blog, week 4:

Friday, March 25, 2011

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the only two of our students that had done their 'homework' and read Acts 2 and 3 of Merchant of Venice were Bruce Mikey. Since we were gone for two weeks, I had hoped that they all would have gotten some more reading done. Travis reread Act 1, which I guess is also a good thing in order to ensure understanding.

This week we assigned actual homework. After reading through all of Act 2, Gabby and I divvied out the various scenes from the first to acts to the students present and asked them to condense and rewrite them for our performance. Gabby feels that by having them rewrite the scenes instead of us, they will be able to understand and memorize the lines better, and I agree with her. I do not want to keep my hopes up; however, I do hope (for lack of a good synonym) that they do attempt to complete the work. I know it will be hard for them, but we tried to be as encouraging as possible and insisted that in addition to reading Act 3 next week, that we would go over their scripts and help revise. I hope that keeps them motivated to try.

I don't know how we got onto the subject of it, but before class started some of the students and I were debating about people in prison. Travis and Steveo insisted that there are a lot of bad people in prison, people incapable of good, and while I tried to resist answering at first, I ended up answering that I believe that there are plenty of good people in prison that made bad decisions. While they agreed with me, they continued to argue that there are a lot more bad people in prison who are unwilling to change. I agree, there are certainly people like that, but I also believe that our students only get to see one side of the men they are incarcerated with. Certainly there is a certain sense of survival when one is incarcerated that prevent a lot of people from showing softer, better sides of themselves. Maybe that is simply me being a romantic, wishing to see the good in people. Would I be here teaching at Florence if I didn't believe that, if I didn't think people were capable of change or trying to change in order to better themselves?

Joey walked in late to our class and we had to turn him away since our out-count form had already been turned in. He was really upset about it, but there really wasn't anything we could do. We had to cross off his name, Adam's, and Luis', even though Bruce told us Luis was sick and wouldn't make it. I hope that they show up next week and that we won't have too much trouble getting them back into the class.

 

Joe Lockard said...

You are facing one of the real difficulties of this course assignment: how to get students not accustomed to memorization to engage in that practice. This seems a real challenge, one that needs a certain teaching creativity. Your homework assignment sounds like a promising effort given the tone of discouragement in your post before spring break.

 

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