Puberty, Pain, and Pranking

So I've been looking over my primary text A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and am falling more and more in love with it. Discussions in the classroom with Amelia, Bailey and Mikaela have helped me realize that this play IS successfully taught in high schools, so why not find out the best and worst ways and write an essay on it? Some of the topics that might interest high school youth are reflected in these quotes: becoming a man, unrequited love (hey hey, Bailey!), mischievousness.

(I.ii.40) Flute says: Nay, faith, let not me play a woman: I have a beard coming. 

(III.ii.233-235) Helena says: What though I be not so in grace as you, / But miserable most, to love unloved? / This you should pity rather than despise. 

(II.i.33-35) Fairy says: Either I mistake your shape and making quite, / Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite / Called Robin Goodfellow. 

Reading through Janelle's process of writing her paper has been helpful because hers also had an educational emphasis, and it's encouraging to find a person who is like minded. Through her comments I am seeing that I am going to need to focus my broad theme down to a couple specific ideas so my paper doesn't end up being twenty pages long. We'll see how that goes.

PROOF for Social PROOF

I was reading through Janelle's posts (she is a girl on the blog who wrote about A Midsummer Night's Dream, too) and it looks like her paper improved a LOT through the social proof from conversations with her friends, posts on facebook, and other people looking at her material and drafts. I have been gaining a "testimony " of the value of social input, and Janelle's experiences validate that. Sweet!

The Final Post: Graphic Novel Video Edition

I made another video per Dr. Burton's suggestion... which hopefully says the same things as the last one, but with better lighting. :)

Another Video About Graphic Novels

This is the video explaining my final paper:

So here's what I learned, Janelle edition:

Gain Shakespeare Literacy:
I would say that I definitely gained some breadth and depth of Shakespeare's works in this class. I read and learned basic knowledge about a wide variety of Shakespeare's plays that I was really unfamiliar with (such as Henry V, The Winter's Tale, and King Lear). I also gained a greater depth of knowledge about plays that I was already familiar with by reading them, watching them, and discussing them (such as Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night's Dream). I most enjoyed gaining Shakespeare literacy in terms of the performance and legacy of Shakespeare. Watching the plays on both stage and screen was definitely the easiest way for me to access the language and the ideas of Shakespeare. I'm actually hoping to watch more of the 'at The Globe' performances over the break because I loved them so much. Being a pop culture junkie, I also loved recognizing and thinking about the ways that Shakespeare carries over to our modern world. I probably shouldn't have been surprised by how many lines from Shakespeare plays I noticed as I watched other television and movies over the semester... but I was.

Teaching Shakespeare Through the Graphic Novel... The Story

Looking back on my writing process, the absolute only thing that I knew from the beginning was that I wanted the paper to be applicable to teaching. I knew this would make me most motivated to write the paper, being something that I'm really passionate about (and knowing that teaching Shakespeare will no doubt be expected from me). I think I did a pretty good job of posting about the social networking experiences that really gave my paper some hold in the real world of teaching and studying Shakespeare (here, here, and here). Initially, my scope was really large (I wanted to cover teaching Shakespeare through many multiple genres), but comments from others, and an experience with reading my first graphic novel in my YA Lit class focused me in on a subject that I really didn't know much about... and that I now really care about. I spent a lot of time revising my paper before I turned it in (largely due to some great feedback that Dr. Burton gave me on my draft), and that's left me with mainly additions (rather than edits) to make in the final final paper. I'm still working on the publication part... something that I've talked to a few English teaching professors about. Kasey gave me the idea to send the final final paper to Sirpa Grierson (others in her ENGL 379 class have written about graphic novels, and she publishes a lot), so I'm planning to do that. I'm also considering trying to contact some of the adapters of Shakespeare's work into graphic novels, per Dr. Burton's suggestion-- I think that could get some pretty cool results.

A little more on The Globe's 'As You Like It'

Oh hey, it looks like a lot of people decided to watch As You Like It performed at The Globe, including myself. :) The Films on Demand site is currently giving me some grief, so I've only watched about half of the play so far... and I may be a little bitter about it, because I LOVE this production. Sometimes I say, with good intentions, that I'll go back and finish something--this is actually something that I absolutely will go back and finish. I'm really excited to finish watching this play.

I liked what Catherine had to say about this performance being a hybrid of movie and theater. Obviously, we aren't there in the audience deciding what we want to look at. The camera makes the decision for us, but that was part of the production that I really enjoyed. I thought the camera had such great comedic timing... it really emphasized the right things at the right time.

A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Graphic Novel... Final Paper

Here it is, folks: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8dC_PASgMXnX3VoNlZoNE50SnM/edit

I think some of the screenshots got messed up in the translation over to google docs... so sorry about that.

Ultimately, I'm most interested in publishing to The English Journal, but that's more of a long-term goal that would probably happen after I've been teaching for a while. Other than that, I'm not exactly sure where to publish this type of paper. Maybe the media site that Ian mentioned would be a good place to check out?

Enjoy!

A (Graphic) Novel Approach to Teaching Shakespeare

I enjoyed doing the research for this paper, mainly because I settled on a topic that I didn't know much about. I would have never ended up writing a paper on graphic novels if it weren't for all of the social input that people gave me-- and how cool is that? 

Overall, I'm mostly concerned with the focus of the paper... I think I'm still trying to cover too much. If you notice, I don't get to the nitty-gritty (the thesis) until almost the end of the second page. So I'm wondering what you think about the information that's included in the first paragraphs about "purists" and bridging language with other things. Do you think this detracts from the focus of the argument, or does it give the argument more meaning? Anything else you want to say is also appreciated. (Oh, and just FYI... I think I'll end up adding one more paragraph that talks about students and problems with Shakespeare language comprehension.)

Improvements in Researching A Midsummer Night's Dream

What has been working:
I've had a ton of helpful feedback through social media.
I've been able to speak personally to people involved/interested in the research that I'm doing. (As an update: In a few conversations that I've had just with friends recently I've been able to run the idea of teaching with the graphic novel by them... and I've had a lot of great responses. Even just my own peers seem interested in the idea, and a lot have expressed that this would have really helped them when they were reading Shakespeare in secondary school.)
I've found a fair amount of research backing up and/or challenging my claims.

What I've been working to improve:
Actual analysis of A Midsummer Night's Dream as a specific vehicle to prove that my ideas work. (Specifically, I was really excited to find a graphic novel version of A Midsummer Night's Dream available in the library. I've been looking at that to find more specifics of where the book could actually serve to better teach an understanding and/or analysis of the text.)
I mentioned that I've found some research regarding my claims, but not enough. I need to find more, and that's my next step.

A Video, Some Progress, and the Graphic Novel

Report of feedback from initial draft:

My paper has changed in massive ways due to some of the awesome feedback that I've received from people (I've mentioned some of these changes on previous posts). Since I posted my first draft, I've already made a major change in focus--I'm planning now to focus a lot more on the graphic novel rather than trying to talk about media, AND text, AND who knows what else I would have come up with... 

I posted a link to my draft on Facebook:

Non-Traditional Methods in the Secondary Classroom: Mini-Paper

Well, as a few others have stated--this is the REALLY rough draft of my paper. Because I've received sooooo much feedback from people (that's not a complaint, it has been really amazing) I only really narrowed down my topic this afternoon, and I still have a massive amount of research that I'm wading through. That being said, I expect the final product to be a bit (okay, a lot) more focused than it currently is. You might also notice that I only have one solid body paragraph arguing specifically for my thesis (about graphic novels). That's because I haven't decided what other non-traditional genres and media I want to focus on... like I said, I've found a lot of information and I'm just working at wading through it all. If anyone has any suggestions/preferences for what non-traditional ideas I should incorporate, I'd be interested to hear your ideas. Cheers!

English Companion Ning Responses

English Companion Ning seems to be another good source to ask current teachers about teaching Shakespeare (or any other topic), if anyone is interested. I would have included this in my last post, but all of these comments got hidden in my junk mail. Go figure. :)

http://englishcompanion.ning.com/group/teachingshakespeare/forum/topics/teaching-shakespeare-in-the-21st-century?commentId=2567740%3AComment%3A665340&xg_source=msg_com_gr_forum

Social Networking and Teaching Shakespeare

I just thought I'd share some of the cool experiences I've been having while trying to incorporate more social networking into my research. I mentioned in my annotated bibliography that I posted some questions to Goodreads, English Companion Ning, and Facebook... and Facebook certainly had the quickest results. The initial question I posted and the comments I began receiving are below. Note that, as discussed in class, I opened up the discussion with a pretty broad topic, just to get a general sense of opinions and interest in the topic. I did also mention (although, perhaps I shouldn't have) that the question was for a class/grade... this was mainly for the same reason that was brought up a few times in class: I was worried about people not responding. Luckily, I had a big response... and some conversations that continued after this first post.

Teaching Shakespeare in the 21st Century

After some deliberation, and a helpful comment from Ian on my last post, I've decided that I am going to focus my paper on teaching Shakespeare in a junior high/high school setting. I mentioned originally that my focus applied very specifically to A Midsummer Night's Dream, but with some comments from Kasey and Catherine I've decided to expand it and focus more on the teaching aspect. I'm not sure how I'll end up tying A Midsummer Night's Dream into this, but I'm currently thinking that this play will be a vehicle to demonstrate how someone could actually use my research in the classroom. 

At this point my very short "tweethis" statement would be: The way that Shakespeare is taught in high schools needs to be adapted to better fit the 21st century. (Notice that I don't say exactly how it needs to change... but it's a work in progress, right? :) And here's my annotated bibliography sharing some of the ways that I'm hoping to gain insight into my topic/better focus my tweethis:

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Well, sorry for the late post! My computer has been giving me some fun difficulties today... let's get to it:

I've been having a hard time deciding what I'd like to write my paper on. Probably mainly because I'm most interested in writing a paper from a teaching perspective (since I will hopefully be teaching some Shakespeare at a high school level someday), but I don't necessarily think that my look into teaching A Midsummer Night's Dream is really my best writing idea. Originally, I was thinking of going along with a thesis something like: By reading and using activities related to A Midsummer Night's Dream, a high school teacher could effectively engage students in a study and exploration of romantic love (or relationships, love in general, etc... depending on what you wanted to emphasize in the class). Kasey then gave me an idea that I feel focuses the paper better--she told me to contrast the way that I feel (or research shows) that Shakespeare should be taught and the way that it is actually being taught, in order to create a more argumentative thesis. So that's one idea I'm considering: using A Midsummer Night's Dream as a vehicle to reach the greater purpose of most effectively teaching Shakespeare to high school students. I don't know... what do you guys think? Is it interesting and/or plausible? Consider this idea in conjunction with my others and let me know what would most spark your interest.

2nd Thesis:
The text in A Midsummer Night's Dream lends itself to modern interpretations of the play where the woods become a fantasy world free of inhibition and the palace becomes a symbol of repression and force.
The idea here (as I mentioned in class) would be to look into things like prose, verse, and the varying types of verse... how does that contribute to the overall meaning of the palace and/or the woods? The problem here is that I haven't found much to back up the correlation that I'm proposing... which could mean it doesn't exist, or could mean that it just hasn't been explored yet. Intriguing.

3rd Thesis:
In the play A Midsummer Night's Dream, dreams function as a means for characters to experience a world separate from the real world, a place where they can live out their fantasies. (I'd probably reword this, depending on where I take the focus.)
The initial idea came from a quote (that I shared earlier on digital dialogue) found here: http://kellybulkeley.com/dreams-midsummer-nights-dream/ ...looking into this idea further I found some interesting articles considering a psychoanalytic approach to this play and the value of dreams. With this thesis I would explore the value that dreams have for the characters. Are dreams just a means to enact fantasies that otherwise wouldn't be acted upon?

Those are some of my ideas--I'd be interested to hear opinions or expansions anyone has. What would you be most interested to hear more about? Any insights?