While Hiatusing Howard Zinn Would Like a Moment of Your Time
One of the things that I often tell teachers is that I think that they should never hesitate to bring their own personal experiences into the classroom. Teachers are often shy about that. They think that it’s sort of unprofessional. You know – teach the syllabus, teach the textbook, teach the stuff that you want to teach, but don’t bring in your own life and your own experiences. But after all, every teacher – maybe the teacher has not had the the kind of experiences I have had – but all teachers have lived certain kinds of experiences, which made them who they are. And whatever those experiences are, whatever led to a change in consciousness of those teachers, students should know about that. And I discovered this: that whenever I brought into the classroom my own experiences, the interest of the students suddenly quickened. I don’t want to to say that before I brought my experiences in my students were asleep. I like to think that half of them were awake. But certainly when I began to bring my own life into it, my own experiences, yes students’ interest always quickened. A lot of teachers don’t understand this; students always want to know who their teachers are, who they really are, behind the textbook, behind the syllabus, what their lives are like, what they went through, and what they’re thinking about. I always resented it when I was a student and I spent a semester or a year with a teacher and at the end of the semester and and the end of the year I didn’t know where that teacher stood. I thought there was something missing there.Howard Zinn – Original Zinn
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