Life. Loss. Love. Tears. Vomit.

Image by comedy_nose on Flickr. Obtained via cc license.

It was never my intention to make two of the girls in the class cry.  All I’d asked was that they write and share a poem.  But there we were, sitting in a circle on the auditorium stage and listening to them choke up as they struggled to get through stories of pain, anger, and fear.

We’d spent the last couple of weeks working on reciting others’ poetry, performing for the national Poetry Out Loud competition, and I had thought that it would be a good idea for students to share their own voices, as they had just shared someone else’s.  There, of course, was the potential for a couple of problems:  tell a teenager you want them to write poetry and they flinch; and I’m the world’s worst poet.

Now, I solved the first problem right away.  Despite having been exposed to free verse much earlier than high school, many students still have this tendency to think that poetry has to rhyme.  I made a point to read, analyze, and discuss a ton of free verse poetry during the previous three weeks so that I could remove the “Does it have to rhyme?” question from the room and hopefully tamper down some of their trepidation toward writing poetry*.  Then, I dug up a bad poem I wrote in high school and read it, promising that on the day when we would all read our poetry to one another, I’d read the worst poem I had ever written.  After all, I told them, you may think your poem isn’t great, but it’s nothing compared to what I will unleash upon you.

The second problem–my being pretty terrible at writing poetry–was a little tougher to solve because it drove to the heart of my actually being qualified to teach.  If I am horrible at writing poetry, then how could I evaluate it?  Am I completely wrong for trying to cover it or even assessing it?  After all, poetry, like any other form of writing, is subjective, and therefore if I have no true expertise on the matter my opinion has no leg to stand on.  Or is this one of those perfect cases of those who can’t, teach?

Why the Jeff Bliss story makes me want to quit

I am sure that by the time I am writing this, you have read about, heard about, or seen the viral video featuring Texas high school student Jeff Bliss going off on his teacher about having to complete another packet.  The video is roughly a minute and a half, was recorded “undercover” by a classmate using a cell phone, and is largely out of context, although if other sources are to believed, her request for him to “quit bitching” and subsequently throwing him out of the room prompted his tirade.  Her dismissive attitude comes off as a combination of her not caring about her students and her not trying to get flustered and overreact to his ranting (although maybe I’m assuming too much with the latter–I have been in situations where students are yelling at me and one of the few ways I keep myself from yelling back is to act casual).

No matter what the teacher did or what her behavior was before, during, and after the confrontation, two things are certain:  she’s been placed on administrative leave and Jeff Bliss has become a folk hero.  A smattering of praise via a quick check of the internet …

• “aaronburr,” commenter on the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet:  ”Way to go, Jeff! You’re a true American hero.”
• HumanWazHere, WaPo commenter:  ”GO JEFF GO!!! We need more people like this in the USA!! I Support YOU!”
• Zak Malamed, Student Voice:  ”Hey, buddy! You are quite an inspiration & great representative of the work [Student Voice] is doing.”
• Lisa Nielsen:  ”I commend Jeff Bliss for standing up for himself and all the other students who deserve a beyond-the-packet education … Our children are not our future. They are the voices we need TODAY. Our job is to listen and support them. When they say they can’t learn the way we are teaching (or not teaching in this case) we must hear them and do what we can to ensure they receive the education they deserve. When we do that we will have citizens who are not just good at sitting down and filling in packets but standing up and filling our world with those who are empowered with embrace their right to change the world.”

Now, there are many more tweets, posts, and comments that are similar.  Many are quite different, ranging from John Spencer’s post about how we don’t have the whole story and therefore shouldn’t rush to judgment to Teaching Underground’s post about how all this really does is perpetuate the “bad teacher” narrative to more caustic comments about how Bliss was being disrespectful (although I’d say petulant is more accurate a term).  

I have a question for #StuVoice

Do you represent every student?

Case in point: I was an honors student in high school, the type of student who often had good rapport with teachers and could readily engage adults in honest debate and conversation.  Though there were times my focus was on, say, the Stanley Cup Playoffs and not the latest Senate hearings, I did pay attention to the news, cared about what was going on in the world, and was active in my community.  So did many of my friends.

But there were also many students in my high school who would have readily tried out for Jersey Shore if it had been on the air in the early 1990s, people who were more concerned with what they were wearing, what they were driving, and where Friday night’s kegger was going to be than they were about the state of the public educational system.

It took me quite a long time to get over the disdain I had for many of these people.  I admit I was arrogant, even snobbish because I considered myself above them and their less-than-honorable pursuits in life.  With maturity comes perspective and while my current crop of students–some of whom are suited to a casting call for Buck Wild–can drive me crazy sometimes, I do my best to make sure they all learn something worthwhile in my class.  You know, even if they’ve used their student voice to change the school’s policy concerning wearing hats in the building instead of protesting against standardized testing.  Some, in fact, have celebrated passing standardized tests because they were up against the eight ball the entire time they were preparing.

Furthermore, they sometimes exhibit behavior that would have adults sneer and others say, “Well, don’t worry.  All students/teenagers aren’t like that.”

I know you’re going to tell me you represent and speak for all students, but how do you speak for those who “all teenagers aren’t like” or who seemingly don’t really care all that much about their academic experience and don’t seem to be guided by ideals and a desire to change the educational system/the world for the better?

There but for the Grace of …

 

Earlier today, John Spencer posted this problem to Education Rethink:

The title of the post “See if you can spot what’s wrong …” dares you to see how this is a poorly worded test question.  And it is.  But in putting on my Wizard of the Language Arts hat (because “English teacher” suggests an image I choose not to be associated with), I realized that this goes much deeper than a simple fractions problem about Grace and her bean plant.

You see, Grace was like any other student.  She was tired of having her learning dictated to her and wanted to own it.  So, she sought learning experiences that were authentic.  Rather than learn the facts about the process of photosynthesis and plant growth, she thought it more important to plant a sprout and measure its growth, thinking that the miracle of curiosity and learning is what made the bean plant grow.

So, she asked her teacher if she could plant bean sprouts.  But her teacher was not an innovative educator.  Her teacher was doing what she could to follow orders and not get fired.  She had considered that Grace and her classmates bring their own seeds, but the class parents–with whom she kept in constant contact–balked at the idea because for all of the money that Grace’s teacher earns with getting the summers off, she should be able to afford to buy seeds, sprouts, plants, dirt, and gardening equipment for all of her students out of her own pocket.

Grace’s teacher tried to say that she has been doing a lot more with a lot less, so this is really not realistic.  For Grace’s mother, that was the last straw.  Fed up with the unwillingness of the teacher to teach her daughter outside of forcing her to be compliant within a system designed for a factory-model society, she pulled her out of the school and took her to a gardening store.  They went home and planted the seeds and waited for the miracle of curiosity and learning to occur.

Grace measured the bean plant at the end of each week.  At the end of week 1, the plant was 4 inches tall.  At the end of week 2, it was 4-1/2 inches tall.  At the end of week 3, it was 5 inches tall.  Grace liked how the plant was growing and would come back week after week.  But soon after, it didn’t get much taller.  In fact, it stopped growing and shrank altogether.  She used her savvy as a digital native to find out the answer to her question, but none of the answers that were provided seemed to apply to the problem at hand.

The plant eventually died.

Years later, as a high school student, Grace was back in the public school system–teacher’s pensions had wrecked the economy so she was forced to endure public indoctrination–and when she was taking a chemistry test, there was a question about volume of liquid in a watering can that was being used to water bean plants.  Grace thought back to all those years ago and wrote,  “Clearly, this is an indication of the liberal conspiracy to indoctrinate students.  I have decided to opt out from this test because plants cannot all be expected to require water in order to grow.”  She then left the room.

This story made its way into a rejected application to one college and then her blog where it was reposted and retweeted by a few people, but within a few weeks fell back into obscurity.

Grace is now in her early 30s and unemployed.  She lives at home and blogs about how the public education destroyed her curiosity, quashed her love of learning, and stole her dreams.

The answer, by the way, is c) 6.

Pancakes of Innovation and Coffee of Freedom!

So I have been seeing this particular iHop commercial lately:

Now, it seems like a pretty mundane commercial; iHop is showing how people who eat at their restaurant eat their pancakes and that’s supposed to be appealing.  But if you look closely toward the beginning of the commercial, you see a guy that they call “The Big Dipper” dunking a dry pancake into a mug of coffee:

When I first saw this, I wondered aloud what kind of mental defect this gentleman has that would cause him to dunk a pancake in a cup of coffee.  Not that I don’t like things dunked into my coffee, but dunking is reserved for stuff like cookies and donuts, not pancakes, which are meant to be smothered in some sort of syrup or compote, maybe with some butter, and eaten with a fork.

Then I watched the commercial again and I had a revelation.  Everyone in the commercial was eating their pancakes in their own way and they seemed to all enjoy their meals.  In fact, iHop was not only condoning this practice, it was encouraging it.

How innovative!

There was a time when pancakes were all eaten the way I like to eat them.  People sat at tables in a diner–tables which were usually arranged in rows–and undertook a standardized procedure to have breakfast.  But then came places like iHop, which set aside the industrial-model pancake eating in favor of customer-centered, differentiated eating.  In fact, their very name suggests that they realize that pancake eating doesn’t just happen within the restaurant and that the pancake eating shouldn’t feel so contained and detached from the rest of the world–after all, it is the International House of Pancakes.

My guess is that someone at iHop took lessons from people like Steve Jobs, who didn’t feel that the traditional way of dealing with apples was right for him and dropped out of eating apples to reinvent the concept of apples.  And The Big Dipper is taking ownership of his eating pancakes within an environment that does not enslave and abuse its eaters or steals their dreams of dunking pancakes in coffee, but instead lets them fly.

So fly, Big Dipper.  FLY!  You have me so INSPIRED!

 

You don’t need to brag more, you need to advocate

Among the many articles and blog posts I’ve seen this week concerning New Year’s resolutions, the one that stood out to me the most was the one Julie Conlon wrote for EdWeek Teacher wherein she talks about how she has resolved to not just be more positive as a teacher, but show off the positive things that she and her students have done in her classroom (“A New Year’s Resolution:  Brag More”). This came about because she had been invited to a local chamber of commerce happy hour and found that she felt excluded from the conversation, which was mostly people commiserating over their jobs and having the other types of conversations you have when you’d network.

When she tried to join in on the conversation, Conlon got the typical patronizing responses we in education all get and responded with some jokes:

All they had for me were sympathetic shakes of their heads and a few patronizing quips.

“Not a lot of money in that.”

“Ninth grade? I remember what I was like in 9th grade.”

“I don’t know how you do it. You’re a much better person than me.”

I found myself making excuses and jokes. “It’s nice to have my summers off. Why do you think I’m at a bar on a school night? When it comes to 9th grade boys, it’s not me you should feel sorry for, it’s the girls in my classes; At least I’ve learned to laugh at the boys’ antics. The girls are still crying—and will be for the next 10 years.”

Later on, she has a similar experience in a department meeting and it’s not until she actually has classes that she realizes that she needs more of her students’ stories to be heard and that quite possibly, that will help change the image of teachers:

The people we meet in a bar or those we sit next to on a plane cannot see into our classrooms to witness the daily flashes of brilliance, inspiration, and enthusiasm that fuel our fires and give us the energy to teach. Instead, they hear the stories on the news and believe them. We need to invite them into our world and tell the stories about the students and the teachers we work beside everyday. Let’s show them that what happens between our opening and closing bells is just as significant as what happens on Wall Street. When they hear about what we really do—rather than our complaints of low pay, unfair testing, and kids who really are just kids—maybe then we’ll start to see some changes. Changes in the conditions we work in, changes in the pay we receive, and changes in the future for our students—which is really what it is all about.

Since the piece was posted on EdWeek, it was guaranteed a pretty large audience. And unsurprisingly, I have seen it shared and retweeted at least a couple of times since I first read it yesterday morning. And why not? It’s a pretty great sentiment, one that definitely is focused on our mission as educators. But I have a couple of problems with it.

Confessions of an Achievement Junkie

photo credit: thebarrowboy via photopin cc

[A quick note: I originally posted this entry on June 6, 2011, on my old blog. I've been thinking about this one a lot lately, and since the blog has been taken down, I wanted to repost it (with some minor edits) today.]

About a year and a half ago, I came across the article “How Important are Grades to You?” by Marcella Purnama in the Melbourne-based Meld Magazine. In the article, she challenges the notion that knowledge and good grades go hand in hand and criticizes the fact that we have become obsessed with the evaluation part of education and therefore have lost the plot.  She even goes as far as to quote Erica Goldson’s 2010 valedictory speech, and picks up the part that most people who were enamored of that speech picked up on, the “I was a good slave, you’re all slaves, death to the system!” part.  It’s not that necessary for me to repeat that there aren’t that many teachers out there who worship at the altar of evaluation and standardized testing; in fact, most of the people I know seem to accept testing as part of the job and strive for their students to get good test scores because … well, I don’t know about you but I don’t feel like standing on an unemployment line.

But when you get to the heart of the matter and take something like standardized testing out of the equation, I honestly get frustrated by my students’ Pavlovian need for a grade on every little assignment to the point where they will not read an article or engage in a discussion if there no type of credit attached.  ”Is this for a grade?” is the second-most asked student question (the first, of course, is “Can I go to the bathroom?”).  But at the same time, grades are obviously necessary on some level.  I know that knowledge is a formidable goal in itself and one should be happy that he or she achieved said knowledge, no matter if the grade is an A+ or a C-.  Purnama seems to have a pretty balanced view of things and I think she realizes this; however, she ends her piece by saying:

University was never meant to be a pressure cooker. We come to learn new things, not just for the getting of good grades or jobs. More than that, we learn because we are passionate about what we are studying. It’s all about seeing the bigger picture. Good grades aren’t the guarantee for success in life.

And like I said, this is true to an extent.   Just because you got good grades in high school doesn’t mean that you’re going to automatically ascend to the presidency and if you pull a D in 9th grade English you’re not doomed to destitution or a life of crime.  You know, just like winning a senior award or a scholarship doesn’t make you any better than the person who didn’t.  I sit through a senior awards ceremony every year, just like most high school teachers who have to babysit a throng of underclassmen in a gym.  And if we’re not complaining about having to babysit, we’re complaining about how long the awards ceremony is, or how the same kids seem to win every award (of course, I’m always the first person to point out that very often they’re the only ones to apply for the scholarships they win).  Somewhere along the line, usually when we get into hour three of the ceremony (seriously, they’re like an Oscars telecast), someone pipes up that there’s no point in these awards because in the long run, they’re all insignificant anyway.

I’m sure there are plenty of people who agree with that sentiment.  Obviously, being the person who is given the perfect attendance award in high school doesn’t mean that you’re set for life.  I know someone who was awarded the perfect attendance award in high school and then wound up flunking out of college because he never went to class.  And I know people who spent a significant amount of high school “in absentia” who are successful in their jobs as police officers, lawyers, soldiers, or whatever passion they followed.   Of course, that all goes without saying because if you think that who you are at 18 defines who you will be for the next 70 years, you’re either naive or stupid.   Maybe both.

This is why.

MEMORANDUM

 

To:  The youth of America

From:  A teacher in his mid-30s

CC:  The Internet

Date:  11/10/2012

Re:  Social media

So as you probably have heard, President Barack Obama recently won reelection.  Moreover, the youth vote was just as significant this time around in 2012 as it was in 2008.  This surprised some “experts” because voter enthusiasm was supposedly low this year and that often translates to a low turnout, especially among youth, because of a belief that if you don’t believe in it or like it you won’t do it.  You’ll find out as you go through life that “experts,” especially if they are pundits, are quite often wrong (statisticians, on the other hand?  Surprisingly right).  Good job on keeping things going and if this was your first time voting, I have to say you’re lucky to have voted in such an important election.  My first presidential election was 1996 via absentee ballot.  Not exactly the excitement of pulling the lever in person.

I watched election returns on Tuesday night and went to bed at about 1:00 a.m. after Mitt Romney finally conceded.  I didn’t fall asleep until 1:30 or 2:00 because I was so hyped from the Obama victory.  The next day I was a zombie through most of my classes, but I did have a great conversation with a few students in my study hall, a couple of whom voted and a couple of whom were too young to do so.  We talked about the Electoral College and how that worked (and how fortunate they were to see it work in a year that they–seniors–were taking government), and why there was such a focus on Ohio and not on, say, Texas or California, which had more electoral votes.  It was the type of intelligent conversation I don’t hear enough among adults when it comes to politics and I think I closed it with some advice: “Keep following the news, and if you get frustrated, that’s okay.  Politics is frustrating and makes you want to bang your head against the wall, but you should stay informed.”  I have been reminded time and again by “experts” in my field that I do not have a monopoly on knowledge and am not a sage, but I’m pretty sure I was in the position to offer said advice.

But as bolstered as I was in my face-to-face conversations with those students, I have to say that I was both disappointed and disgusted by what many said over social media.  On Wednesday morning, Buzzfeed posted screen captures of various tweets, mainly from teenagers that expressed outrage at the president’s reelection and had prolific use of the “n” word.  Yesterday, Jezebel called out quite a number of those tweeters (twits?) in their piece, “Racist Teens Forced to Answer for Tweets About ‘N—–’ President” (they’ll put the word in the headline; sorry, I won’t).  Go through the article and you’ll see some reprehensible language as well as a running excuse, “My account was probably hacked.”

The comments on the piece are pretty interesting as well.  Several people actually seem to come to the defense of the tweeters (twits?) because of several reasons: “you wouldn’t have posted this if Romney had won,” “well, black people call each other n—– all the time,” “you’re shaming them publicly and that’s going to mess up their lives,” “blah blah blah First Amendment,” and my favorite, “they’re just kids (often followed with, ‘they don’t really know what they’re saying’).”  Most of the other commenters fall on the opposite side of that argument, saying that, no, it’s a good thing that racism and hate speech like this was called on the carpet so publicly.

I fall in the latter camp.  It’s one thing to be upset that President Obama was reelected; a few of my friends posted how upset they were at the election results.  However, none of them used a racial slur because they all realize that you can be upset about a president who happens to be black winning an election without resorting to calling him that word.  Furthermore, I don’t buy the argument that this is a First Amendment issue, because Jezebel is letting these fine youths say what they’re saying, then is calling them out for it.  I also don’t buy the argument that they’re kids and they don’t really know better.  Because first of all, they’re teenagers and by that age, there is a certain amount of common sense that they should have.  Oh sure, I did stupid crap and said plenty of stupid crap when I was a teenager, but I was smart enough to know that I wasn’t going to say racist things or put them in print (because a) you just don’t do that and b) I’m not a racist).  I teach in a high school.  I get to hear people use the word “Jew” in the same pejorative fashion they use the word “fag,” and I have no qualms about calling them on the carpet right in front of their peers.

Here’s the thing.  I realize that as the youth of America, you are smarter than people give you credit for.  I go on #stuvoice chats every once in a while and I see some great stuff; plus, I know what it’s like to be underestimated by adults because I was a teenager at the height of the whole “Generation X is a bunch of slackers” thing in the early 1990s.  But not everyone sees things the way I do.  In fact, many people choose to focus on only the negative aspects of a particular group of people, usually because they don’t like those people in the first place.  Do you want to know why adults might see you as entitled or snot-nosed or disrespectful or bratty?  Furthermore, do you want to know why so many adults who are in charge of your schools still demonize social media? Well, this is why.

No, really.  This is why.  They don’t see the value in Twitter or Facebook or whatever innovative app is being pushed at us through articles and PD because all they can think of is the time when you were posting racist things or spewing insults about faculty and administrators or bullying other students.  The feeling of discomfort, disgust, or pain often resonates longer than that which is pleasurable or positive.  So what you do online–the words you choose, the actions you take, and even the excuses you give (“I really didn’t mean it,” “I was joking,” “Oh, we’re just having fun,” “It’s my personal tweet,” “My account was hacked,” “First Amendment”)–makes more of an impact than you realize.  You might have a short attention span and think that something you said a week ago is “old,” but your parents, your teachers, your guidance counselors, your principals, members of the community, college admissions officers, future employers … well, they may not.  Furthermore, what you say may, to one or more people, represent not you as an individual, but the entire group of teenagers in your community or the youth of America as a whole.

Like I said, this is why you’re arguing about Facebook, Twitter, cell phones, or whatever with your teachers and principals.  And this is why you’re not taken as seriously as you think you should.  I am sure you find my comments here disrespectful, but I only wish to point out the unfortunate truth of the actions of those who wind up representing you in the eyes of older generations.

Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?

“It’s so punk rock.”

This, coming from me, is one of the most hilarious things because while I love punk music I have always been the furthest thing from “punk.” Now, my friend Chris, whom I’ve known since we were four and teaches freshman English on Long Island? He knows punk. Me? I learned to play the piano so I could play Billy Joel songs.

So like I said, the word “punk” coming from me–a bald, slightly overweight, 35-year-old English teacher–seems more hilarious than anything, even though in my mind it’s true because I was describing one of my favorite novels of all time, The Catcher in the Rye.

[My friend Laura, who hates J.D. Salinger, just slammed her head into her keyboard]

I had been talking about banned books week in class the other day and brought up the many times the book has been challenged or removed over the years because of its language or themes (one of my favorites was a district in Texas that preemptively removed the look because they just didn’t want to idea with it), and gave a quick overview of it, saying that in many ways it is the original modern day teen rebellion story. Sure, Holden Caulfield is a whiny rich prep school kid, and this takes place in the early 1950s so it doesn’t have anything to do with 21st Century Skills, but as I have positive before, when there are so many tropes in literature and popular culture, it helps to explore where they come from.

Unfortunately, I don’t get to explore it too much more than recommending it to my students because it’s on the eleventh grade and not the tenth grade curriculum. And I have to admit that I’m a little peeved by that because I know that if I had the chance, I would teach the shit out of that book. the most I have ever been able to do with it is read it about six times and discuss it here and there with former students.

If I did get to teach The Catcher in the Rye, I’d probably start with the statement that began this post. I know that Salinger’s novel is a little more suited to the jazz of the time, but i spent my formative years feasting on John Hughes movies and ’90s alternative, metal, and punk music (well, when I wasn’t playing selections from The Stranger), so as I read the book, I can hear The Ramones, The Replacements, Green Day … which aren’t all 1990s but you know what I’m getting at. In other words, it would be kind of the culmination of what is a running joke between me and a couple of my students–I connect every piece of literature to movies or music.

But in a way, that’s what makes literature like this survive, the fact that there is no adaptation helps The Catcher in the Rye more than any other “watch the movie” exercise could. There’s no set visual or audio to accompany it means the novel’s open to a certain amount of interpretation and even though Salinger would be pissed at my saying it, that kind of makes Holden belong to the reader. Sure, he wrote the words but our getting into his head and then putting him into our is what makes him just as relevant as any of the copies–from Jim Start to John Bender–that he inspired.

Don’t be scared, it’s only The Bard.

“So what is it about Shakespeare that you hate so much?”  I asked.

The class laughed and I added, “No, really.  I tell students we’re reading Shakespeare and they act like I was going to perform invasive surgery?  What is it?”

I was cheating a little with this question, mainly because I knew the answer and one of my students told me exactly what I was waiting to hear:  ”It’s Romeo & Juliet.”

We then talked a little about that particular play, even though that’s not what we’re reading, and I told them that I felt for them because I really can’t stand that play either and that I think that Romeo edges out Holden Caulfield as the whiniest teenage boy in literature.  But I didn’t spend too long on it because I hadn’t come to bury Romeo nor praise him; on the contrary, our objective for the day was to go over the background on the play that we’ll be discussing next week, which is Twelfth Night.

I had first taught the play last year and while my class had found it a little difficult to follow, I felt it was a good experience, especially for an advanced class that was going to be moving on to AP English.  But I will admit I was a little frustrated by how much they didn’t “get” out of the play because I find it to be an engaging and even funny comedy–and I’m not even a Shakespeare buff (they’ll revoke my teaching license for this, but I’ve never read Hamlet).  Still, you can’t always expect even the most advanced of students to completely “get” all of the nuance in The Bard’s writing.

So when it came time to do the introduction day for the unit, I decided to directly address the issues my students had last year with the hopes that I could head them off with this year’s group.  I posted different resources on the board about two weeks out–SparkNotes’ “No Fear Shakespeare” and the “Shakespeare Appreciated” version of Twelfth Night offered by Audible.com are two I have found very useful (although I did mention that you have to buy the audiobook).  I talked to one of my fellow English teachers, who also runs the theater program and he gave me some resources for getting past the language barrier.  And I asked a student from last year’s class–who happens to be in my study hall–to be in class the day I did the introduction lesson for a little Q&A.

I wasn’t sure how that last part would go over so I began with a pretty run-of-the-mill PowerPoint with some basic facts about Shakespeare’s life at the time Twelfth Night was written and performed, the historical context of Elizabethan England, and some of the themes and motifs they should explore as they read and discuss the play.  But then I began the intended Q&A, which I started as an “interview” where I simply asked her about how she came to know Shakespeare and why she liked the play and how she approached studying the play as well as how she approached her assignments for the play–one of which was leading the class discussion on Act I.

She has a very vibrant personality and little to no reluctance to speaking in front of students–plus, we’d done some prep in study hall the day before–so the conversation between the two of us flowed pretty easily and the class joined in at points as well.  In fact, when I brought up the fact that so many students are reluctant to read Shakespeare, it was one of my students (“the audience”) who mentioned that Romeo & Juliet has the ability to kill any potential love of The Bard … though I did have one student who really liked the play (and in all honesty, it’s not a terrible play.  I just don’t like it).

So did it work?  I’m not sure–we don’t start discussing the play until Tuesday.  Did I think it was worth it?  Well, let me put it this way:  there is so much talk about getting “experts” into classes to talk about subjects that when you are trying to basically assuage fears about an upcoming assignment, I thought bringing in someone who has already been there to in the very least give a pep talk would be a good idea.  I mean, I’m sure that I could have told them why Shakespeare is not intimidating and give them tips for tackling the language as well as not losing track of all the characters and events, but to hear it from another student?  Well, I’m hoping that made more of an impact.