Reading through Dr. Burton's posts and articles about social proof are helping me come to terms with the validity of social networking for professional and academic purposes. I think my "social graph" would consist of Google Plus and Facebook, plus my roommate circle and family members who are, fortunately, mostly English majors (sweet!). They give me good feedback and I am becoming more and more dependent on them.
I proposed these three paper topic ideas on Facebook and Google+ and talked to my roommate about them, and thanks to comments from my family, old high school teachers, friends and an almost ex boyfriend, I've been able to narrow down my ideas. Before I tell you the direction in which I am narrowing, though, what do YOU think?
Ideas for my Shakespeare paper:
Most effective ways to teach A Midsummer Night's Dream to a high school class.
OR Why A Midsummer Night's Dream is a better choice for a high school class than Romeo and Juliet.
OR Why teach Shakespeare to teenagers: Five life lessons to be learned through A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Glad you are catching the spirit of reaching out to your social graph. I wish you'd taken a screen shot of all those comments in response to your Facebook post and inserted it in this post. So many responses!
ReplyDeleteI like the third idea--it sounds like the most substantial of your theses. It also opens up some new avenues of research for you: you could research things like adolescent psychology or high school pedagogy and relate them to the play.
ReplyDeleteI think the third idea is probably most substantial, but I'm really drawn into the bold claim of the second one. I would love to see you make the case for MND being more valuable to teach to teenagers than R&J.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to see you make a case for MND being better than R&J.
ReplyDeleteI'd really like to see this developed. EVERYONE learns about R&J in high school. WHY?
ReplyDeleteIm also interested to know what these 5 life lessons are for the final idea.
I was in productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream in both 5th and 6th grade and I studied Romeo and Juliet as well (I think). All I know now is that I totally remember A Midsummer Night's Dream and had way more fun with it and I have no idea what we talked about with Romeo and Juliet.
ReplyDeleteBasically, I agree. Also--getting kids to perform Shakespeare might be a better way to teach than watching it/talking about it in class.
Thank you all for your comments! As you know (if you watched my movie) I kind of chose the RJ topic...but now as I look back over this I think it might be fun to do the 5 Life Lessons and talk about something related to adolescent psychology. Hm.
ReplyDelete