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To teach Shakespeare effectively, a strong teacher needs to direct her entire class, a teaching strategy frowned upon in a system that demands group work using a strategy called the "workshop model." Shakespeare is content. I recently heard about a staff developer who wrote the word "content" on the blackboard, and then proceeded to put a big X through it.
"You are not to teach content, ever," he warned. Students should choose their own books, and discuss them in groups and thus "construct their own knowledge."
"What about ‘Romeo and Juliet'?" asked one teacher, who has taught the plays of Shakespeare in her class for years. "Why would you want to teach that?" replied the staff developer.
Mrs. Badillo and the Bard
Andrew Wolf
NY Sun
June 22, 2007
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6 comments:
Absolutely. Our kids see a scene from Shakespeare acted out by a professional troupe (paid for by the PTO). But they don't read Shakespeare.
One teacher "re-wrote" the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene so her class could understand it.
I think that is incredibly arrogant. Does she really think she can possibly re-write Shakespeare and preserve the beauty and humor of the original? If she can't, why does she bother? There are lots of contemporary knock-offs, if she didn't like the original.
I just don't even know where to start.
Well, here in the Heartland, Shakespeare is alive and well (at least in our district). K read Romeo and Juliet her freshman year, Julius Ceasar her sophomore year and Hamlet her senior year. The junior year lit class focuses primarily on American authors.
By the way, for those of you on the East coast, a visit to Salem, Massachusetts to see Hawthorne's House of 7 Gables and to Concord to visit Walden's Pond is well worth it (you can even swim in the Pond). After visiting Salem, K. had a whole new appreciation for Hawthorne and his "worldview," so to speak.
Uh, that would be Julius Caesar (not Ceasar).
If the idiots weren't in charge, we wouldn't have to try to reason with them.
Well, here in the Heartland, Shakespeare is alive and well (at least in our district). K read Romeo and Juliet her freshman year, Julius Ceasar her sophomore year and Hamlet her senior year. The junior year lit class focuses primarily on American authors.
I think we'll probably get some decent reading in high school, though parents I know are complaining mightily, so we'll see.
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