts more and more high-tech companies and startups. It earned its reputation as a school that is home to high-tech, thanks to the right connection to the local high-tech industry.
An action plan led by ORT Israel with the school's principal, Ada Avrakhan Shemesh, and with the Yokneam municipality, created a real achievement and value connection to the industry. "The idea of collaborations with other organizations, different from us, that will complete the missing pieces of our educational puzzle with us, is what turned the school's graduates into leading leaders in their military and civilian lives," says Avrakhan.
Cooperation is carried out at different levels. Among other things, engineers come to the school through the Open Valley project, engineers from Intel come to accompany students in preparing their matriculation projects, and employees of Dexcel – an international drug development company together with lecturers from academia – run the "Pharmacists of Excellence" program in the fields of chemistry and come to meet with the students.
Two companies – MINDCTI and Onvego – are one of many successful examples of the connection with students, as part of ORT Israel's overall concept of high-tech subjects.
Danny Ben-Yishai, a computer science teacher, was appointed community and industry relations coordinator on behalf of the school due to his experience in high-tech. "As someone who worked in high-tech for 25 years," he says, "my job was to locate as many companies as possible in order to expose students to how a society operates in this era, what teamwork is, what is required of an adult in the 21st century, to get to know this world not only through videos and brochures.
"This market needs people who know how to work in a group, who think differently, who know how to communicate in English. We make sure to push the students forward, make them think about where we can innovate, for example - let's build a smartphone app that will help the community, help autistic people, older people in different situations."
The cooperation between the school and the companies developed over the years, and the students, as mentioned, began to integrate into the industry as regular employees. "We help students write resumes, prepare them for a job interview. The students have a connection with the company and are actually its employees," adds Ben Naim, "I believe that in the future they will return to school as ambassadors and push the next generation forward."
Ariel Belyomkin, an eleventh grader at the school majoring in computers and physics, has been working for the past month as a programmer at MINDCTI, mainly in website design and development. "I devote time to work at the company but no less to my studies," he says, "I definitely see myself continuing in this field. Working at the company gives me tools for the future, it's always good to get experience in the field you like to work in. The tools, knowledge and experience I am currently accumulating will help me later on both in higher studies and in the labor market."
Thinking outside the box
Shoval Cohen Nissan, VP of Computing at MINDCTI, which deals with billing and is responsible for the company's relationship with the school, says: "The students receive the same training as new programmers, manage the conversations of the teams, sometimes even partners in conversations with customers, and all sides benefit - the students acquire a profession and integrate into the industry at a young age, which gives them a tremendous advantage later on; And we get employees who are different from those who come to us after regular school.
"These are young guys who think a little outside the box and aren't fixated or trying to teach us. They have the ability to learn quickly, to try to bring diverse solutions, something new. In tenth grade, they know a lot of things they don't learn in university."
Cohen-Nissan says that the fruits of the cooperation can also be seen down the road: "Some of them return to us after the army, others integrate into the industry in very senior positions in high-tech companies, here in Yokneam as well, and some in positions in the army in the technological world. They come to military service after three years in high-tech, after working with customers from the global market, and are exposed here to things that many reach only at the age of 26-25, so their advantage is enormous."
"Phenomenal learning abilities"
Tali Beresheet, Human Resources Manager at Onvego (which deals with speech, voice and artificial intelligence recognition), was familiar with the cooperation between the companies and the school through her two children who also studied at ORT Shimon Peres (formerly Alon) Yokneam. As a result, she approached the management to look for suitable students, and was surprised by the rapid progress of those who came to the company.
"Partners in everything." Alon Kopylov, a twelfth grade student at ORT Yokneam, during work. Photo: Courtesy of ORT Network
"At first we thought about bringing them in, among other things, to perform software tests," she says, "but we quickly discovered that their capabilities were much higher than that. They are able to program, operate and set up cloud servers, have phenomenal learning abilities and independence, which are qualities required in high-tech in general.
"We recruited them as regular employees – they underwent interviews and screening, then started with ten hours a week and later expanded to work during vacations, and as soon as they became available for more time, we put them in as much work as possible – within the law, of course. Some of them had other activities in the community, such as youth movements or volunteering, so we always made sure to find the right mix, so that first of all there would be students and meet their school commitments, and beyond that they would come to us.
"They continue to work for us even after graduation, right up until a week before the draft, and honestly – we 'bully' them even after because it's hard for us to say goodbye.
These are really quality guys at insane levels, and according to my gut we will hear about them in the future, establishing startups and reaching the highest possible places."
"The young people will come back." Yokneam Industrial Park, Photo: Moshe Shai,
CEO Zvi Peleg: "The education system in ORT schools has undergone a significant change in recent years, with the emphasis on multi-level and project-based learning, while integrating and fully cooperating with Israel's leading high-tech industries and start-up incubators. The educational challenge is the aspiration for excellence and the youth's initial choice in advanced science and technology professions."
In association with ORT Israel