Watch out, world! Story of my paper

Okay, so it took forever for me to get my paper going.

     I came up with a couple different ideas for theses and got great feedback from all of you (thank you!) and from my facebookgroupies along with some really solid advice from Dr. Burton. I found all these possible sources, of which I only ended up using a couple, but that’s okay.

     Thanks to some more guidance from Dr. Burton right at the end I changed my whole approach, (from “comparing R&J to MND andproving that MND was better” to “since we have to teach Shakespeare in spite of these risks, we’d better do it right, so here is WHAT to teach and HOW to do it” which was frustrating, but guess what! It made my topic much more accessible.

     Of course I was procrastinating a lot and praying a lot, which is not advisable but worked out for me: the night I was supposed to be writing this paper but getting nowhere I finally gave up at like 12:00 am and decided to just read a couple of articles for my ENG 378 class and then go to bed. Well guess what, those articles were about Shakespeare! And the next day my ENG 378 teacher shared a Scholastic Scope kids lit magazine that had a MND script in it – I was so surprised and very grateful. Those articles and that magazine fit perfectly into my essay. I also had one good response from a question I posted to a teacher Google community that contributed to my thesis. Equipped with these great tools, I stayed up til 3:30 am and finished that dang paper in the nick of time! Now maybe it will be accepted to the venues I have submitted it to (the Rough Magic guys emailed me back and are looking over my full text!) and go on to change the world! 

Submitted once, offered twice...we'll see what they say!

I submitted my essay to ScholarsArchive, and sent an email to

This Rough Magic
A Peer-Reviewed, Academic, Online Journal
Dedicated to the Teaching of Medieval and Renaissance Literature

and

Stage Mom Musings

art is everything & everything is art

with this abstract: 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

A Teacher’s Solution to Disinterest and Society’s Solution to Anti-Literacy

Shakespeare has made his way from the heart of commonplace Globe attendants, through the minds of scholarly experts and into the adolescent classroom. As an icon in the history of written English literature, Shakespeare has influenced writers for centuries. Now, thousands of ninth grade students study Romeo and Juliet and other plays each year. The universal themes promoted by Shakespeare’s myriad of publications as well as his stylistic prowess in make his work a popular part of high school English syllabi. However, arguments about the psychological and academic impact of these plays on today’s youth present a contrary argument. This paper will show how teachers can be wise in selecting a Shakespeare text for their classroom and the best methods to teach this material in a way that will engage, motivate, and educate their students.

Wish me luck!

Leah Anderson: A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Teacher’s Solution to Disinterest and Society’s Solution to Anti-Literacy

A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

A Teacher’s Solution to Disinterest and Society’s Solution to Anti-Literacy

Shakespeare has made his way from the heart of commonplace Globe attendants, through the minds of scholarly experts and into the adolescent classroom. As an icon in the history of written English literature, Shakespeare has influenced writers for centuries. Now, thousands of ninth grade students study Romeo and Juliet and other plays each year. The universal themes promoted by Shakespeare’s myriad of publications as well as his stylistic prowess in make his work a popular part of high school English syllabi. However, arguments about the psychological and academic impact of these plays on today’s youth present a contrary argument. This paper will show how teachers can be wise in selecting a Shakespeare text for their classroom and the best methods to teach this material in a way that will engage, motivate, and educate their students.

Websites for Teaching Shakespeare

I don't know if this is helpful to anyone but me, but these are all links that my Eng 378 teacher Dawan Coombs recommended today for teaching Shakespeare. Not a bad resource!

Class, 

There's no reason why you can't make teaching Shakespeare meaningful and engaging if you borrow and customize great teaching ideas from people who have already done it. The following links offer a myriad of lesson plan ideas for every Shakespeare play.

Shakespeare Lesson Idea Resources:

http://www.teachit.co.uk/?CurrMenu=searchresults&keyword=shakespeare 

http://www.folger.edu/

http://www.readwritethink.org 

http://www.uen.org/core/languagearts/shakespeare/ 

http://www.rsc.org.uk/education/resources/bank/ 

http://www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org/education/for-teachers 

http://englishcompanion.ning.com 

http://www.teachersfirst.com/spectopics/shakespeare.cfm 

http://webtech.kennesaw.edu/jcheek3/shakespeare.htm 

http://www.shakespeare4kidz.com/teachers 

http://www.webenglishteacher.com/shakespeare.html 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/famouspeople/william_shakespeare/teachers_resources.shtml 

http://www.coloradoshakes.org/education-outreach/shakespeare-resources 

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/teaching-shakespeare-with-the-new-york-times/

A Midspring Morning's Revision

New ideas for this paper: Why is Shakespeare taught in High Schools at all? These are the bad things about Shakespeare (and Romeo and Juliet in particular): (violence,)_________  (suicide)_______  ___________.  Why is it taught? Because (he's an icon in the history of English literature)_________ (There's a variety of genres - drama, sonnets, etc)____________ __________.

Shakespeare turns kids off from English because (difficult language)____ ____ _____,and that's just counterproductive, so teachers MUST choose appropriate texts that will HOOK their students. MSD is more appropriate and interesting for youth. These are good teaching methods and techniques for that specific play: _(act it out)______  __(make a movie)__________  __(write your own ending?)_________

And that’s why teachers SHOULD teach Shakespeare, and why they should choose A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM!

(These are some of the thoughts/suggestions from Dr. Burton and classmates. What do you think?)

Nostalgia

Social learning has been a big part of our research "project" (if you will) and so I took the time to get into contact with my English teacher from my senior year of High School.  She has taught a unit on the play Othello for I don't know how many years and she was eager to offer further insight into what I am currently researching as regards Shakespeare's play.  She was as fascinated as I was with Iago's character.  She has always been a great appreciator of the ideal villain and Iago is a choice character in that regard.  I am still in the process of sorting through the thoughts she communicated to me and I have found many of them helpful as well as directing.  Iago is a man of winding motivations all revolving around one man, Othello, and he steps on people as he climbs closer to his goal and closer to the moor.  He uses everyone around him as disguises almost, just as characters in other of Shakespeare's plays have used actual disguises to fool those around them.