We had many discussions about activating a student’s prior
knowledge and incorporating affective approaches to literacy this semester, and
during my clinicals at Logan High
School I noticed that one of the teachers I observed
did this quite well as the class read Romeo
and Juliet. I must say that when I
learned the class would be reading Romeo
and Juliet during my time in the class I was somewhat disappointed. To this day the play remains my least
favorite of Shakespeare’s works, but in the class I gained a new appreciation
for how the opinions of the students, as well as those of the teacher, can be
used to further appreciate the text.
Also, it’s often difficult for young readers to see through the
different language and cultural references that Shakespeare uses in his plays,
but this teacher did a great job of helping his students make connections with
events and ideas from their own lives and draw on their own knowledge to
understand the text. Love is a common
and obvious theme, and I really liked how the teacher validated the opinions of
the students in class discussions. Some
students felt that the romance was charged with drama and closely matched (in
terms of that drama) situations that the students themselves had experienced;
others saw Romeo as a creepy boy falling head over heels for a thirteen year
old girl after breaking up with some other chick. This disparity among the students made for some
very interesting discussions, and led to some in-depth analysis of the play
that I don’t remember happening when I read the play at that age. Making those connections really made the
difference, I think, and I plan on doing the same thing in my own classroom.
Hello Evan,
ReplyDeleteThese comments are probably supposed to be of a professional nature huh. Well, too bad sucker. I am just kidding you. As I read this I wondered, would it be harder to sway a high school age student or a soon becoming teacher on a particular subject. I thought, and this is debatable, that your opinion would be harder to sway. Minus a few years of experience, you are probably on the same intellectual level as the teacher of this English course. It stands to reason that you have formed opinions that are backed by sound logic and your own experience contrasting that with an adolescent that may like or dislike something on a whim (generally speaking). My point is, if this particular teacher could portray a literary piece in new light that caused you to change from at best a neutral feeling of it to a positive one is impressive to me. So, I would indeed take aspects of this particular teacher's methods and try to implement them in your own way. Good luck to you in life. Thanks.
I can see that you are a critical observer of your environment. This will do much for you as you work to find the teaching style and tools that work best for you. It’s nice to observe others and learn from them what we will or won’t do in our practice to create more inclusive and student friendly classrooms and I can see from this post that you will be a learner in regard to observing and critiquing your own environment and your own instruction in regard to how it fits your environment.
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