Teaching Ancient Hebrew to High School Students

I’ve begun teaching a class of six high school freshman (5 boys, 1 girl) ancient/biblical Hebrew. So much fun! Remember now, I’m in a country parish in the boonies of Wisconsin. My students are respectful and of sweet disposition, not like the city-slicker who is typing these lines.

There are three juniors who want to start Hebrew with me, too.

Negotiations with the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the students' public school districts are underway to allow the students to receive high school and/or college credit for the course and in order to address funding issues. The textbooks and materials to be used are the same as those of the UW Extension Distance Learning courses. The non-discounted cost (excluding my teaching hours, which I consider part of my professional duties) is $800-900 per student per semester. That is more than parents and/or school boards can be expected to cough up.

If all goes well, this group and future groups will progress through 4 to 6 semesters of college-level classical Hebrew before they finish high school.

The method of teaching I am using involves extensive use of online resources, an emphasis on verbal and compositional skills, with the goal being to be able to sight-read and sight-pronounce biblical Hebrew without vowels and translate from Hebrew to English and English to Hebrew. Not your run-of-the-mill biblical Hebrew course, I suppose. But that’s the Hebrew I learned from Ruth Driss, Menahem Mansoor, and E. J. Revell in my youth.

A NAPHNet query went out with this content a couple of hours ago and another high school teacher of Hebrew has already contacted me. How cool is that.

If anyone knows of a foundation that might be interested in seeding this initiative financially, let me know. In effect, it is an example of pre-seminary education.

Comments

[Phil Sumpter]

I have just started functioning as the tutorial assistent for Hebrew here at the University of Bonn! I won't be teaching them anything new, just reviewing what they've already done. If you have any tips on how to make the thing fun and interactive, or perhaps any resources, I'd be grateful! I'm going to try and translate Mario Runvolucri's Grammar Games into suitable material (I don't think I'm being paid enough to be this keen!).

[Tim]

If you want to give them vocabulary learning as part of the mix do look at http://cfdl.auckland.ac.nz/hebrew/ you can ouput the vocabs you need with sound files and pictures as mini websites to give your students. (As long as the "words" are already done - if not you can add them, as long as you get a login.) We are quite pleased with the system, as are the students!

[JohnFH]

Thanks, Phil and Tim, for comments and suggestions.

Other online resources for beginners, with discussion and links, are found on Talmida's site (see blogroll).

[Lue-Yee Tsang]

James Jordan also suggests that Hebrew be taught in the K–12 curriculum. What you write about sounds like a lot of fun, and I hope I get to be involved in something like that when I’m older (even if just with my own kids).

[JohnFH]

Hi Lue-Yee,

Marvelous! And thanks for the link to James Jordan, who makes many excellent points.