by Dan Bruno, M.Ed., NBCT
Turning and turning in a widening gyre...
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
-William Butler Yeats
This time of year brings on some many forms of frenzy: promposals, AP testing, Standards testing, closing out the year, awards, sports, academics. The list, like Yeats's gyre, grows with each rotation of the day. In my district, a new superintendent, the same old board of supervisors, and the same old school board have led to the same old budget crisis. Positions slashed. Apologies made in e-mails. What seems absent are the passionate arguments over raising the only source of revenue the schools have: the real estate tax. In dependent school board states like ours, the school board cannot tax; instead, they are entirely dependent on the whim of the supervisors. Democracy at its finest and most flawed. Public debate too often comes down to facts and figures, bottom lines and dollar signs. The truth is that these issues require a bit more passion.
In the world of our classrooms, passion comes in the form of verse. From Shakespeare to Schnackenberg, emotion does not come in a more crystallized form than the poetry we teach. Oftentimes, like that public discourse mentioned above, we lose ourselves in the technical and forget that poetry is, at its best, an individual expression of singular experience. People write verse to share these experiences with an audience. When we focus solely on the techniques and minutiae, we alienate students from an art form that offers them an outlet in a world full of inputs. This month's Engage Now! focuses on helping students own poetry through creation.
Katie Greene's May Engage Now! puts poetry in the students' hands so that they can write it and perform it. Utilizing the web site Shadow Poetry, students explore forms and write poetry in forms they find appealing. To top it off, they must find pictorial representations of their work and use it to decorate the page. The activity is light enough to fit the hectic schedule of the end of the year while still packing a hefty intellectual punch. If you are looking for a way to close out the year with fun, flexibility, and intelligence, head over the NCTE Connected Community and download the lesson. And best of luck at the end of this year.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
Authentic Audiences: Engage Now February, March, and April
By Dan Bruno, M.Ed., NBCT
This year, even the denizens of the South can put on the face of the grizzled winter survivor. And, just to add injury to injury, we've had so many of them that plans are becoming more of a suggestion than a reality. I mean, how do you reduce a 4 week unit into 2 days? We are only now catching back up where we need to be for the AP exam. If you'd told me that I would ever grow weary of the interruption of snow days, I would have laughed in your face; however, even the students, hearing that it might be below freezing for a number of nights in APRIL, are groaning about the never-ending winter. But I digress.
This post starts with an idea: What makes us write? There are a lot of suggestions, the least of which is the assignments people like us give out. But, if we are honest, the reasons most people write are far more mundane and far more important.
This realistic environment to "publish" one's work is something numerous teachers of writing reference in order to create a successful, student-centered classroom. Even if a symposium is out of reach, involving parents in the learning process can be one of the most important and vital connections for a child to see in action. I've used rubrics for writing to involve parents before, asking them to review their student's work and write feedback based on the rubric. These rough drafts can be included in any process paper project and used to soften the blow of the sometimes "harsh" teacher comments. "I agree with your mother that the sentences here are a bit confusing" is a lot easier to accept than "Your sentences lack clarity throughout this section."
The authentic audience makes another appearance in the March 2014 Engage Now from Courtney Morgan, The Aesthetic of Race. Students, doing a study of race, are asked to read informational texts about race, including Toni Morrison's "Recitatif," and then write an argumentative essay about race based on their reading. Students are asked to respond to the question "Is cross-racial friendship possible?" while considering the works they've read throughout their study of race. Students are encouraged to submit their essays to the Post Register's Essay Contest, providing a real world setting for the success or failure of their work. The plan is so extensive that one needs to merely sub in or out the standards and assessment tools used in his or her district (although, admittedly, my state is one of the few stragglers not adapting to the CCSS yet, so the standards substitution is probably only an issue for the few, not the majority). Head over to the Connected Community and download a copy for your lesson library.
Questions about race never seem to fail when it comes to spark good, thoughtful writing. Students realize the real implications of race around them because of the mosaic they see daily in each and every classroom. Our society is so racially conscious that these conversations are sometimes difficult to have without the suggestion of offense impressed upon every utterance. Lessons that provide strong frameworks in which to have these discussions foster the type of communication that builds bridges and creates cross-racial friendships.
The final Engage Now lesson in this post also deals with engaging with authentic audiences; however, the audiences in this lesson are different enough that students are forced to switch modes of discourse and medium of presentation. In Anna Roseboro's April Engage Now, students engage in the "thematic choral reading" of poetry and in the art of self-assessment in order to demonstrate to different audiences their competency in the study and performance of poetry. The "thematic choral readings" involve groups of students gathering together to choose poems they will perform as a group. The students figure out how the poems are connected and how they will be performed. Once the performance occurs, students write a reflection that serves as one half of a discussion between the teacher and student about what is deserved based on the final performance. For more details, check out the full plan at the link above.
Students crave authentic audiences and experiences for their writing. Nothing motivates like an uncontrived purpose. Knowing that someone will be reading and reacting to their words, that their words have the power to shape their academic and cultural identity, empowers students to become better writers, raising the stakes without attaching penalties. As Goethe said: "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and help them become what they are capable of being."
This year, even the denizens of the South can put on the face of the grizzled winter survivor. And, just to add injury to injury, we've had so many of them that plans are becoming more of a suggestion than a reality. I mean, how do you reduce a 4 week unit into 2 days? We are only now catching back up where we need to be for the AP exam. If you'd told me that I would ever grow weary of the interruption of snow days, I would have laughed in your face; however, even the students, hearing that it might be below freezing for a number of nights in APRIL, are groaning about the never-ending winter. But I digress.
This post starts with an idea: What makes us write? There are a lot of suggestions, the least of which is the assignments people like us give out. But, if we are honest, the reasons most people write are far more mundane and far more important.
"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and help them become what they are capable of being."In Stephen Heller's Engage Now! for the month of February, students are asked to develop a real world setting for the release of their junior research projects: a symposium. The symposium audience, composed of their peers and community members, observes presentations of the research these junior students have done in a professional setting. The students in Mr. Heller's class research contemporary issues, but the plan and format are so flexible that this symposium format could be adapted to any research project. Most important, the research symposium precedes the submission of the final paper, so the feedback given by audience members is applied to the revision of the final paper. Lastly, anyone who knows the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification process recognizes the importance of including the community in the classroom as a measure of excellence. This symposium requires parents to jump in, get involved, and provide feedback to their own and other people's children. What a way to bring various members of the community together: supporting the children they work so hard to support.
This realistic environment to "publish" one's work is something numerous teachers of writing reference in order to create a successful, student-centered classroom. Even if a symposium is out of reach, involving parents in the learning process can be one of the most important and vital connections for a child to see in action. I've used rubrics for writing to involve parents before, asking them to review their student's work and write feedback based on the rubric. These rough drafts can be included in any process paper project and used to soften the blow of the sometimes "harsh" teacher comments. "I agree with your mother that the sentences here are a bit confusing" is a lot easier to accept than "Your sentences lack clarity throughout this section."
The authentic audience makes another appearance in the March 2014 Engage Now from Courtney Morgan, The Aesthetic of Race. Students, doing a study of race, are asked to read informational texts about race, including Toni Morrison's "Recitatif," and then write an argumentative essay about race based on their reading. Students are asked to respond to the question "Is cross-racial friendship possible?" while considering the works they've read throughout their study of race. Students are encouraged to submit their essays to the Post Register's Essay Contest, providing a real world setting for the success or failure of their work. The plan is so extensive that one needs to merely sub in or out the standards and assessment tools used in his or her district (although, admittedly, my state is one of the few stragglers not adapting to the CCSS yet, so the standards substitution is probably only an issue for the few, not the majority). Head over to the Connected Community and download a copy for your lesson library.
Questions about race never seem to fail when it comes to spark good, thoughtful writing. Students realize the real implications of race around them because of the mosaic they see daily in each and every classroom. Our society is so racially conscious that these conversations are sometimes difficult to have without the suggestion of offense impressed upon every utterance. Lessons that provide strong frameworks in which to have these discussions foster the type of communication that builds bridges and creates cross-racial friendships.
The final Engage Now lesson in this post also deals with engaging with authentic audiences; however, the audiences in this lesson are different enough that students are forced to switch modes of discourse and medium of presentation. In Anna Roseboro's April Engage Now, students engage in the "thematic choral reading" of poetry and in the art of self-assessment in order to demonstrate to different audiences their competency in the study and performance of poetry. The "thematic choral readings" involve groups of students gathering together to choose poems they will perform as a group. The students figure out how the poems are connected and how they will be performed. Once the performance occurs, students write a reflection that serves as one half of a discussion between the teacher and student about what is deserved based on the final performance. For more details, check out the full plan at the link above.
Students crave authentic audiences and experiences for their writing. Nothing motivates like an uncontrived purpose. Knowing that someone will be reading and reacting to their words, that their words have the power to shape their academic and cultural identity, empowers students to become better writers, raising the stakes without attaching penalties. As Goethe said: "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and help them become what they are capable of being."
Monday, March 10, 2014
Making it Count
In the 2009-2010 school year, a history teacher colleague and I set out on our second year of the journey we called Hislish. We taught together, everyday. We saw the same kids, everyday. It was a tight-knit group. Unfortunately, at the end of that year, I received an opportunity to teach for the Governor's School, the position I currently occupy. The decision to leave was hard, but the future of our class was, like so many abberrations to the early 20th-century factory model of education, administratively in doubt. I still see those kids in dreams and in memories, but I hadn't seen them in the flesh for a while.
I use that metaphor, in the flesh, intentionally. Flesh is weak and malleable. It betrays our confidence in it with the slightest pin-prick of a splinter. It betrays our trust in it when it falters and fails to recover. I saw these students again in the flesh because one of them discovered how frail our lives can be.
On February 27th, one of my former students, at the age of 20, died of Leukemia. He fought 14 months. We say that we fight cancers of all types, but this time the fight was truly vicious. This young man was a fighter in the classroom, on the football field, and in his daily life. There was no challenge too big for him to accept. In fact, the bigger the challenge, the more fight in this student. On March 8th, sitting in a church built to host 800 people in a single service, I looked around at the crowd so large people were standing along the walls. Five eulogists chronicled the young man's many achievements: football captain despite his short stature; All-State defensive player again despite his small stature; honor roll student; college student athlete; devout man of faith; best friend to another student; brother to another young man graduating high school this year. As you might assume, tears come often and plentiful, but so did the laughter. The funeral truly was a celebration of life. And we all celebrated together: catching up while sharing bittersweet hugs and smiles.
But it wasn't the funeral that helped me understand the importance of our lives, as teachers, to these young people. It was the viewing.
As it was only my second viewing, I was hesitant to go. Luckily, my sense of duty and my affection for the family prevailed. That was what made this even harder; the young man's mother was a colleague. How do you look someone you know in the face and truly offer them the encouragement and sympathy they need, especially after the loss of a child? The answer was unexpected. As my wife and I stood in line to express our condolences, I could hear my friend crying with each expression of grief as though it were the first. The heart-rending cries of a mother who has lost her child. I held it together, trying to appear strong for her, trying to stand as a support it a time of trouble. Then we were there, standing before her. We gave her a big hug. She stepped back, and said: "Do you remember the poem he wrote for class about being a big brother?" I said I had. She asked if I remembered walking it down to her and telling her that if it didn't make her cry, then nothing would. I said I did. Then she said this: "I've kept that poem in my purse the entire time." We both crumpled. I wanted to say "thank you for sharing that with me" but all I could manage was "Thank you" before losing my composure. We hugged, and my wife and I moved out of line.
But in that moment, I knew why it was I started doing this job in the first place. That might have just been an assignment at the time, but it became something more. The work we do, asking students to define themselves in different formats and fonts, asking students to express their humanity, is vital. Science and mathematics have their practical applications, but the humanities helps us to feel and to know ourselves better. So, behind all of the sadness and the encouragement, behind the faith and the despair, behind the questions and the silent answers, a small piece of paper was transfigured into a totem of great love. All I had to do was give him the time to write. I cannot think of a testament more powerful than that.
So, hang in there. Keep teaching. Even in these darker days of the third quarter, there are moments that remind us just how muchh our work means in the long run.
I use that metaphor, in the flesh, intentionally. Flesh is weak and malleable. It betrays our confidence in it with the slightest pin-prick of a splinter. It betrays our trust in it when it falters and fails to recover. I saw these students again in the flesh because one of them discovered how frail our lives can be.
On February 27th, one of my former students, at the age of 20, died of Leukemia. He fought 14 months. We say that we fight cancers of all types, but this time the fight was truly vicious. This young man was a fighter in the classroom, on the football field, and in his daily life. There was no challenge too big for him to accept. In fact, the bigger the challenge, the more fight in this student. On March 8th, sitting in a church built to host 800 people in a single service, I looked around at the crowd so large people were standing along the walls. Five eulogists chronicled the young man's many achievements: football captain despite his short stature; All-State defensive player again despite his small stature; honor roll student; college student athlete; devout man of faith; best friend to another student; brother to another young man graduating high school this year. As you might assume, tears come often and plentiful, but so did the laughter. The funeral truly was a celebration of life. And we all celebrated together: catching up while sharing bittersweet hugs and smiles.
But it wasn't the funeral that helped me understand the importance of our lives, as teachers, to these young people. It was the viewing.
As it was only my second viewing, I was hesitant to go. Luckily, my sense of duty and my affection for the family prevailed. That was what made this even harder; the young man's mother was a colleague. How do you look someone you know in the face and truly offer them the encouragement and sympathy they need, especially after the loss of a child? The answer was unexpected. As my wife and I stood in line to express our condolences, I could hear my friend crying with each expression of grief as though it were the first. The heart-rending cries of a mother who has lost her child. I held it together, trying to appear strong for her, trying to stand as a support it a time of trouble. Then we were there, standing before her. We gave her a big hug. She stepped back, and said: "Do you remember the poem he wrote for class about being a big brother?" I said I had. She asked if I remembered walking it down to her and telling her that if it didn't make her cry, then nothing would. I said I did. Then she said this: "I've kept that poem in my purse the entire time." We both crumpled. I wanted to say "thank you for sharing that with me" but all I could manage was "Thank you" before losing my composure. We hugged, and my wife and I moved out of line.
But in that moment, I knew why it was I started doing this job in the first place. That might have just been an assignment at the time, but it became something more. The work we do, asking students to define themselves in different formats and fonts, asking students to express their humanity, is vital. Science and mathematics have their practical applications, but the humanities helps us to feel and to know ourselves better. So, behind all of the sadness and the encouragement, behind the faith and the despair, behind the questions and the silent answers, a small piece of paper was transfigured into a totem of great love. All I had to do was give him the time to write. I cannot think of a testament more powerful than that.
So, hang in there. Keep teaching. Even in these darker days of the third quarter, there are moments that remind us just how muchh our work means in the long run.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Real Linguistic Horror
by Dan Bruno, M.Ed., NBCT
Stephen King has been dethroned; at least, he has been dethroned as the king of horror among young adult writers. Tapping into what could accurately be many teenagers' worst nightmare, Michael LoMonico has written a novel about a young man who must (gasp) speak only in Shakespearean verse. My students would be, and were, horrified at the thought. If your students are anything like mine, they fear the Shakespeare unit more than most things because they are, well, Shakespeare. So many students come to the high school English classroom with one of two Shakespeariences (Yeah, I said it):
1. The Dummy Experience: Nothing makes someone feel smarter than being handed a copy of a novel with a "simpler" version of the text on the opposing page. Did I say smarter? My mistake. Just as translations of great works of literature only hint at the meaning tucked away in its original language, so too the "No Fear" and various other off-brands of Shakespearean play sacrifice meaning for accessibility. So, when students come to the high school classroom, if they've had the dummy experience, they sit waiting and ready to jot down the answers that the teacher will provide and then ask for on a test. The loss of complexity is a loss too dear to be taken lightly. There are lines and phrases in Shakespeare that still defy a single interpretation; heck, some lines still defy any interpretation. To remove that layered and personal process of meaning making reduces the study of Shakespeare to a gotcha course in plot summary. I did not sign up for that.
2. The Play Experience: For clarity's sake, let me say that I do not mean actual performance of the plays. As a matter of fact, you will see that I advocate that later. What I mean here is the let's-all-dress-up-and-pretend-we-are-doing-Shakespeare-but-remove-the-difficult-language approach. One of my favorite lessons in the Romeo and Juliet unit is walking through the opening, guiding my students to an understanding of what those naughty young men are saying. Students think Shakespeare is the stuff of old, stodgy men in bizarre costumes. They don't really believe the language says so much in such a small space. When they do realize what those two bawdy young men are saying, they usually claim that I have either ruined the play or made the play for them. After all, Shakespeare is a classic, he cannot be "dirty." They never get this in the versions they do in Middle School. In my experience, the Middle School experience is limited not because the teachers don't have the knowledge nor that the students are incapable of dealing with the language (I mean, the original audience was largely undereducated by today's stringent middle school standards). What I mean is that the "fun" of creating the play usually outpaces the struggle to understand what the play says. Oftentimes, the aforementioned dummy versions of Shakespeare are substituted in these productions.
What Mike LoMonico's novel does for young adult readers is build the very confidence needed to take on these plays using a bit of magical realism and a plot straight out of Disney. The moves the narrative makes are so familiar, so unthreatening to young readers, that they cannot help but be charmed by its invitation to sit for a while and enjoy a story about a young man who magically cannot speak in anything but Shakespearean phrases. Opening with the requisite establishment of a teenage voice in all its slang-ridden glory (I seriously felt that I have taught multiple Emmas in a single year), LoMonico's narrative quickly moves the two protagonists to the inciting incident in Peter's parents' study. As anyone who has owned a Riverside Shakespeare can attest, and as I am sure the Reverend Hale of another well-known play would attest, it is certainly a text weighted with authority. Once the tome strikes Peter's dome, he is unconscious until the EMTs place him on a stretcher and he says "For this relief much thanks." I write this in italics because this is how LoMonico denotes Shakespeare's words in the text, providing a quick visual reference for students as they read. The emphasis is unnecessary, but it draws attention to Shakespeare's language. At the end, this focus seems to be LoMonico's thesis: Shakespeare's language is not just immortal, but magical in the way that it transports the imagination to new places. Whether Peter, the eponymous Shakespeare Kid, is at school or a Mets game, the presence of the Bard's words in his speech amplifies everything.
A few students have read it and they are amazed at how enjoyable the experience was. Their horror at reading a "Shakespeare" book has, to once again shamelessly paraphrase, converted from disdain to courtesy. They even seem more open to the idea that we will be tackling one of the plays in a month's time.
This eagerness borne of LoMonico's novel is what classroom teachers can harness. In the Commonwealth Governor's School program, we have limited, but mandatory, summer assignments. My proposal for next year will be to adopt this text as summer reading for the ninth grade. The way the story incorporates and comments upon the play Romeo and Juliet is the perfect introduction to a year that has them encountering the play at the beginning of October. Besides, the story is fun and fast-paced, perfect for a day at the beach or a stormy day inside.
Bottom line: Go get this novel. It is widely available from Amazon. When you open the front cover, be warned. You won't be getting much done until you reach the end of Peter and Emma's journey through Shakespeare. So now the wheel is come full circle, and I will bid you good night, good night until we meet again.
Stephen King has been dethroned; at least, he has been dethroned as the king of horror among young adult writers. Tapping into what could accurately be many teenagers' worst nightmare, Michael LoMonico has written a novel about a young man who must (gasp) speak only in Shakespearean verse. My students would be, and were, horrified at the thought. If your students are anything like mine, they fear the Shakespeare unit more than most things because they are, well, Shakespeare. So many students come to the high school English classroom with one of two Shakespeariences (Yeah, I said it):
1. The Dummy Experience: Nothing makes someone feel smarter than being handed a copy of a novel with a "simpler" version of the text on the opposing page. Did I say smarter? My mistake. Just as translations of great works of literature only hint at the meaning tucked away in its original language, so too the "No Fear" and various other off-brands of Shakespearean play sacrifice meaning for accessibility. So, when students come to the high school classroom, if they've had the dummy experience, they sit waiting and ready to jot down the answers that the teacher will provide and then ask for on a test. The loss of complexity is a loss too dear to be taken lightly. There are lines and phrases in Shakespeare that still defy a single interpretation; heck, some lines still defy any interpretation. To remove that layered and personal process of meaning making reduces the study of Shakespeare to a gotcha course in plot summary. I did not sign up for that.
2. The Play Experience: For clarity's sake, let me say that I do not mean actual performance of the plays. As a matter of fact, you will see that I advocate that later. What I mean here is the let's-all-dress-up-and-pretend-we-are-doing-Shakespeare-but-remove-the-difficult-language approach. One of my favorite lessons in the Romeo and Juliet unit is walking through the opening, guiding my students to an understanding of what those naughty young men are saying. Students think Shakespeare is the stuff of old, stodgy men in bizarre costumes. They don't really believe the language says so much in such a small space. When they do realize what those two bawdy young men are saying, they usually claim that I have either ruined the play or made the play for them. After all, Shakespeare is a classic, he cannot be "dirty." They never get this in the versions they do in Middle School. In my experience, the Middle School experience is limited not because the teachers don't have the knowledge nor that the students are incapable of dealing with the language (I mean, the original audience was largely undereducated by today's stringent middle school standards). What I mean is that the "fun" of creating the play usually outpaces the struggle to understand what the play says. Oftentimes, the aforementioned dummy versions of Shakespeare are substituted in these productions.
What Mike LoMonico's novel does for young adult readers is build the very confidence needed to take on these plays using a bit of magical realism and a plot straight out of Disney. The moves the narrative makes are so familiar, so unthreatening to young readers, that they cannot help but be charmed by its invitation to sit for a while and enjoy a story about a young man who magically cannot speak in anything but Shakespearean phrases. Opening with the requisite establishment of a teenage voice in all its slang-ridden glory (I seriously felt that I have taught multiple Emmas in a single year), LoMonico's narrative quickly moves the two protagonists to the inciting incident in Peter's parents' study. As anyone who has owned a Riverside Shakespeare can attest, and as I am sure the Reverend Hale of another well-known play would attest, it is certainly a text weighted with authority. Once the tome strikes Peter's dome, he is unconscious until the EMTs place him on a stretcher and he says "For this relief much thanks." I write this in italics because this is how LoMonico denotes Shakespeare's words in the text, providing a quick visual reference for students as they read. The emphasis is unnecessary, but it draws attention to Shakespeare's language. At the end, this focus seems to be LoMonico's thesis: Shakespeare's language is not just immortal, but magical in the way that it transports the imagination to new places. Whether Peter, the eponymous Shakespeare Kid, is at school or a Mets game, the presence of the Bard's words in his speech amplifies everything.
A few students have read it and they are amazed at how enjoyable the experience was. Their horror at reading a "Shakespeare" book has, to once again shamelessly paraphrase, converted from disdain to courtesy. They even seem more open to the idea that we will be tackling one of the plays in a month's time.
This eagerness borne of LoMonico's novel is what classroom teachers can harness. In the Commonwealth Governor's School program, we have limited, but mandatory, summer assignments. My proposal for next year will be to adopt this text as summer reading for the ninth grade. The way the story incorporates and comments upon the play Romeo and Juliet is the perfect introduction to a year that has them encountering the play at the beginning of October. Besides, the story is fun and fast-paced, perfect for a day at the beach or a stormy day inside.
Bottom line: Go get this novel. It is widely available from Amazon. When you open the front cover, be warned. You won't be getting much done until you reach the end of Peter and Emma's journey through Shakespeare. So now the wheel is come full circle, and I will bid you good night, good night until we meet again.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Love or Lust: Romeo & Juliet and Missing the Point?
I may be in the minority on this one, but I have to come clean. I have never been able to justify the modern argument about love or lust in regards to Romeo & Juliet. There are many reasons for this confusion, but I want to make sure I am clear: I need someone to explain this conflict over love or lust because I cannot see it.
I have many colleagues who fret over the sensitivity of the main characters committing suicide in a play we teach to fourteen-year-old students. I am beginning to believe they fret over this portion of the play because they have allowed cynical, modern lenses to interfere with their artistic vision. If we dive into the play, a number of reasons against the reading of the play as lust surface from the depths of Shakespeare's text.
First, the contrast between the other male characters and Romeo. A softie by any other name would be as saccharine as Romeo tends to be. He speaks in the conventions of courtly love, by acts with the abandon of a teenager. The other male characters do not speak in courtly phrases and tidy metaphors; instead, they revel in violence and conflict. Heck, Tybalt has such an act to grind he actually hates the word peace. Forget the concept they represent, Tybalt's out for logocide. The most bawdy and lusty characters end up dead by open brawling violence, not quietly committing suicide in a tomb. Romeo is different from the other males precisely because he is not as lusty.
Second, the holy palmers' kiss sonnet. Shakespeare and his sonnets; Petrarch and his sonnets; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her sonnets; let me count the ways. If there is one thing "universal" in literary study, it is that sonnet structure is associated with love. If sonnets are poems about love (yes, even ironically about love), and this first dialogue between Romeo and Juliet is a sonnet, this dialogue must be about love. Before I get harangued for simplistic syllogistic logic, also consider the metaphor Shakespeare uses in the sonnet. The two lovers are not just speaking about love, they are speaking about pilgrims on a holy quest. Love and holiness: I just cannot reconcile myself with lust and holiness being a pair. Was Romeo just pining away for Rosaline? Yes; but my dude does not miss a beat. Why harp on what's past when what's present is so lovely.
Third, the balcony scene. The stories of Petrarch and Laura and Dante and Beatrice are sweet until you realize that they are essentially pulling off the literary equivalent of Frankenstein's monster. Each man, at the loss of so lovely an object of admiration, reanimates the dead woman and speaks for her. In this way, the two female voices become formulaic, expected, in line with the men's perspectives. Juliet is not given the chance to speak in such saccharine language as Romeo because the meddlesome male is spying on her. Juliet is relieved that Romeo sneaks up on her at night because the night's darkness can hide the "maiden blush
that would "bepaint [her] cheek / For that which [Romeo] hast heard [her] speak." Realizing that the conventions of courtly love are useless at this point, she says one of my favorite lines in Renaissance literature: "But farewell compliment. / Dost thous love me?" I can almost she her crossing her arms, narrowing her eyes, and preparing to shove this fool off of her bedroom balcony. Juliet is not one given to frailty and helplessness. Unlike the ideal women of Petrarch and Dante, Juliet has a life and mind of her own, and she is smart. Some say that Romeo is lusty and pushes her past her own comfort; I say that Juliet knows exactly what she is doing and falls in love with this deep and sensitive soul. Like Ovid before him, Shakespeare seems to be letting the poets prove to be the best lovers.
Fourth, and final, the union of the two families. This feud is old. This feud is bloody. This feud could not be stopped under pain of death. Watching the Folger's Master Class on Romeo & Juliet last night, I was struck by the actress Erin Weaver's explanation of the suicide scene. She says that there is ample justification in the text, besides the love for each other, that drives Romeo and Juliet to suicide. I have to admit that was a new perspective. She explained specifically that Juliet has little in the way of relationships with others outside her family, and these relationships break. The one with her mother is not particularly strong from the start, but when her father says "get thee to church o' Thursday, / or never after look me in the face" Juliet's heart breaks. In the eerily similar passage from Much Ado About Nothing, the good friar convinces Leonato that Hero's disobedience is false. In that play, Leonato relents, is shown the truth, and everybody lives...(you know the rest). In this play, Capulet leaves angry, the betrayal is real, and Friar Lawrence is not big on communicating effectively with others. Abandoned, Juliet only has Romeo left. With him gone, what more can there be? To ascribe to lust the power to end life, the power to stop violence and convert it to peace, and the power to mend physical and emotional wounds is to miss the point. What else but holy love, corrupted by the violence of these two families' rage, could be of significant enough loss to justify the immediate and certain change of heart in these two old, battling fools?
I am interested in what you think. Am I just being ridiculous? Have I missed something big glaring at me? I have always found the idea of having the debate over love and lust intriguing, but I've never seen how the lust side can get enough textual support to be convincing. I'm looking forward to reading some feedback and discussing this seminal text.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Mastering Shakespeare: the Folger's 21st Century Outreach
Tomorrow night at 7 PM EST, anyone who is anyone is the wild world of High School English will be tuned into the first Folger Master Class on teaching Romeo & Juliet. Just what is this wonderful opportunity you ask? Listen "to hear true shrift":
This one-hour professional development session will be stremed live to any computer, iPad, or Android device. You need only register ahead of time to be a part of the action.
You will be able to see, hear, and/or interact with:
- Two scholars:
- Gail Kern Paster, director emeritus of the Folger Library
- Ayanna Thompson, professor at George Washington University
- Actors in the Folger's current production of the play
- Teachers from around the country
On top of all of this dialogue, each participant receives a downloadable bevvy of materials for teaching the play.
This course is a history-maker for the library; it is the pilot of this new type of digital learning experience. the Library will be asking all who participate to complete a survey when the Master Class is over. If you are interested, please click this link to reach the registration page.
So, come be a part of the action as the Folger enters a brave new world that has such technological wonders in't.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Being Atticus Finch: Teaching Students to Walk in Another's Skin
by Dan Bruno (@HSMatters)
When Othello suspects that Desdemona has been unfaithful, he says: "My name, that was as fresh / As Dian's visage, is now begrimed and black / As mine own face." Once again, the bard is ahead of his time; he has Othello use the language of a different race to identify his shame with his color. What would it be like to think of your own skin color as a metaphor for shame everyday?
This question also led to one of the most important psychological experiments of the 20th century: the Clark Doll Experiment. Kenneth and Mamie Clark did not intend to be the linchpin in the famous Brown v. Board of Education court case, but their ingenuity became just that. After seeing example after example of African-American child choose the white doll for the wrong reasons, the Warren court overturned the prior ruling of separate but equal and changed the face of 20th century America.
Why my obsession with race? Our program, the Commonwealth Governor's School, has just begun our newest unit: an interdisciplinary study of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. We could just read the the text, but there are social issues, especially for my students, that need to be understood. How does a privileged white kid from the suburbs understand fearing Johns Hopkins University Hospital because the doctors there are white? How does a privileged white kid understand living in a town where you used to be slaves? How does any privileged kid understand living in poverty? With these questions in mind, I began to design how I would introduce students to the unit's ideas.
The first thing that came to mind was a website I first learned about in my sociology of education class at UVA. Project Implicit, a sociological project from Harvard, maintains a website where anyone can take an IAT (Implicit Attitude Test). According to the project's website, "The IAT asks you to pair two concepts (e.g., young and good, orelderly and good). The more closely associated the two concepts are, the easier it is to respond to them as a single unit. So, if young and good are strongly associated, it should be easier to respond faster when you are asked to give the same response (i.e. the 'E' or 'I' key) to these two. If elderly and good are not so strongly associated, it should be harder to respond fast when they are paired. This gives a measure of how strongly associated the two types of concepts are. The more associated, the more rapidly you should be able to respond." The time it takes to respond one way or the other reveals the switch from unconscious attitude to conscious choice. So, I might not want to associate the elderly with negativity, but it takes me longer to correct this unconscious attitude and hit the appropriate key.
I asked the students to take the IAT at the beginning of class and then to write their responses down on 3 x 5 note cards (leaving off their names). I collected these and read them aloud while another student kept a tally of the class's responses on the board. The results are posted here:
The IAT we took was on race. The outcome measured was how much the test taker preferred European-Americans (EA) over African-Americans(AA) (to get a really clear idea, I suggest you take the test at this link). I had the student serving as our scribe put an "S" on the left for strong preference of EA over AA, then an "M" for moderate preference, and L→0 for little to no preference. We mirrored the M and S on the right side, but these were for preference of AA over EA. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the overwhelming majority of my students have a strong to moderate preference for EA over AA. In fact, 65 % of my class fell into this range. If you include the little to no preference students, the total rises to 83%; the other 17% fall into the right side.
What makes these percentages so important is that the percentage of non-African-to-African-Americans in the class falls out about the same: 87% non-African American; 13% African-American. These three students come from varied backgrounds and varied places. The only cultural similarity that they share is that they have darker skin tones than everyone else. Moreover, these three represent distinct variations on the skin color continuum: one mixed, one lighter, one very dark. When I opened the class period, none of the students believed they were about to come face-to-face with the cultural divisions that have lingered between us since before this country was founded, but they did. The difficulty of the lesson arises now. How do you help relieve the guilt that inevitably comes from modern cultural perspective? Every single non-African-American
I dove first into the psychology. I put up for examples of racists Bob Ewell (we read To Kill a Mockingbird earlier in the year) and pre-conversion James Jarvis (from Cry, the Beloved Country) as examples of men who consciously acted upon their subconscious attitudes. The hatred made them racist in (and I introduce this term in process) overtly racist. What we are attempting to coax into the light is the notion of covert racism. I referenced examples of things I'd seen in my career: the rush to judgment and rejection of students of color in disciplinary matters; the habitual rewarding of or taking away of points in regards to students of color based solely on color and not merit; entire classrooms segregated by seating chart. Then, I hit them where they live--television. I asked them to stand inside the 7-11 near school, to browse the aisles looking for a quick snack as the smell of 24-hour coffee and 24-hour sausage invades their nostrils, to feel the shake of the bass as the lowered vehicle glides into a space, to consider their immediate reaction when four young black men get out of the car. Nearly everyone flinched. I admitted that subconsciously I also would hit the panic button, but then I ask them to think about every crime show they have seen on TV. I ask them to consider who plays the street thug. Who plays the informant? Who plays the violent and dangerous criminal? Most of the time, it is a black man or a group of black men. Even when the black man is just sitting in a frame placed on him by a white guy, we have to make that stop before reaching our lily white villain. These biases are programmed culturally; feeling them is not the student's fault.
Then, I bring it to Kenneth and Mamie Clark. I ask them to watch the heartbreaking video of young black boys and girls rejecting the doll that looks like them. And then I ask the class to consider why even with three black students, no one strongly preferred African-Americans to European-Americans. There are times in life where the silence is so loud it is nearly unbearable. The mute cacophony of the class was almost too much for each one of them to bear, so before the discomfort became too great, I brought it back to the text.
One of the spots in the text of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks that catches me off guard is the part where Skloot discusses how the Lackses and their friends feared Hopkins. Could they imagine, I ask, feeling mistrust for an entire hospital based on the racial biases that were woven into the African-American cultural fabric as a means of survival? The responses are coming thick now. They have never felt it, but they can understand how an attitude can become rooted in the subconscious, worrying the conscious mind with the spectre of what may happen. Then, a discussion ensues that makes me proud to call these my students.
They made me proud because they owned the subconscious biases and spoke openly about race for probably the first time in many of their lives. I even heard one of the African-American students say "that is how I feel everyday."
As English teachers, we deal with a lot of topics surrounding hatred and racial bias. As Robert Frost might say, "Something there is that harps on racial conscience." So many of the novels, plays, and poems we teach are laden with the tension of centuries of racial misunderstanding, violence, and fear. Then again, so are the hallways of our schools. I encourage you to use the IAT; like Atticus suggests, it can force students to consider what life would be like wearing a different person's skin.
When Othello suspects that Desdemona has been unfaithful, he says: "My name, that was as fresh / As Dian's visage, is now begrimed and black / As mine own face." Once again, the bard is ahead of his time; he has Othello use the language of a different race to identify his shame with his color. What would it be like to think of your own skin color as a metaphor for shame everyday?
This question also led to one of the most important psychological experiments of the 20th century: the Clark Doll Experiment. Kenneth and Mamie Clark did not intend to be the linchpin in the famous Brown v. Board of Education court case, but their ingenuity became just that. After seeing example after example of African-American child choose the white doll for the wrong reasons, the Warren court overturned the prior ruling of separate but equal and changed the face of 20th century America.
How does a privileged white kid understand living in a town where you used to be slaves? How does any privileged kid understand living in poverty?
Why my obsession with race? Our program, the Commonwealth Governor's School, has just begun our newest unit: an interdisciplinary study of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. We could just read the the text, but there are social issues, especially for my students, that need to be understood. How does a privileged white kid from the suburbs understand fearing Johns Hopkins University Hospital because the doctors there are white? How does a privileged white kid understand living in a town where you used to be slaves? How does any privileged kid understand living in poverty? With these questions in mind, I began to design how I would introduce students to the unit's ideas.
The first thing that came to mind was a website I first learned about in my sociology of education class at UVA. Project Implicit, a sociological project from Harvard, maintains a website where anyone can take an IAT (Implicit Attitude Test). According to the project's website, "The IAT asks you to pair two concepts (e.g., young and good, orelderly and good). The more closely associated the two concepts are, the easier it is to respond to them as a single unit. So, if young and good are strongly associated, it should be easier to respond faster when you are asked to give the same response (i.e. the 'E' or 'I' key) to these two. If elderly and good are not so strongly associated, it should be harder to respond fast when they are paired. This gives a measure of how strongly associated the two types of concepts are. The more associated, the more rapidly you should be able to respond." The time it takes to respond one way or the other reveals the switch from unconscious attitude to conscious choice. So, I might not want to associate the elderly with negativity, but it takes me longer to correct this unconscious attitude and hit the appropriate key.
I asked the students to take the IAT at the beginning of class and then to write their responses down on 3 x 5 note cards (leaving off their names). I collected these and read them aloud while another student kept a tally of the class's responses on the board. The results are posted here:
 |
| IAT Results for my class (EA over AA is on the Left) |
What makes these percentages so important is that the percentage of non-African-to-African-Americans in the class falls out about the same: 87% non-African American; 13% African-American. These three students come from varied backgrounds and varied places. The only cultural similarity that they share is that they have darker skin tones than everyone else. Moreover, these three represent distinct variations on the skin color continuum: one mixed, one lighter, one very dark. When I opened the class period, none of the students believed they were about to come face-to-face with the cultural divisions that have lingered between us since before this country was founded, but they did. The difficulty of the lesson arises now. How do you help relieve the guilt that inevitably comes from modern cultural perspective? Every single non-African-American
I referenced examples of things I'd seen in my career: the rush to judgment and rejection of students of color in disciplinary matters; the habitual rewarding of or taking away of points in regards to students of color based solely on color and not merit; entire classrooms segregated by seating chart.
I dove first into the psychology. I put up for examples of racists Bob Ewell (we read To Kill a Mockingbird earlier in the year) and pre-conversion James Jarvis (from Cry, the Beloved Country) as examples of men who consciously acted upon their subconscious attitudes. The hatred made them racist in (and I introduce this term in process) overtly racist. What we are attempting to coax into the light is the notion of covert racism. I referenced examples of things I'd seen in my career: the rush to judgment and rejection of students of color in disciplinary matters; the habitual rewarding of or taking away of points in regards to students of color based solely on color and not merit; entire classrooms segregated by seating chart. Then, I hit them where they live--television. I asked them to stand inside the 7-11 near school, to browse the aisles looking for a quick snack as the smell of 24-hour coffee and 24-hour sausage invades their nostrils, to feel the shake of the bass as the lowered vehicle glides into a space, to consider their immediate reaction when four young black men get out of the car. Nearly everyone flinched. I admitted that subconsciously I also would hit the panic button, but then I ask them to think about every crime show they have seen on TV. I ask them to consider who plays the street thug. Who plays the informant? Who plays the violent and dangerous criminal? Most of the time, it is a black man or a group of black men. Even when the black man is just sitting in a frame placed on him by a white guy, we have to make that stop before reaching our lily white villain. These biases are programmed culturally; feeling them is not the student's fault.
Then, I bring it to Kenneth and Mamie Clark. I ask them to watch the heartbreaking video of young black boys and girls rejecting the doll that looks like them. And then I ask the class to consider why even with three black students, no one strongly preferred African-Americans to European-Americans. There are times in life where the silence is so loud it is nearly unbearable. The mute cacophony of the class was almost too much for each one of them to bear, so before the discomfort became too great, I brought it back to the text.
One of the spots in the text of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks that catches me off guard is the part where Skloot discusses how the Lackses and their friends feared Hopkins. Could they imagine, I ask, feeling mistrust for an entire hospital based on the racial biases that were woven into the African-American cultural fabric as a means of survival? The responses are coming thick now. They have never felt it, but they can understand how an attitude can become rooted in the subconscious, worrying the conscious mind with the spectre of what may happen. Then, a discussion ensues that makes me proud to call these my students.
I even heard one of the African-American students say "that is how I feel everyday."
They made me proud because they owned the subconscious biases and spoke openly about race for probably the first time in many of their lives. I even heard one of the African-American students say "that is how I feel everyday."
As English teachers, we deal with a lot of topics surrounding hatred and racial bias. As Robert Frost might say, "Something there is that harps on racial conscience." So many of the novels, plays, and poems we teach are laden with the tension of centuries of racial misunderstanding, violence, and fear. Then again, so are the hallways of our schools. I encourage you to use the IAT; like Atticus suggests, it can force students to consider what life would be like wearing a different person's skin.
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