Special Post, Dietze

In Shakespeare,Our Digital Native, English teachers Christopher Shaburg and Cari Craighead describe a learning experiment on reading Shakespeare between two groups of high school students. The first group of 9^th graders filmed and reenacted the performance of Romeo & Juliet. The second group did an audio only play of Macbeth where they worked with these limitations by evoking character voice and sound props. The purpose of these assignments was to introduce the students to critical concepts found in Shakespeare’s works. The process allowed the students to become active participants in the narrative and engage with the characters. This allowed them to form a connection with the readings and also probably quelled some fears about reading the plays. Besides, Shakespeare’s plays were originally not to be read, but heard and seen. They were to be shared. This technological and creative engagement not only incorporated the traditions of Shakespeare, but also molded them with today’s modern habit. This formation of old style and new, referred to as remix, was after-all one of Shakespeare most successful tactics in writing. The author believed the assignment “extended thoughts and feelings from [the students] lives” that provided a “toolset to live in situations they never could and to express language they did not craft.”

When students are able to see the plays less as lofty long words on a page, and are able to live out literature and embody the characters, they are able to create a connection with Shakespeare’s works: “when students see themselves as participants in culture and literature, they develop habits of mind that can help them for a lifetime.” This connection, or participatory culture, will stick with them much longer than memorization would. Our critical concepts blogs and the service-learning component, also requires our active participation. We are reading and discussing in ways that allow us to engage with the text that brings the works in a relative context of our own. I had some trouble choosing which concept I would base my blogs on off of the four columns of words. Each concept out of the list can all be found within Shakespeare’s works. There are many layers and many ways to interpret Shakespeare, but the method that has worked most effectively is finding a way to engage with the works that make them come alive in any era.

I wrote all the above before our cluster convo, which completely solidified all the points I had made. The adaptation of the King Lear play in the Zaatari Refugee Camp embodies this sort of active participation as the above experiment did. Even if it was not conscious of it. It doesn’t matter that it was a Shakespeare play, what matters is that it embodied all of the elements Shakespeare wanted to evoke: relation, theatrics, connections, and all to be seen/heard by the common people. An audience without ranking or status, just an audience of people. The American film society has a tendency to over-produce and under-inspire.

Although I chose to do the critical concepts blog, I have done service learning in the past and have an experience I’m reminded of. I worked at the Freret Street Neighborhood Center, a space that opened its doors to anyone who needs it, from children’s art classes to health information to community events to the computer lab where I worked. On the three big brown boxy computers I helped jobless, sometimes homeless, individuals to create a resume, job search, etc. One day Henry came in. He looked in his 60s. He told me he wanted to learn how to read and had some online texts, I think it might’ve been a class, and that day we went word for word on that big computer screen for hours. We’d take breaks and Henry would tell me how he was a truck driver that traveled cross-country by wheel. Henry told me the feeling of waking up in a new place each day was the most exhilarating feeling. He said it made him feel alive, a feeling he never took for granted after discovering he had a brain tumor. After our day together, he told me he felt that God had sent me to help him. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been so inspired by such a genuine human being since. The experience taught me how valuable life is and how many different ways there are to interpret it. And, this is cheesy, but I think that Shakespeare’s ability to ingrain experiences of humanity in his stories are what make them so lasting.