Oh my God. They killed Romeo!

I hope you haven’t played that party game of ‘I have never’. The rules are pretty simple: People take it in turns to complete the phrase ‘I have never…’ and if you have, you have a drink, or you have to complete a forfeit. I will go first: I have never taught ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to students. This is where you take a drink now, because I bet the majority of people reading this have, at some time, taught the play. I bet there are schools across the land that only teach ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at GCSE. I have certainly worked in schools where 90% of English teachers teach ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and the rest do something else by William Shakespeare.  

I am one of those 10% of teachers that teaches anything but ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Over the years, I have taught ‘The Merchant of Venice’, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘Macbeth’, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, ‘King Lear’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘Henry V’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ to a variety of students. Even my university days included more of the Bard’s work such as ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘As You Like It’, ‘A Winter’s Tale’, ‘King John’, ‘Henry IV Part 1’, and ‘Henry IV Part 2’. You can see I like variety.  In fact, this week I have been studying another play to teach: Othello. I tend to rotate plays every two years to: keep me on my toes; and keep things fresh and new.

Looking at the recent changes in the curriculum, you can see an attempt to remedy this. We now have to study more Shakespeare plays and more than one at GCSE. Why? Possibly because the same one is done time and time again. There exists a problem that has been highlighted before: We tend to teach the same texts again and again at GCSE. Let’s call them the ‘trinity’ of English departments. An Inspector Calls. Of Mice and Men. Romeo and Juliet. I bet there are people that teach these plays year on year and never change them. The beauty of these texts is that they are so bloody good. However, teaching them year on year breeds over familiarity with them. Funnily, a Year 7 brought a copy ‘Of Mice and Men’ to a reading lesson and said that they were told to read it by an older sibling. Also, I have heard of some schools teaching ‘Of Mice and Men’ in Year 8 and repeating it in Years 9, 10 and 11 so, hopefully, something sticks.

Am I a better teacher for teaching the same text several years in a row? Or, is it a safer approach to teaching? I know it works, so I will stick to doing it. Why change it if it works well already? We talk about students focusing on content rather than the skills, when we do it already. We see teaching the play / novel as being content driven rather than skills driven. I have these resources and I must use them. Texts are so good because you can squeeze years of teaching out of a single novel or play.  But, does this over reliance on one text mean that we neglect the skills of a new reader to a text? Or, does it mean that we can hone some skills better?  

Personally, my teaching several Shakespeare plays has helped me considerably in my teaching. I understand his style and techniques better, because I can spot patterns between plays. I understand the mechanics of his plotting better, because I see similar devices used in different ways in his other plays. I understand his themes better, because I have seen them repeated and echoed in other plays. I am better, in my opinion, because I have read, acted and studied a range of his texts. Therefore, I now tend to have a ‘give-it-a-go approach’ to things now. I have never taught ‘Othello’, but I am enjoying preparing and planning for it. Already, I can see connections between ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and ‘Othello’. Firstly, there’s the plotting of Don John and Iago. Then, there’s the use of imagery relating to ‘Heaven and Hell’. Finally, there is the use of Hero and Desdemona: A character presented through other people’s opinions of her. They both don’t save a single kitten, yet they are presented as pure as snow. I am starting to see that ‘Othello’ is a grown-up version of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and a less comedic version of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. Yes, I know Shakespeare didn’t come up with the story, but they have a lot of similarities in the ways that they are written.

My insistence of doing different texts has helped me considerably. I feel that I can comfortably handle a new Shakespeare play without fear and worry. Yes, it does take time, but I feel more comfortable with talking about Shakespeare and his writing and his style as I have a breadth of knowledge to work from, rather than the same play. There are so many resources for ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that you don’t need to create anything really. Pick another play and you can be more inventive and creative.

So, what’s my beef with ‘Romeo and Juliet’? When I tell students that we are not going to study the play, I get a few groans and the jealousy starts about how the other groups are watching the dead good film by Baz Luhrmann. There is one reason I don’t go for it: They want to watch it.  This is my same reasoning with books like ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Hunger Games’. Why introduce these to students when they are likely to read them independently? Surely, it is better to introduce them to something new and different. I have saved somewhere a letter from a parent explaining how amazed she was that her son knew a lot about ‘Julius Caesar’. I’d rather be the key that opens doors to literature, than the ticket tout for the latest film.

Another reason: My childhood. Yes, you may call Freud. I had a fabulous English teacher at school, Mr Bic, and he taught me the play. However, even he couldn’t make me connect with the play. In fact, all I can recall is some video with some naked bums in it and me slowly ploughing through the text, wandering what we will do next. I never really connected with it, because I wasn’t part of a warring family; and, I just felt that Romeo and Juliet’s suicides were misguided. Maybe, I am heartless, but I just don’t buy the fact that these characters quickly go from 'stranger' to 'lover' and then to not wanting to exist without the other one. Furthermore, the potion. A potion that mimics death. I am sorry, but I would use everything at hand to see if my loved one was really dead. A mirror. Check her pulse. Pinch her. Bucket of cold water. Plus, what about rigor mortis?

But, the main reason is that I never felt it was a teen play. It does feature some teenagers in it, but I feel that it is an adult’s view of teenagers and how teenagers behave strangely. They fight. They argue. They disobey. They even do the deed. Then, they do a stupid thing like kill themselves. ‘Hamlet’ for me has always been the play for teenagers. A person that questions the world as it is. A person that searches for their position in the world. A person that isn’t happy. A person that has mood swings. A person that doesn’t like what his parents are telling him. I suppose I was more Hamlet than Romeo.  

In September, I will be selling (teaching) ‘Othello’ to my class. First, I will start with the plot of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Then, I will ask them: How would you make a sequel of the story? How could you improve on the story? How could you reimagine the story? Then I will tell them that ‘Othello’ is like ‘Romeo and Juliet’ but with more sex, more violence, more realism, more plot twists and a darker tone.

Why the title? It is a reference to ‘South Park. In every episode, the character Kenny is killed. This is repeated every episode.
 

http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/File:KennyMcCormick.png

Oh my God. They killed Romeo!

Oh my God. They killed Juliet!

Oh my God. They killed Curley’s wife!

Oh my God. They killed Lennie!

Oh my God. They killed Eva Smith!

Oh my God. They killed Daisy Renton!

Go on pick another play by William Shakespeare. I dare you to.

Thanks for reading,
Xris

 

P.S. I will learn to love ‘Romeo and Juliet’ as I will be helping to direct it next year.

Mashing-up Literacy

I feel literacy in schools isn’t a major thing when it comes to the amount of work you have to do, as a lot of it is about publicity. Literacy is about PR for an often neglected set of skills that students have forgotten about. I have done a number of things as a coordinator to create publicity in the school: I changed the name of the Library. I took over parts of lessons. I have written to parents. I have given out ‘golden tickets’ for a non-uniform day to any student who presents work neatly. I have even changed how student write the date in their books. However, I knew from the start that I needed some big PR stunts to make literacy an issue and a priority. Stupidly, I had in my mind to do a whole literacy day. Now, the sensible voice in my head was screaming that I shouldn’t do it, while the voice with the devil horns was softly whispering that I should do it. I abhor shouting, so I ignored that voice and listened to the whispering devil.

There is a problem with calling things a ‘literacy day’ as it has the word ‘literacy’ in it. Even Geoff Barton agrees with this issue, as his great book, ‘Don’t call it literacy’, proves. As soon as you call something a literacy day, you lose about two thirds of the school population. Literacy in the students’ minds stands for lots of writing. Therefore, like a Labour candidate, I needed spin, spin, spin. I needed to learn from all those PR agents from the 1990s. I needed to rebrand it. Not New Labour, but New Literacy.

Several months ago, I attended a conference for ‘Outstanding Literacy in Secondary Schools’ and thoroughly enjoyed it - so much that they include my name (Why?) on the literature for the next one – which I sadly can’t attend. Anyway, there I was lucky to meet David Didau, Phil Beadle and Lisa Jane Ashes. For the first time in my life, I felt like a groupie, as I was surrounded by people I read about, or who had written books. There were several interesting talks and one, from Lisa, talked about ‘Manglish’. In it she described how in her school they had changed the curriculum to integrate subjects together. Hence, the title ‘Manglish’: Maths and English.

The idea floated in my brain for several months until my desire to do a literacy day. What if we did a kind of ‘Manglish’ day? What if we did lots of mixes? What if we ‘mash-up’ subjects for just one day? The ‘Mash-up day’ was born. Like ‘The Lion King’, I held up the new-born idea before the SLT and they said ... yes.

It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle The Circle of Life

 

This is how I presented it to staff:

What is a mash-up?

Definition: v. To take elements of two or more pre-existing pieces of music and combine them to make a new song. n. A song comprised of elements of two or more pieces of music.

The Mash-up Day is about making links between subjects explicit. Our students do not always use the knowledge from one subject to help them with the learning in another subject. By forcing connections, pupils will see the benefits of making connections.

 

Objectives:

·         To develop links across departments

·         To develop students’ ability to make connections

·         To provide a real context and audience for a piece of writing

·         To develop teacher’s confidence at  teaching literacy

·         To think creatively 

·         To get students working collaboratively with others in different year groups

There was quite a bit of confusion over the term ‘mash-up’; however, the teachers were very responsive to the idea, when they had understood the concept. But, where did the literacy come in? Well, the day had a clear structure and this is how it went:

Period 1: Subject mash-up

Period 2: Subject mash-up

Period 3: Written reflection on the mash-up

Period 4: Read the booklet made of their reflections

The mash-ups happened at the start of the day and they were the spring-board for a piece of writing. The writing could be anything stemming from the lesson. However, the writing had a real and genuine audience: the rest of the school. For once they were not writing for a fictitious MP or to the Prime Minister. They were writing for their peers. It was 'real writing' that would be judged by others. This, I feel, added a new aspect to their writing. There was, however, one rule: no names on the written work. At the end of the day, we would all read the booklets and see what others had done.   

The build-up to the day was amazing. I had made sure I had given staff lots of notice, so they could prepare, with time to spare. But during the preparation, you had staff fighting to work with each other. I felt sorry for one member of staff who uttered the words: ‘Who’s left?’. You had staffroom conversations about what mash-ups could be done. People kept chatting about it over the weeks. There was a general buzz as teachers were working together in a way that they had never done before. They were collaborating together and enjoying making a link. It helped, I think, that I didn’t make the connections and left staff to arrange the combinations themselves. Furthermore, as we were at the end of the academic year, there was less pressure, so people felt that there wasn’t major panic about missing valuable time.

The day started with an assembly by me. Prior to the day, I had been very vague about the whole day to students: a love a sense of drama. To start off with, I showed the school a mash-up video courtesy of YouTube and Popdanthology – great video. Then, I used a collection of my daughters’ handbags for a simple metaphor. With some handy volunteers, I got students to hold a handbag and represent a subject. I explained how lessons involve learning things (cue a plastic ball shoved into the bags) and that students often 'zipped up the bag' as soon as they leave a lesson. Today, they had to open those handbags and swap information between subjects. To sum this up, I informed them that the best students bring more to the table when answering question; they add life and other knowledge, rather than just repeat what is told to them.  

 

The combinations between subjects included:

Penglish – PE and English

Sciglish – Science and English

Frart – French and Art

Tecaths – Technology and Maths

Spanology – MFL and Technology

Half the fun was making up names for these new combinations of subjects. It was infectious as the students liked coming up with their own names.

It was a melting pot of ideas and teaching. The groups were organised via vertical tutor groups and that meant that each class was a mixture of 7s, 8s, 9s and some 10s. Roughly, each class had about 32 students in it, but there were two teachers, team-teaching, in each class.  It worked to build connections between staff and students.

The lessons that people had sounded really interesting and here is just a flavour of some of the things offered:

·         Food and Maths – Making cakes and up scaling the ingredients

·         French and Technology – Designing chocolates and packaging for a new chocolate to be sold in France

·         Maths and Technology – Throwing paper aeroplanes and working out the perfect trajectory for maximum flight

·         Science and English – Experiments with eggs and writing a crazy experiment

·         PE and English – Writing radio commentaries for a game they played in the first lesson

·         French and Art – Researching a French artist and developing French skills through art.

·         French and ICT – Designing a French superhero and creating their Wiki page.

 

I could go on as there were fifteen different mash-ups across the school. Some combinations were more successful, but as an experiment it produced some fruitful results. And, for me doing it, it was a laugh working with another teacher and doing some English stuff in a Science lesson. Plus, I have a booklet documenting the writing of the day. And, every student got a chance to read what others did in different mash-ups. Oh, they could proofread the work if they spotted any mistakes.

What the students thought?

The students liked the idea. They felt that it made them see things in a different way. Some were that keen that they wanted to mix three subjects at once. A small few thought it would be better if they could work with their friends – mmmm! As part of the evaluation process, the students got a chance to suggest their own mash-ups. Of course, PE was linked to every subject under the sun, but some interesting combinations were made such as:

·         Explore the history by looking at old games from the past;

·         Use Geography in a cooking lesson to explore different cultures and cusines.

 

My favourite quote of all the evaluations was:

‘It was great because you took a dull subject and made it more interesting by mashing it up with a more interesting subject.’

Staff thoughts

I think a colleague summed up the day when they told me that they really enjoyed it. I think the big thing, a problem in some cases, is that literacy has this big fanfare moment currently and in some ways people might feel that their subject is being neglected as a result. This mashing up of subjects highlighted the equal nature of all subjects. I keep going back to this question: What’s in it for me? That question is the first challenge that people have as literacy coordinators. The mash-up day meant that we were raising the status of every subject and showing students that we are working as a team. Literacy ran alongside every subject. It was and is a team effort.

For me, it was a resounding success. I have heard about other kinds of literacy days, but I am glad we mashed things up. Some of the suggestions I have seen have been quite ambitious and I think this little experiment worked as it was one small step to something bigger. Who knows what we might do next? I might look to Boris Johnson’s PR agent for some suggestions. I might even get a zip-wire and…

Thanks for reading and check out Lisa's blog here for more information on Manglish

Xris

P.S.  I am aware that 'mashing' refers to making a cup of tea in Nottinghamshire. Apologies if you came to this blog hoping for some advice on how to make the perfect cup of tea.