[etni] A response to: My reflections on the literature course

From: "Adele Raemer and Laurie Levy" <raemer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'ETNI'" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2008 21:54:23 +0200
I have been asked to post this in Dr. Lifschitz' name:
 

 

To Anonymous and Anonymous

 

I would like to take this opportunity to respond to some of the accusations
made in your letters. The initial letter has as its goal not merely to air
some misgivings, but to "stoke the flames". I hope that what follows will
douse them considerably.

 

The F module, which was piloted last year, does not seek to merely "give
names to what you have been doing all along". To the contrary, the explicit
teaching of the Higher Order Thinking Skills targets learning the thinking
skills in such a way that the students will be able to use them, whereas
until now you may have been asking higher order questions and the students
may have answered but they certainly would not and could not initiate the
use of any thinking skill on their own. Certainly, they could not transfer
the use of higher order thinking to anything else: not their life, not their
other school subjects. But of course as long as you were asking higher order
questions, that in itself was sufficient.no need to go beyond that. Right?

 

You also complained about the criteria for literary texts. It is true that
some long poems can be boring for your students, and that some teachers can
be very creative even with very short poems. However neither of these
complaints are a valid reason for NOT having criteria. They only point to
possible exceptions, the former to be avoided in any case and the latter to
be used as supplementary material.  The reason we chose to have criteria is
because we thought that there needs to be some equivalence between the
length of the texts that students studying for the exam will be studying and
the length of texts that LOG students study. If you want to argue that
length is no guarantee of quality, then the answer to that is-- that is
precisely why the regional inspectors need to certify the teachers' choices.


Lastly, you deplore the fact that because of the authentic criteria
precludes teaching Eli Wiesel's Night. First let me state that in canvassing
chief inspectors of 5 languages, all insisted that they include ONLY
authentic, original texts in the target language. French learners do not
study Russian stories in French, Spanish learners do not study French
stories in Spanish. It follows that in English we should be doing English
language texts and not texts translated from other languages. And there's
enough to choose from. As for Eli Wiesel, had you asked - you would have
been told that an exception was made for both Night and Anne Frank's Diary.
And the inspectorate is willing to consider other texts from the Shoa if
proposed. However, there is no necessity to 'davka' teach texts from the
Shoa. 

As for the 4 point Bagrut, no list of texts has been made up as yet for the
D module so I cannot comment on that. I will be willing to discuss this when
it becomes relevant. However I can tell you that some teachers have already
started, on their own initiative, to teach the new program in 4 point
classes and have had very good results (and I'm trying not to use
superlatives). 

 

On Thursday evening teachers from the Jerusalem area who participated in the
pilot met. None taught every text for 7 lessons. Poems were taught for far
fewer lessons, the long text for quite a bit more. No prescription of this
kind was ever proposed, nor was any ever discussed. Nor is it to be
recommended!

 

Furthermore, no one ever said that there must be a written task for each of
the seven components. There are certain components that require a written
task. If this issue remains unclear in the course please have the course
lecturer contact me, or one of the veteran lecturers. By the way, I have
heard from teachers who participated in the pilot that the written work of
their students has improved significantly because they think differently and
therefore write differently!

 

One final comment. Obviously, you and the other teachers in your group are
qualified and experienced teachers. Not all English teachers are. Many
teachers are unqualified and / or inexperienced. They have high anxiety
levels about teaching literature. The sessions in the course have taken into
account the entire population of teachers, and for certain groups the
sessions on teaching literature are extremely important. 

Hopefully, as your lecturer gets to know your group adjustments will be
made. Your anonymity precludes our intervening to help at this juncture.
Also future sessions that deal more concretely with the program should
clarify many of the issues you raised.

 

One request before I end: next time please try asking for clarifications
before you decide to 'stoke fires'. 

 

Kol Tuv and Shavua Tov,

Sincerely,

Dr. Debbie Lifschitz

National Counselor

 



-----------------------------------------------
        Call for Articles
      The Etni Rag needs you

** Etni homepage - http://www.etni.org 
   or - http://www.etni.org.il **
** for help - ask@xxxxxxxx **
** to post to this list - etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **
-----------------------------------------------
[etni] A response to: My reflections on the literature course

Other related posts:
