Hey everyone,
I wanted to talk a bit about the lesson series for Romeo and Juliet, since I neglected to do so last week. For the discussion lesson, I really liked the idea of having a class-wide discussion of certain passages that have to do with Romeo and Juliet's views on true love and how they conflict with those held by peers and family. Then I wanted to tie in the movie, Grease (woo!), to further emphasized how one's perceptions of love are affected by the rest of society. I would consider showing the clips where Danny and Sandy say goodbye on the beach, Danny and Sandy reunite and Danny decides to play it cool in front of the guys rather than show his true feelings, and Danny and Sandy decide to break their own social conventions at the end. With the contrasting endings to the play and the movie, I think you could say a lot about what makes true love work and what makes it not work: in either case it is impacted heavily by how the rest of society feels. At this point, I should probably think more about the pragmatic side of this and how exactly I would utilize the content and teach it in a classroom. It seemed a lot easier to consider this for the cooperative learning activity because there is much more focus on how the students will function and work amongst each other to achieve a certain goal. Perhaps teachers tend to overlook this more so when thinking about having discussions or lecturing. The series has taught me that it is important to ask, for any of these types of instruction, what will the students DO with this?
After searching high and low for a good YA novel to tie in to a unit with R & J, I stumbled upon one called Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson. It's about a kid, Tyler, going through a series of transitions after a summer of community service. From working hard, he becomes more muscular and grown up looking, which causes a pretty girl he likes to take notice of him. However, the girl is the daughter of Tyler's father's boss, which means having a relationship with her can have tremendous consequences for him and his family. Although I've only read synopses, it sounds like a book that can give a contemporary take on how love and society coexist. Then, I chose the poem "The Fathers" as one pick from Poetry 180, which may add a unique perspective on tensions between families in both R & J and Twisted. That's about where I'm at for now, any ideas or suggestions for other resources welcome :)
Hi Warren,
ReplyDeleteWe've already talked a little bit about your unit and the framing, and I especially like this idea about focusing on family dynamics. I recently thought more about this, and about how the notion of family is so caught up in both public and private notions of values that it's hard to imagine how to define certain kinds of terms--marriage, children, parents, domesticity, etc.--without pushing the conversation to both the law and the site of "home." In this way, if you were to move in this kind of direction, it might help you start to frame your reading and writing in the unit in much more practical ways, especially if you start with these sites of interpretation and analysis.
And, of course, this is just brainstorming, to help you develop and extend your ideas! There are so many ways to go when it comes to analyzing and considering family, and the ways in which this concept informs how we know and act in relationships. Do you think you'll tie in the film *Grease*? That makes me think about other ways that teenagers and popular culture (like WB teens shows) often re-negotiate the idea of family, especially when it comes to this (somewhat problematic) notion that we can just make our own families.
Very interesting! Thanks for the dual-entry kind of blog. Looking forward to seeing more.
sarah