MJHS 1st in City to Offer Harkness Method
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Memphis Jewish High School 1st in City to Offer Harkness Method of Teaching
MEMPHIS, TN (4/15/06) -- Eric Berman, Dean of General Studies and Joan Traffas, General Studies Coordinator announce that Memphis Jewish High School will implement a style of teaching known as the Harkness Method. This style of teaching was first initiated by Phillips Exeter Academy, and adopted by other leading American independent schools, including Horace Mann School, The Hotchkiss School, Phillips Academy, St. Paul’s School, and The Masters School. The name comes from the philanthropist Edward Harkness who endowed Exeter with a monetary gift in 1930 and challenged the faculty to develop an innovative teaching method that empowered students to take active ownership of their education. Tangibly, the result was an oval table around which teachers and students engaged in cooperative inquiry. But pedagogically, the Harkness classroom transformed learning. As one Exeter teacher explained, the classroom was “no longer a battleground but a proving ground,” and “in a Harkness class the students will not debate, but discuss; the teacher will not pronounce, but question.” Both Berman and Traffas were trained in the Harkness method at Phillips Exeter Academy and each teacher at Memphis Jewish High School will be trained by them in the teaching methodology.
Inspired by this concept, Memphis Jewish High School teachers, with class sizes around 12 students, will conduct class in a discussion format. Both teachers and students will be committed to an ideal of active, participatory, student-centered learning which values teaching students not just a given course’s content, but the skills required to become their own and each other’s teachers. The Harkness Table will be central to both the Memphis Jewish High School classroom and its curriculum. A place at the Harkness Table will require students to exercise a high degree of self-discipline, and to engage eagerly and energetically with both peers and instructors. Learning at Memphis Jewish High School will be a cooperative enterprise in which the students and teachers work together as partners.
Andy Groveman, president of Memphis Jewish High School, said the school will be “for students who take pleasure in a distinctive mode of teaching and learning in which each member of the class is in some distinctive measure a teacher of all the others. We are excited that Memphis Jewish High School will be the first school in Memphis to systemically implement the method throughout its general studies and Jewish studies curriculum.”
For more information on Memphis Jewish High School or an application, call Andy Groveman at 901.260.7278.
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