As You Like It: Perseverance

Today I introduced ten new vocabulary words that were harder than usual because my class likes challenges. The words may be difficult, but we shall persevere, both because of their attitude and because persevere is on the list. They liked that word. They felt that it described them and their quest for a GED. All except Willy, who announced that he does not persevere when life gets hard.

“If something is too hard I give up,” he told me. “It’s just not worth it.”

It’s not often that someone will admit that out loud. We may give up in our hearts but we usually put on a brave front for the world. It made me sad that this 30-year-old man has found nothing in life that he values enough to strive for. I asked him, “You have never had anything in your life that is important enough to fight for? No friend, no love, no job, no ideal?”

“No,” he answered. “Who needs the trouble? I would rather give up.”

When I asked him how he intended to get his GED if he didn’t persevere in his studies, he told me that he had attended classes before and had dropped out when they got too hard. He told me that if this class got too hard he would do the same thing here as well. Every work-ethic bone in my body rebelled at his attitude. In the U.S., where we’re all descended from immigrants who never had the luxury of giving up, perseverance is our mantra. When faced with someone for whom giving up was a way of life, I was speechless.

And Willy seemed to echo the limping spirit of our highest level students who had just taken their GED tests and not done as well as they had hoped. We’ve been spending a lot of time these past few weeks doing damage control, convincing them that this was just the first step on the road that they’ve chosen.

Throughout the year I spend a lot of time convincing students to study a little more, write one more sentence, read one more book. Especially the book part because, call me a romantic, I believe in the healing power of words sprinkled across a page. They remind me that there is much in this world that is well worth the fight. And above all it is Mr. William Shakespeare’s words that convince me that, if their sheer beauty can exist in this world, then there is always something worth getting up for.

So when I opened my morning paper to see that William had made the front page, I let my coffee grow cold as I read what catapulted him to the headlines. And as fate would have it, it turned out that old Will has managed to introduce perseverance to teenagers who were ready to give up. Ripeness is all.

The Globe’s Louise Kennedy in her article, Caught in the act: Juveniles sentenced to Shakespeare, described how the Bard is being used to turn lives around:

Tonight, 13 actors will take the stage at Shakespeare & Company in “Henry V.’’ Nothing so unusual in that — except that these are teenagers, none older than 17, and they have been sentenced to perform this play.

The show is the culmination of a five-week intensive program called Shakespeare in the Courts, a nationally recognized initiative now celebrating its 10th year. Berkshire Juvenile Court Judge Judith Locke has sent these adjudicated offenders — found guilty of such adolescent crimes as fighting, drinking, stealing, and destroying property — not to lockup or conventional community service, but to four afternoons a week of acting exercises, rehearsal, and Shakespearean study.

The teenagers show up resentfully on their first day of rehearsal. They tell each other that they’d rather go to jail or perform more traditional community service than do Shakespeare. They’ve given up before they’ve even laid eyes on one word, sure that they’ll fail. How could they possibly be expected to read Shakespeare, let alone perform it? The judge must be crazy. But in the end they do it.

Assitant director Jenny Jadow explains, “We don’t have a standard we expect them to get to. We say to them, ‘You’re going to do this impossible task.’ And then, by God, they do.’’

It makes me wonder if that is the reason the directors chose Henry V, which tells the story of the Battle of Agincourt where 6,000 British soldiers managed to defeat 36,000 French knights. The play is a lesson in achieving the impossible through sheer perseverance.

Probation officer Nancy Macauley, who has worked with the program since its inception, sees its effects. “It makes a difference in their self-esteem, in their willingness to try something new,’’ Macauley said. “And the beauty of the program  too, is that learning the words, and learning the meaning of the words, is something that they’ll have forever . . . Nothing can take it away from them, which unfortunately is not always the case in life.’’

And so I decide that I will take Shakespeare back to Willy and my class. I will gather his words in my hands and offer them to my students to hold and to keep, so that they will always be able take them out and dust them off when life gets too hard. And no one will be able to take that away from them.

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Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on Jun 3 2010. Filed under As You Like It, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.