Proposal Title
Teaching Tolerance: Using Syrian Refugee Literature in the Secondary English Classroom
Proposal Type
Individual Presentation
Location
Olscamp 208: Collaboration in the Classroom
Start Date
21-10-2017 9:45 AM
End Date
21-10-2017 11:00 AM
Abstract
Teaching Syrian refugee literature in high school English literature classrooms requires a collaboration between student and teacher, built on mutual trust. Procedurally directive teaching must be used, as students must feel safe to participate, disagree, and misunderstand when learning about controversial topics, such as the refugee crisis.
Teaching Tolerance: Using Syrian Refugee Literature in the Secondary English Classroom
Olscamp 208: Collaboration in the Classroom
Teaching Syrian refugee literature in high school English literature classrooms requires a collaboration between student and teacher, built on mutual trust. Procedurally directive teaching must be used, as students must feel safe to participate, disagree, and misunderstand when learning about controversial topics, such as the refugee crisis.
Proposal
Teaching Syrian refugee literature in high school English literature classrooms requires a collaboration between student and teacher, built on mutual trust. This method relies on a classroom atmosphere, in which student are taught how to question themselves and others with academic curiosity and respect. Directive teaching cannot be employed with such material, as students must feel safe to participate, disagree, and misunderstand when learning about controversial topics, such as the refugee crisis. Directive teaching suggests that teachers subtly guide their students toward the most logical or desired answer. However, given the topic, students need to be provided the space to discover these topics and their intricacies without direct guidance. To teach this material, the instructor and students must work in concert, assuring that the students do not feel duped or guided. Instead, procedurally directive teaching and discussion-based lessons need to be employed. This style of teaching, which is based in its cooperative methods of discovery, allows students to respectfully challenge the teacher and interrogate their own beliefs and biases. Using these methods, I will detail the types of lesson plans that can be utilized to teach his material and other like topics.