
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 29, 1993                   TAG: 9401040001
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: New River Valley bureau
DATELINE: RADFORD                                 LENGTH: Short

READING TEACHERS CALLED TO ANSWER MANY CHALLENGES

Teachers today face a list of problems in the classroom ranging from violence to teen pregnancy to illiteracy, but they can be part of society's solution if they are ``up to the challenge.''

Herbert Thompson, associate professor of education at Emory & Henry College, talked about the challenges ahead for English and language arts teachers at the fall reading conference of the New River Valley Reading Council recently at Radford University.

In a talk titled ``How It Is Ain't How It's Going to Be,'' he described the increasing changes in family life, ethnic diversity and technology that are affecting society.

Teaching, also, has been transformed, and could be improved, through creative use of computer and video technology, he said.

Modern students are less willing to memorize a set of facts than to learn how to use a computer to find them, he said. But he thought that education in the future should be more about empowering students than about handing out facts, anyway.

Thompson quoted at length from a paper by one of his students, Gary Lilly of Abingdon, who envisioned an electronically oriented school using teachers and the entire surrounding community as tools for learning.

by CNB