As You Like It: Wherefore Art Thou

While teaching a new reading skill the other day in class, I was reminded yet again of how little my students know about the world outside their neighborhoods. Teaching comprehension according to this new method is difficult enough, but when I’m also presented with the challenge of filling in crater-sized knowledge gaps, it’s put-my-head-on-the-desk-and-sigh time.

My class is composed of intermediate level students, which means they run the gamut from fourth through eighth grade reading levels. When I teach them comprehension, I don’t focus on the specific words and ideas on the page, but on the tools that I can give them to figure things out for themselves. Sort of like teaching a guy to fish and not simply handing him the halibut.

Or as I tell my students, “Pretend I’m giving you a plot of earth and encouraging you to plant a garden. If I don’t give you the tools you need — a rake, some seeds, a watering can — you’re always going to depend on me for radishes. I want you to grow them on your own.”

So I teach them comprehension tools, which are basically graphic ways of organizing their thoughts. Good readers do it constantly and internally, but even good readers underline, highlight and scribble notes all over the pages of difficult text. I teach them how to summarize text, explaining that if you can summarize a passage, it means you understand it. I teach them how to ask strategic questions, how to fit new knowledge in with what they already know, how to reread and read in context.

It’s a long, slow, agonizing process. And even when they complete impressive charts of what they’ve just read, it still takes a long time until they can apply it to another reading passage, and then do it on their own. Sisyphus has nothing on us — connections in GED come hard and sometimes not at all.

Before I taught a reading selection entitled, “Shakespeare’s Tragedies,” I thought I’d begin with an easy question: “Who can tell me something about Shakespeare?” A deafening silence ensued. I could feel my stomach sink as I looked around the room, willing someone to throw me a bone. It reminded me of the time when I had asked another class to tell me what they knew about Europe, and the answer I got was, “Isn’t that where Harry Potter lives?”

Then one of my scholars said hesitantly, “Wasn’t he a poet or something?” “Yes!” I yelled ecstatically. “Anything else?” There was nothing else. So I explained that he lived a long time ago in England, did indeed write poems and, more importantly, plays that everyone loved then and still enjoy today. In desperation, I played my trump card and asked if anyone had ever heard of “Romeo and Juliet.” Only two faces lit up with recognition.

For the rest who had never heard hide nor hair of the doomed couple, I told the story briefly and was rewarded with a soft, “Cool!” Before the lesson ended I had also explained the difference between comedy and tragedy and summarized King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet. But I didn’t need Othello to remind me what a tragedy was — I felt one being played out in front of me. My students had all attended high school for at least three years, and yet this was the first time they had ever heard of Shakespeare or his plays.

Romeo and Juliet. How can you live in this world and not be somewhat aware of the feuding Montagues and Capulets? As I told my students, there wasn’t a time when I read or saw the play that I didn’t still hope for a happy ending. I had a very wise middle school teacher who introduced us to Shakespeare through Romeo and Juliet. How could you be 13 and not be entranced by the soap opera of forbidden love, even if the language was so “passing strange?”

When I was in high school, movie director Franco Zeffarelli cemented my love affair with Romeo and his fair Juliet when he presented the couple as they were meant to be — two love-sick 15 year olds. I remember the first few moments in that darkened New York City theater, when the play became everything I had ever imagined and dreamed of, filled with music, color, and a gorgeous Romeo accompanied by his friend Mercutio, who exuded a dangerous attraction that I only dimly understood. I took every boyfriend I had to see that movie again and again. A huge poster of Romeo and Juliet hung in my room, and I still have a picture of me and Steve mimicking their pose beneath it.

So, many years later, when I need a vacation from the world, dipping into Romeo’s lovesick poetry or Mercutio’s dagger-sharp sarcasm still soothes and excites me. And yet, here I had before me an entire room of adults who had never, and probably would never, understand even one line, no matter how many reading comprehension tools I gave them. This is a fish they will never catch on their own.

So I will have to be content to dangle a bit of Juliet and Romeo’s poetry before them in the hope that it will awaken a hunger in them to go beyond what they comfortably know. And maybe, like Juliet, they will teach the torches to burn bright with their dreams.

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Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on Mar 24 2011. Filed under As You Like It, Featured Content, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.