Authentic Education and the Teaching of Chumash. A Contradiction?

Comment by Michael Bitton on October 22, 2012 at 3:58pm

I agree with your premise, but I believe your missing the point. I don't believe authentic learning means you have to bring the learning alive, so to speak, that is just an example of Authentic learning. In my opinion  authentic learning means that the learning process become something tangible to the child, not just concepts or facts. As you mentioned yourself, the student becomes actively involved in the learning process. How you achieve that is up to you. I, too teach Judaic studies (Gemara, Navi etc.) which is a text based class, and therefore applications might not necessarily work as they would in a science or math class. But, I incorporate extensive collaboration (i.e. Havruta) in my classroom, and I feel this accomplishes alot of what we are trying to do. I have students coming to me and telling me all the time how thier learning has changed significantly  due to this. I plan on writing more about Havruta learning in a later blog.

Comment by Shira Leibowitz on October 24, 2012 at 6:29am

Hi Rabbi Pollock,

An interesting source from which to gain insight is the Jewish Day School Standards and Benchmarks Project. As the project is led by The Jewish Theological Seminary's Melton Research Center, you would need to feel comfortable with reaching out to educators outside of Orthodox world. If that works for you, I do think that the interaction could be enriching for all.

The project provides a framework for "backward design" in the teaching of TaNaKh. You choose from a range of standards that make sense to you and your school. Some standards are:

• Students will become independent and literarily astute readers of the biblical text in Hebrew
• Students will be engaged in the learning of ancient, rabbinic, and modern modes of interpretation of the biblical text and will see themselves as a link in this ongoing chain of interpretation
• Students will develop an appreciation for the sacredness of TaNaKH as the primary record of the meeting between God and the peopel of Israel and as an essential text through which Jews continue to grapple with theological, spiritual and existential questions.

Each standard has a series of benchmarks to guide learning.

Teachers begin by determining "big ideas" from the text; in essence taking a sacred learning for focus. Teachers determine what they want students to know and be able to do. Teachers then create the assessment, which can be a creative project to demonstrate deep understanding. The assessment then guides development of lessons and learning - we are preparing students to uncover understanding.

There is a somewhat steep learning curve to gain facility in the approach and the training is important. If you were not going to participate in the full training, there are many with whom I could connect you who could guide you. The method has assisted us from moving pasook by pasook; perek by perek; to guiding students toward greater understanding of the language and sacred narrative of the TaNaKh.

I'd be happy to speak to you via Skype or phone to share more. You can e-mail me at: shiraleibowitz@gmail.com if you'd like to continue the conversation.

 

Comment by rabbipollock on October 26, 2012 at 8:03am

Michael - Thanks for reading the blog post and taking the time to comment. I don't think that I am disagreeing with you. I think that Chumash/Gemara is learned best when it is done with a chavrusa. In fact I would make an argument that the Yeshivos are where the original 21st Century Skills and Learning took place. After all, learning with a chavrusa in the Beis Medrash seems to involve Communication (between the two learners), Collaboration (between different groups learning in the BM, as well as the Shaylos UTeshuvos that would go back and forth between the different learning centers), Critical thinking (I think that is all you do as you learn Gemara) and Creativity (Pilpul).  I was just making the point that Authentic Education and Problem Based Learning, where the point is to take a real world example and apply it to life and then learn from it, do not fit in so well with traditional methods of teaching Chumash.  Trying to use them to learn Chumash puts you at risk of learning the side points while missing the main ideas.

Comment by Moshe Krakowski on October 31, 2012 at 9:13am

Hi Rabbi Pollack,

I'm on faculty at Azrieli, and one of my areas of research is PBL and authenticity more generally--and i found your post interesting and compelling.

You make some very strong points (indeed that 17 year-old was spot on in his critique), and I agree that some types of authenticity such as problem based learning, are more appropriate in the later grades, but this doesn’t mean that authenticity itself is problematic in chumash.

All we mean when we talk about authenticity is that students be engaging in real tasks, and not be doing something artificial. This doesn’t mean always bringing in real world examples—sometimes the chumash learning itself is the “real world”. For example, chavrusa learning, mentioned above, is an authentic activity—it’s how people learn in the real world, but it doesn’t involve any attempt at “relevance”. Similarly, trying to understand some problem that is inherent in the pesukim (perhaps something that bothered the rishonim—a textual nuance, or some chronology in the text being off) and having students try to solve the problem, while giving them scaffolds (translations of meforshim perhaps) to help out as they work on it, is also authentic. This is very different than pointing out the problem and telling them (and having them memorize for the test) that this is what the Ramban says, this is what ibn Ezra says, and this is the medrash Rashi brings.

None of this means you can’t, at the same time, also be working your way through a perek—but it might mean working your way through while also looking up and providing other sources, and giving the students the leeway to take charge of their own learning in an active way, because they are working on something meaningful. It means that they might be indendently producing something. This doesn’t mean they shouldn't be working hard at translation, grammar, etc. just that it should be embedded in a structure that has real meaning beyond having to know something for school.

Does this version of authenticity make more sense? 

Comment by rabbipollock on November 7, 2012 at 10:51pm

Rabbi Krakowski,

     Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my blog post. Your post is really the follow up to what I wrote. My premise was that traditional Authentic Education doesn't work. However, Torah has been relevant for thousands of years. The system that you are describing is nothing different than what they do in Yeshivos. There is nothing more fulfilling than the time spent with a chavrusa trying to understand the sugya and finally coming to a good pshat. That is completely relevant and authentic. In that way we are doing something right. The question to ponder is whether we can take that Yeshiva Bais Medrash experience and give it over in the lower grades. It might mean teaching Rebbeim and Moros the ideas of Differentiated Instruction and giving the students the opportunity to work to understand the Chumash on their own, instead of a straight frontal lesson. In my classroom I try to give my second graders a dictionary of harder words in the possuk and a menu of activities on the possuk in order for them to work with chavrusos or in small groups to understand the pessukim. I go around the room to monitor the progress of the boys as they work through their menu. 

Comment by Moshe Krakowski on November 8, 2012 at 11:28am

Thanks for the smicha!

I would suggest, however, that what you are calling traditional is not as traditional as you think! In the research literature, authenticity was never only about relevance, it included a wide range of things depending on the specific learning domain.

In addition, there can be some differences between this and traditional beis medrash study - for example, in a focus on solving some problem or coming up with some specific chidush--rather than working through with a chavrusa page by page.

But overall, yes: for many (but not all) things we can definitely  import the beis medrash experience into the lower grades.

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