So like, I'm student teaching to become an English teacher. Or history, which is my minor. But I'm student teaching in English.
So like, I went to school too, right? I'm quite aware that a lot of people view English, Science, Math and History as "Prison Sentence Classes". One of the goals that has been set for me is to get the class (11th grade) to read and analyze a Shakespeare play (either Merchant of Venice or Henry IV, I haven't decided yet). Of course, most kids groan and recoil and are set to be bored when they hear "analysis". What the hell does taht mean anyway, they think. Now, the letter that your supervising teacher writes at the end will make or break how good of a teaching job you can land at first. So I just took that one line from Dangerous Minds seriously "Get their attention".
I knew I had to hook them in the first 10 minutes or the entire semester woud be a wash. SO what I did was I passed out the lyrics to "Everytime I die". I asked "Waht did you just read?' People said, "A poem of course". So I run a short discussion of "What did it make you feel?" Answers were "Hopeless, sad, desperate, depressed, despondent". Good, right? They don't know it, but they've already started analyzing. So then I say "Are you sure it was a poem?" A few cautious shaking of heads. Okay says I..so then I turn up the classroom CD player and blast the song. Now of course because of Alexi Laiho's singing style, it took them a few minutes to realize it was the same words. So I played the song a second time so people could stop focusing on just the words and analyze what the music, the whole package made them feel. Answers were kinda different this time "Anger, frustration, desperation, and empowerment". That was my point on context; which leads me to think I'll probably have them do Merchant of Venice given the many different contexts taht Shylock has been portrayed under (from stupid, to vicious to complex and sad).
The point of my lesson? Analysis can be in the eye of teh beholder. One person said the song made them feel empowered because he said that bottling up your rage sucks, so being able to express it loudly and with reckless abandon made him feel good. We actually took about 20 minutes discussing the line "Black candle wax has buried me" (cause I for one have a pretty weak interpretation of it I think). But my other point is that songwriters are modern poets. SOme of them suck and some of them truly are poems. In fact, one of the first passages of Henry IV sounds somewhat similar to "Everytime I Die" as do several in Hamlet.
So now I've got the kids eating out of my hand and they'll read and analyze whatever I tell them to because they realize they can apply it to their everyday lives, which is one of the biggest questions highschoolers have "When am I ever gonna use this?" Plus, they never know what we're going to listen to or read next. Obivously I can't make every song heavy metal. So I'm also using some Cat Stevens, Peter Gabriel and hoping to culminate with Leonard Cohen's "The Future" since NO ONE can actually analyze that song. I reward the students with "heavy metal fridays". On Fridays, we listen to a new metal song and analyze it for half the class. But then it's back to other business. But I got called to the carpet by the principal. That's another story.
Anyhow, I think Children of Bodom may have just made my career.
So like, I went to school too, right? I'm quite aware that a lot of people view English, Science, Math and History as "Prison Sentence Classes". One of the goals that has been set for me is to get the class (11th grade) to read and analyze a Shakespeare play (either Merchant of Venice or Henry IV, I haven't decided yet). Of course, most kids groan and recoil and are set to be bored when they hear "analysis". What the hell does taht mean anyway, they think. Now, the letter that your supervising teacher writes at the end will make or break how good of a teaching job you can land at first. So I just took that one line from Dangerous Minds seriously "Get their attention".
I knew I had to hook them in the first 10 minutes or the entire semester woud be a wash. SO what I did was I passed out the lyrics to "Everytime I die". I asked "Waht did you just read?' People said, "A poem of course". So I run a short discussion of "What did it make you feel?" Answers were "Hopeless, sad, desperate, depressed, despondent". Good, right? They don't know it, but they've already started analyzing. So then I say "Are you sure it was a poem?" A few cautious shaking of heads. Okay says I..so then I turn up the classroom CD player and blast the song. Now of course because of Alexi Laiho's singing style, it took them a few minutes to realize it was the same words. So I played the song a second time so people could stop focusing on just the words and analyze what the music, the whole package made them feel. Answers were kinda different this time "Anger, frustration, desperation, and empowerment". That was my point on context; which leads me to think I'll probably have them do Merchant of Venice given the many different contexts taht Shylock has been portrayed under (from stupid, to vicious to complex and sad).
The point of my lesson? Analysis can be in the eye of teh beholder. One person said the song made them feel empowered because he said that bottling up your rage sucks, so being able to express it loudly and with reckless abandon made him feel good. We actually took about 20 minutes discussing the line "Black candle wax has buried me" (cause I for one have a pretty weak interpretation of it I think). But my other point is that songwriters are modern poets. SOme of them suck and some of them truly are poems. In fact, one of the first passages of Henry IV sounds somewhat similar to "Everytime I Die" as do several in Hamlet.
So now I've got the kids eating out of my hand and they'll read and analyze whatever I tell them to because they realize they can apply it to their everyday lives, which is one of the biggest questions highschoolers have "When am I ever gonna use this?" Plus, they never know what we're going to listen to or read next. Obivously I can't make every song heavy metal. So I'm also using some Cat Stevens, Peter Gabriel and hoping to culminate with Leonard Cohen's "The Future" since NO ONE can actually analyze that song. I reward the students with "heavy metal fridays". On Fridays, we listen to a new metal song and analyze it for half the class. But then it's back to other business. But I got called to the carpet by the principal. That's another story.
Anyhow, I think Children of Bodom may have just made my career.
