"In an era where AI knows everything, students need more human intelligence"

When entering the gates of the Shaanan Academic College of Education in Haifa, passing between the laboratories, innovative learning spaces, and wide lawns, it is hard for a moment to connect all this to the fact that this institution is marking 75 years since its founding this year. Long before anyone talked about techno-pedagogy, AI, or personalized learning, Shaanan was already training teachers. It was founded in 1951 as a small seminar for training teachers and kindergarten teachers for religious education in Haifa and the north, and has since become a leading academic college where the blackboard and chalk have given way to advanced teaching technologies. However, Prof. Avi Levy, the college president, is convinced that precisely now, when the machine is more sophisticated than ever, the education system is required to return to the most basic thing it had from the start: the human being.

When entering his office, two things immediately stand out. One is a map of the north of the country, loaded with hundreds of dots of cities and settlements, from Metula and the Golan in the north to Netanya in the Sharon, to which the college's graduates have been going over the years. The second is a text on the wall titled "To be a teacher is to be a 'shamash' (servant/attendant)." The idea is simple: in a world where there are candles that burn for themselves, matches that light up for a moment, and torches that attract attention; the role of the educator is to be the "shamash" — the one whose entire occupation is to light others.

"Throughout all its years of activity, the college carries a DNA that contains first and foremost a sense of mission. Already at the beginning of the journey, Shaanan took upon itself to produce educators who are connected to the values of the Torah of Israel and Zionism in the young state that had just been established. This DNA obligates us to shape the image of the graduates as leaders who need to reach the educational field and lead." — says Levy.

Levy seeks to preserve this concept of mission in the character of the institution as well. "The college is not one of the largest in the country, or as I call it: a 'boutique college', and this has allowed for creating a warm, family-like, and supportive atmosphere. This is the secret of its strength — to upgrade professionally and set very high academic standards, and on the other hand, to remain family-like."

However, seniority can also become a trap. "The big challenge is to read the field at a faster pace, because the field is advancing quickly. Trends and programs that are being implemented now in the education system must receive expression already in the training process and not in retrospect." From his perspective, the connection to the field is a condition for relevance. "Otherwise, we simply won't be here in ten or twenty years. This is my agenda and this is the role I received as an academic institution from the state with holy trepidation: to train the best teachers that can be."