Last week we finished Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak in the tenth grade. It's a story about an American girl who gets raped at an end-of-summer party before her freshman year of high school. Melinda's sarcasm and candour create a poignant narrative which ... did very little to keep the 15-year-old boys' attention.
Monica and I figured this might draw them back in:
The ten minute opening of Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet worked magic, real magic, on these boys. The image of their faces during the viewing should go in the dictionary next to the word "rapt".
Lest they think they're in for another quarter of discussing feelings, (widespread misconception: "R&J is purely a love story") Monica thought to start with a shoot-out at a gas station where the frame showing a close-up of Tybalt's face as he says "Peace? ...Peace?", as if trying to remember when and where the concept was ever relevant, fairly wraps a hand around the back of the viewer's head and jerks it toward the screen.
They loved it.
Thank goodness again for Monica, because I have never read Romeo and Juliet. (I hope the students don't know just how sincere I am when I tell them: "You don't have to understand every word in Shakespeare - just appreciate the beauty of the language!!") The play is required reading for all ninth grade Britons, so Monica has taught it dozens of times.
Once again, I am thrilled, thrilled to be a teacher in this day and age, when I can buy this film on Amazon Instant for $9, and use it next period from my computer, and take screen shots of key moments (the images above) and print them for the students to analyse during group work.
I simply can't imagine how teacher taught this text for the past 400 years....
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