[etni] Fw: re: My reflections on the literature course
- From: "Ask Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
- To: "Etni" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 10:05:22 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rita Braunstein" <ritabr@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: My reflections on the literature course
I want to thank "anonymous" for giving us an overview of what the course,
which many of us have been waiting for, and to ETNI for allowing her/him to
post this summary anonymously.
I hope the Ministry realizes that many of us love literature and teach it
with the utmost of care so that it becomes memorable to our students.I also
assume they know how very overworked we already are. Don't turn literature
into a burden!
Rita Braunstein
Anonymous wrote:
> A month or two ago, the new literature module was the subject of much
> controversy on this list. At some point it died down, but I think that
> I'm going to stoke the embers a bit by sharing my reflections on the
> literature hishtalmut that I am currently attending.
> Let me preface this with a few important points:
> First, lest I be attacked by zealous Irgun members for attending the
> course to begin with, I'd better point out that I am not a member of the
> Irgun,
> and therefore am not bound by the Irgun's directives regarding the course,
> the
> project, etc. That does not mean that I don't support the directives
> (especially after a few sessions of this course!), but I did feel that I
> could attend the hishtalmut without any pangs of conscience.
> Second, I am posting anonymously. Some list members probably won't like
> it, and I understand that, but I do have reasons (and unfortunately have
> witnessed firsthand that they are quite valid) for fearing the
> repercussions
> of posting a rather uncomplimentary letter about the Ministry to a public
> forum of this sort.
> Lastly, before I am accused by literature module proponents of being
> pre-prejudiced against the whole concept, let me assure you that that is
> not the case. I spoke to quite a few people who took last year's pilot
> program, and they all spoke very highly of the experience. That, more than
> anything
> else, convinced me to attend the course, and I was actually waiting
> eagerly for it to start so I could see what this whole exciting thing was
> all
> about.
> Unfortunately, I've been more than a little disappointed by what I've
> discovered.
> So now, for my reflections on the course:
> 1) It is WAY too long and drawn out. In our first session, the instructor
> assured us that we weren't going to be doing anything new, just giving
> names to things that we had already been doing in the past. My question at
> the
> time was: Then why do we need 56 hours (14 long face to face meetings!) to
> learn how to do that? By the end of the first session, I knew that the
> question was justified. I had learned exactly one new thing - the criteria
> for the pieces of literature that we will be allowed to use - in that
> whole three and a quarter hour session! Subsequent sessions were no
> better, and
> this is not only my feeling. I have spoken with numerous other
> participants, and everyone is bored out of their mind and consider the
> course an
> enormous waste of time (those that stayed, that is - many dropped out, and
> no
> wonder). And I can assure you that no one walked in that way - we all
> wanted to learn something new. So why do we have to spend 3 sessions
> talking
> about what literature is and why we teach it, etc.? Maybe this is suitable
> for
> first year teachers, but surely the Ministry realized that most of the
> teachers taking the course are far from first year teachers. Actually,
> most of the participants have been teaching for so long that they've
> pretty
> much reached their gmul limit, so why should they waste their time on 56
> hours
> of blather? (Even those who haven't would rather get 56 hours for actually
> studying something.) The Ministry should have taken that into account and
> condensed the course - from what I've seen so far, it could have been cut
> by at least 50%.
> 2) This program is, to an extent, going to kill literature. Just look at
> the criteria for an accepted piece of literature: it must be unsimplified
> and
> unabridged (yes, for 4 pointers, too, at this stage, although supposedly
> they're still working on the 4 point criteria) and originally written in
> English. Oh, and everything has to be a certain length. OK, I understand
> levelling the playing field when it comes to length, so that you don't
> have some teachers getting away with murder while others work very hard,
> but
> sometimes that makes no sense. Some short poems, for example, have much
> more to work with than much longer poems. The unsimplified part is going
> to be
> a killer for four pointers. And using only works originally written in
> English
> means that we won't be able to teach books like Night by Elie Wiesel, just
> as one example. This criterion was not in the pilot program - but next
> year we will all have to deal with it. Oh, and we were told that we need
> to
> spend 7 lessons minimum on each piece of literature - including poems. To
> me,
> that's total overkill. (By the way, that's 70 hours total for 5 pointers,
> more of course since a novel / play will obviously take more than 7 hours.
> When exactly are we supposed to teach other things?) There are also lots
> of criteria for how to teach the literature - you must go according to
> seven
> steps, and students have to have written proof in their literature log
> that you've done each step. All the participants I've talked to are
> getting a
> very boxed-in feeling from all these requirements. We ALL teach literature
> for literature's sake and love doing so, and now we are going to have to
> rearrange our whole way of teaching, not in order to enhance literature
> but in order to enhance students' higher order thinking skills. I have
> nothing
> against teaching higher order thinking skills - on the contrary, I spend a
> lot of time on that (without giving it a name... ), but I don't think that
> it should be on literature's back.
> 3) The Irgun was right: this program is going to require an awful lot of
> extra work. All you English teachers who are bored out of their skull
> because they have nothing to do after they come home from their cushy
> classroom jobs, step right up here to join! For the one or two that don't
> match that description, be prepared for a lot more work. Basically,
> students doing the log must have lots of pieces of written work for each
> piece of
> literature - much more marking than we've done in the past, and believe
> me, I do plenty as it is. Unless the Irgun manages to win this fight
> (which I
> highly doubt, and forgive me for being so cynical), we're not going to be
> paid extra, but the Ministry will have saved the cost of marking 2
> modules... why shouldn't we get that money instead??? I assume that most
> schools will prefer the log, because if you choose the test, you must
> teach certain pieces of literature whether you like it or not, mostly
> golden
> oldies such as All My Sons. If you're sick of those pieces of literature
> and would prefer to teach something fresher, you have no choice but to
> choose
> the log. In addition, I understand (although I don't have all the details)
> that even students taking the test will have to prepare some sort of log,
> and that on the whole, preparing students for the test won't end up being
> less work than having them do the log.
> So these are my reflections on the literature course. Am I eagerly
> anticipating implementing the program next year? That's a resounding NO
> you can hear echoing in the background! Has the Ministry once again jumped
> in
> without taking into account everything that goes on in the classroom? Oh,
> yes, no doubt about it. Once again, I'd like to emphasize that the
> hishtalmut I am in is being attended by some of the brightest, most
> experienced, most motivated, most caring teachers that I know - not people
> who are being forced to attend, but people who really wanted to know what
> to do with this program. If we are all at the same hostile stage regarding
> the program, the problem is with the program and the course, not with the
> participants. Will anyone in the Ministry even bother to take note of this
> post? Probably not. But at least I know that I've warned others about
> what's to come...
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