[etni] Fw: empty vessels

From: "Ask_Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
To: "ETNI" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:10:04 +0300
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sharon Tzur" <sharontzu5@xxxxxxx>
Subject: empty vessels


A brief response to something I read on the list a few days ago – I believe
by Batya. She mentioned that the new program treats the students with
respect and..." assumes that students are not 'empty vessels' being filled
with facts like Mr .Gradgrind in Hard Times did to his unfortunate victims.
HOTS insists that literature cannot be taught as a fully frontal assault or
a display of the teachers understanding and magical ability to decode. The
students in the examination or the log and in the classroom are being
invited to join this thinking process."

As others have written, making HOTs the central organizational concept is
not the only way to ensure that students are respected, and not treated as
empty vessels into which teachers pour their wisdom. I've always seen
literature as a joint venture in which students work together with each
other (sometimes individually, sometimes in groups, and sometimes as a
class) and with myself to try to understand what the writer is trying to
express. Literature is a subject where students can very much make a
contribution based on their own understanding and their own life experience.
I try to ask questions and provide tools which will enable and challenge
students to think and come up with their own answer. Over the years, many of
my best insights into the pieces of literature that I teach have come from
my students' input. Students are most certainly part of the thinking
process.

Batya's wording however made me wonder. Are teachers not equally worthy of
respect? Or are we the empty vessels into which a new theory of teaching
literature through HOTs can be poured?



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[etni] Fw: empty vessels

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