Monday, February 23, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
My Lesson Went Great!
My Junior English classes are reading Night at the moment. Using Thinkfinity.org, I found audio of a great interview Elie Wiesel did in 1985 for the BBC, discussing topics ranging from his views on God and his mission to the trivialization of the word holocaust. It was great to hear Wiesel discussing these things himself, in his own voice.
I am fortunate enought to have a Smart Board in my classroom, so I hooked up the laptop to it and the students got to hear the interview loud and clear through the Smart Board. After listening to it, I used the interview as the basis of their Daily Journal writing to start off yesterday's class. I had them respond to the following questions which I posted on the Smart Board:
Ø Elie Wiesel discusses the problem he has with the trivialization of language when it gets overused. His example is the use of the term Holocaust to describe what happened to the Jews during World War II. He says that when he first used this term to describe the horror that occurred (he was the first to do so) he did so because there were no words appropriate enough to describe the event. Look up the word holocaust in the dictionary and define it. Do you think it was a good choice? Explain your understanding of Wiesel’s decision to use that word, and why he now feels it has been “trivialized.”
Ø What words do you think have been “trivialized” or cheapened by overuse?
Ø Wiesel also discusses the “Survivor’s Guilt” he feels, which is common among individuals who are one of few survivors of a tragedy. He asks, “Whose place have I taken?” What do you think this must feel like? Whose place might you be taking now? Wiesel has won the Nobel Peace Prize for the work he has done throughout his lifetime against genocide and other atrocities, yet he still feels like perhaps there is someone better who could be alive in his place. Think about your life. How do you intend to spend it? Does the way Wiesel feels make an impact on your ideas about what you should do with your life? In what way?
Once the students responded to these questions, we began a whole class discussion about their responses. It went so well! These questions fostered some incredibly sincere, introspective comments from my students. The discussion we had first about words that have been trivialized was really interesting. Some of the words the kids came up with were "love," "hate," "kill," "gay," "the n-word," and "jew". The final entry in this list really floored me, because some of the kids admitted that they knew people who used the word "jew" to insult people, either to say they were cheap or lame, in the same way people sometimes use "gay." This was incredibly upsetting to me, as a Jew, and very surprising as well. I of course knew the stereotype of Jews as cheap, but I had no idea that in this day and age the word "jew" was still used in private company to insult. I took the opportunity in class to educate the students about the origin of that stereotype, that historically in Europe Jews were not permitted to hold many different types of employment, but because of the bibilical ban against usury one of the only professions they were allowed to hold was in banking, and thus developed the stereotype of the Jew being obsessed with money. I think I dealt with the situation well, and hopefully I turned a very distressing situation into one the students learned from, but I am still quite upset.
Moving on. For the second question regarding this notion of, "Whose place have I taken?" there was some very interesting and moving discussion. One student felt that she was fortunate to be sitting in school when there are young people in Iraq, for example, who cannot go to school. She had also been moved by Slumdog Millionaire and felt fortunate to be privileged, in school, well-taken care of, etc. Another student expressed something similar, discussing her friend who lives in Southern Israel who cannot attend school because of the bombing from Gaza. Another student had a near-death experience a few years ago, and expressed his feeling of simply being fortunate to be alive and sitting here. Another student spoke about the need to tell the people we love that we love them, because we don't know how long we will have them with us, and that it's important to cherish them and remind ourselves and eachother that we love one another. She actually ended up needing to step outside as she was overcome with emotion.
I, myself, was really moved by the insightful comments made by my students. I am so happy to have given them this opportunity to express themselves on these topics as it engendered some really poignant commentary. Moments like this make me happy and proud to be a teacher. My students are pretty cool (when they let it show).
I am fortunate enought to have a Smart Board in my classroom, so I hooked up the laptop to it and the students got to hear the interview loud and clear through the Smart Board. After listening to it, I used the interview as the basis of their Daily Journal writing to start off yesterday's class. I had them respond to the following questions which I posted on the Smart Board:
Ø Elie Wiesel discusses the problem he has with the trivialization of language when it gets overused. His example is the use of the term Holocaust to describe what happened to the Jews during World War II. He says that when he first used this term to describe the horror that occurred (he was the first to do so) he did so because there were no words appropriate enough to describe the event. Look up the word holocaust in the dictionary and define it. Do you think it was a good choice? Explain your understanding of Wiesel’s decision to use that word, and why he now feels it has been “trivialized.”
Ø What words do you think have been “trivialized” or cheapened by overuse?
Ø Wiesel also discusses the “Survivor’s Guilt” he feels, which is common among individuals who are one of few survivors of a tragedy. He asks, “Whose place have I taken?” What do you think this must feel like? Whose place might you be taking now? Wiesel has won the Nobel Peace Prize for the work he has done throughout his lifetime against genocide and other atrocities, yet he still feels like perhaps there is someone better who could be alive in his place. Think about your life. How do you intend to spend it? Does the way Wiesel feels make an impact on your ideas about what you should do with your life? In what way?
Once the students responded to these questions, we began a whole class discussion about their responses. It went so well! These questions fostered some incredibly sincere, introspective comments from my students. The discussion we had first about words that have been trivialized was really interesting. Some of the words the kids came up with were "love," "hate," "kill," "gay," "the n-word," and "jew". The final entry in this list really floored me, because some of the kids admitted that they knew people who used the word "jew" to insult people, either to say they were cheap or lame, in the same way people sometimes use "gay." This was incredibly upsetting to me, as a Jew, and very surprising as well. I of course knew the stereotype of Jews as cheap, but I had no idea that in this day and age the word "jew" was still used in private company to insult. I took the opportunity in class to educate the students about the origin of that stereotype, that historically in Europe Jews were not permitted to hold many different types of employment, but because of the bibilical ban against usury one of the only professions they were allowed to hold was in banking, and thus developed the stereotype of the Jew being obsessed with money. I think I dealt with the situation well, and hopefully I turned a very distressing situation into one the students learned from, but I am still quite upset.
Moving on. For the second question regarding this notion of, "Whose place have I taken?" there was some very interesting and moving discussion. One student felt that she was fortunate to be sitting in school when there are young people in Iraq, for example, who cannot go to school. She had also been moved by Slumdog Millionaire and felt fortunate to be privileged, in school, well-taken care of, etc. Another student expressed something similar, discussing her friend who lives in Southern Israel who cannot attend school because of the bombing from Gaza. Another student had a near-death experience a few years ago, and expressed his feeling of simply being fortunate to be alive and sitting here. Another student spoke about the need to tell the people we love that we love them, because we don't know how long we will have them with us, and that it's important to cherish them and remind ourselves and eachother that we love one another. She actually ended up needing to step outside as she was overcome with emotion.
I, myself, was really moved by the insightful comments made by my students. I am so happy to have given them this opportunity to express themselves on these topics as it engendered some really poignant commentary. Moments like this make me happy and proud to be a teacher. My students are pretty cool (when they let it show).
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
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