Really, am I the only one in class that actually watched a show called "Moonlighting" that was mentioned in the article I read, "Shakespeare and the At-Risk Student"? Just wondering.
All of this talk about Shakespeare reminds me of my first (and really only) experience teaching Shakespeare. I taught in a Chinese college in Hong Kong for a year and a half in the mid-90s. I’ll never forget when the student group assigned to cover Romeo and Juliet absolutely BLEW me away with their lively, memorized, engaging, full-on dramatic rendition of the play. They had rewritten the play to key scenes and designed it all to run about 30 minutes. Students memorized and delivered their lines in a virtually flawless performance. All students wore full costume. Juliet even perched on a desk as she called out to Romeo. They may have even kissed? I can’t remember. The Chinese students used some of the most precise enunciation they had used all semester. The students wrote to me later in their journals that the project was one of the most inspiring they had ever done. Admittedly, it was their creativity and their drive that produced the good work they did. I only facilitated and acted as the guide-on-the-side. It was a real lesson to me on the importance of letting students free so they can create freely.
All of this talk about Shakespeare reminds me of my first (and really only) experience teaching Shakespeare. I taught in a Chinese college in Hong Kong for a year and a half in the mid-90s. I’ll never forget when the student group assigned to cover Romeo and Juliet absolutely BLEW me away with their lively, memorized, engaging, full-on dramatic rendition of the play. They had rewritten the play to key scenes and designed it all to run about 30 minutes. Students memorized and delivered their lines in a virtually flawless performance. All students wore full costume. Juliet even perched on a desk as she called out to Romeo. They may have even kissed? I can’t remember. The Chinese students used some of the most precise enunciation they had used all semester. The students wrote to me later in their journals that the project was one of the most inspiring they had ever done. Admittedly, it was their creativity and their drive that produced the good work they did. I only facilitated and acted as the guide-on-the-side. It was a real lesson to me on the importance of letting students free so they can create freely.
Gleaves, Slagle, and Twaryonas supply inspiration and ideas I’ll definitely use in their article on “Shakespeare and the At-Risk Student.” As a future special education teacher, I expect to sometimes question whether I should be using multiple modalities and alternative/modified texts for teaching harder texts. I like that these authors embrace the idea that “at-risk students could not only present and perform, but be appropriate audience members.” The teachers espoused the belief that “all… students can understand and appreciate the works of William Shakespeare.” I found it interesting that Patti introduced her sophomore students to the text by first watching a film, e.g. she introduced The Taming of the Shrew by first having students view Zeffirelli’s film of the play, starting Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They ended the class by viewing the Moonlighting spoof (strangely enough I vaguely recall when this came out). Patti used Zeffirelli’s Hamlet to help students connect to the drama. She also used scene-by-scene summaries, character poems, improvisation, and journal writing (and the Moonlighting spoof again). All of this emphasizes that the multi-modal approach is critical to engaging students, particularly at-risk students. This all comes back to the importance of creating multiple access points to text and learning. With at-risk students, there is a likelihood that a text-only approach would not engage and would not appeal to all students’ strengths. The multi-pronged approach of video, writing, reading, speaking will appeal to a wider variety of the student strengths in order to encourage learning.
Clearly, a key part of teaching Shakespeare is ensuring students can connect to the text. I particularly liked Patti’s point that having students present complete scenes is unwieldy and perhaps too daunting for students who are at-risk. She instead had students choose single incidents and improvise the scenes using their own language and dialects. Patti found these improvised incidents “increased success” and further engaged students. David suggests that students need to become familiar with Shakespeare, audiences of the time, and “Elizabethan customs, belief, and family life.” Through studying this, students compare and contrast their own lives with life in Shakespeare’s time. He used Papp and Kirkland’s Shakespeare Alive! (1988) to guide students in this study. I definitely need to check out this book! I liked how he assigned small groups a chapter; students had to select five things from their chapter and present the information back to the class.
The teachers’ descriptions of their efforts to engage these at-risk students in the Shakespeare Celebration inspires me to provide similar opportunities for my future students to participate and “own” such an event by choosing and planning the medium for contribution. Students could provide art or projects for display, present text from Shakespeare through dramatizations, skits, videos, reenactments, or choral reading, be a master of ceremony or stage manager. Each student chose a project for the event. The teachers noted that the key elements to the event were that the study and performance should be fun and that the effort should focus on collaboration in the classroom. The results were that students improved their attitudes toward their responsibilities, gained renewed or new found confidence as learners, and enhanced their self esteem. I hope I’m creative enough to get this going in my own classrooms!!
The teachers’ descriptions of their efforts to engage these at-risk students in the Shakespeare Celebration inspires me to provide similar opportunities for my future students to participate and “own” such an event by choosing and planning the medium for contribution. Students could provide art or projects for display, present text from Shakespeare through dramatizations, skits, videos, reenactments, or choral reading, be a master of ceremony or stage manager. Each student chose a project for the event. The teachers noted that the key elements to the event were that the study and performance should be fun and that the effort should focus on collaboration in the classroom. The results were that students improved their attitudes toward their responsibilities, gained renewed or new found confidence as learners, and enhanced their self esteem. I hope I’m creative enough to get this going in my own classrooms!!
I finished the Manga Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet, but I’m just not sure I love reading it over the original Romeo and Juliet. I need to think on this a little more. At this point, I’d prefer to stick to the original. I might, however, give students an opportunity to read this in a group project. Or maybe, I’d take a scene from the original and compare it to this. I guess I’m still getting used to the idea of the graphic novel. I feel like there’s so much we can do with the original, and like the teachers in “Shakespeare and the At-Risk Student,” I do feel that all students can appreciate the work of Shakespeare in some way. At any rate, I am very interested in hearing the responses and ideas of my classmates to this debate.
