from page to stage

“Some things are just designed to be read aloud I guess.”

That was a comment from one of my year 12s earlier. And it was one of several events which restored my faith in Literature this week – well, maybe ‘restored’ is the wrong word; maybe ‘reaffirmed.’

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. Don’t tell anyone but I’m a sucker for a good sonnet. Even one as popular as #18 - Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day. Normally I try to forgo the popular choice in favour of a path less trod but I like this one.
Of course I got the usual groans when I handed out copies to my year 12 literature class. They tell me they’re not Shakespeare fans. They tell me that they find his language a barrier rather than a selling point. They tell me he is rammed down their throats so much that they can hardly breathe and they feel under undue pressure – that if they don’t like the bard they believe they are seen as lesser beings. I try to understand, but I can’t empathise. After they read through this particular poem, making first impression annotations, their mood was no better.
“It’s gay!” announced one of my more vocal girls. “If some lad said something like that to me I’d finish with him there and then.” There was general murmured approval and so she continued, “I’d worry greatly about his sexuality.”
“Because he writes poetry?”
“Because he wrote a poem about a type of love that doesn’t exist. It’s sickly sweet and unrealistic”
I found it hard to argue against that – so instead I took them through the poem a bit at a time and looked at the mechanics – I find this an uninspiring task but it has to be done. And finally, as a parting gesture I read it aloud – well, I didn’t read it; I recited it. Eye contact makes a big difference you know. I gave it everything. I put my all in to it. I gie ‘er Dixie.
I’m not going to tell you I am a good reader, I am under no illusion that my public speaking is anything other than average; but twelve lines in I paused, looked them in the eye, and read the last couple of lines,
As long as men can breath, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, [dramatic gesture towards the poem projected on the wall behind me]
And this, gives life to thee.
Then silence. Everyone was looking at me - it was unnerving. The silence seemed to last an age. Then a collective exhale. They were rapt. I think I may even have heard a slight "awww" coming from one of the rugby players sitting at the back of the room.
Of course it was all ruined when I pointed out it was written to a young man and the rest of the lesson descended into a debate about whether Shakespeare was gay or not. Well at least I had them for a moment.
Do they love Shakespeare now? Not even a bit. But they enjoyed that one little bit of Shakespeare. I think it helps when you understand that he understands us. Wow that last sentence was pretentious – superb!

inspirational?

How did you end up where you are today?

I don't mean transportation. I mean doing what you're doing with your life. I only ask because I'm beginning to think I may have had the wrong idea.

Talking to people in the staff room here I get the impression that good teachers breed good teachers. So many of the staff here seem to have been inspired by a superhuman teacher from their childhood - someone who made such a difference to their lives that they had no option but to pay it forward and enter the pedagogy business.

My high school English teacher, who for some reason assigned me the role of Portia in The Merchant of Venice when we read it aloud in class -- it was the first time I'd ever done anything remotely like acting, and I thought, hmmmmm...

Megan Mullally

Then I started to think about acting, sports and music awards. How often have I heard someone get up and thank their high school music/drama/chemistry teacher who told them they could reach for the stars when no one else believed in them. It seems the world would have been a much less talented place had there not been some superb confidence builders in the teaching profession. It’s something I always say with a smile when a pupil thanks me for putting up with them for a term or helping them through something they find particularly challenging, “Just remember me when you’re making your acceptance speech.” I say it half jokingly.

When I was in sixth grade, I had a science teacher named Mrs. Walton. She’d had my older brother, Durran, in her class the year before. Durran is as smart as they come, the kind of student that every teach­er loved. I idolized him. One day she gave us a test. I’d studied as hard as I could, but got a mediocre grade—nowhere near what Durran had probably scored. My eyes filled with tears.
Mrs. Walton came up to me.
“You’ll do better next time,” she said.
I shook my head. “I’ll never be like Durran,” I said.
She shook her head, then said softly, “No, you don’t have to be like Durran. You just have to be the best Shaun the world’s ever seen.”
Those words clicked in my head. That’s been my goal ever since.
Shaun Alexander, Seattle Seahawks

But me, why did I become a teacher? Was it because I was inspired by one of my teachers. Well, here’s the problem. I despised my English teacher. Looking back I realise that is a bit of an overreaction – she was never that bad to me – but let’s just say she and I never really saw eye to eye. I remember at one point she decided to instigate a new rule that if someone forgot a book or a pen or a homework they would have a mark put beside their name. If someone got three marks beside their name they would be given an after school detention. I was in detention two days later. Three marks, two days.

I will readily admit that most of the issues she and I had were of my creation. I rubbed her the wrong way. I was lazy. I was, at times, insolent – lots of times. I lied to her, I skipped class, I never handed in any work on time. Looking back I can understand why I was never her pupil of the month. But what I never understood was why she didn’t get my writing. In the five years that she taught me English I never achieved a mark higher than a C. It could be an end of year exam, a piece of creative writing, a detailed critique of a Philip Larkin poem or a haiku – nothing I did was ever worthy of an A or a B.

Right in the middle of my time at secondary school I had two years with another teacher. My GCSE years. Suddenly the world changed. In two years I never once got anything lower than an A for anything. I was the best in the class – the teacher loved what I wrote and regularly told me how she looked forward to reading the next piece. The world of English became a brighter place. So much so that I felt confident of taking English Literature on as one of my post 16 specialties. And with it my previous teacher. And with her my previous grades.

D,D,D,C,D,D,C . The frustrating thing is that I can’t claim she was marking me unfairly. I had a second teacher at the same time who was giving me similar grades. Between them I was predicted a slim pass in my A Level English Lit. I was predicted an E and told that they were being generous; told that I had made a bad choice when picking subjects. How did I do? Well, I’m not going to say I aced the exam – but a decade later I am teaching A Level English Literature to pupils of my own after completing an English Literature degree. You don’t do that with an E.

Teachers are often the people who inspire us the most. I know I wouldn't be where I am today without my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Duncan. She so believed in me, and for the first time, made me embrace the idea of learning. I learned to love learning because of Mrs. Duncan.

Oprah Winfrey

So I find it difficult to give her any credit when I think on how I got where I am. I know she is owed some – I learned a lot from her, even picked up her hatred of words such as ‘hard’ or ‘nice’. There is no doubt she had an effect on me – but my inspiration? No. Although having just read back a couple of paragraphs maybe I did have an inspirational English teacher after all. Maybe my preoccupation with the negative has overcast the positive effect of my GCSE teacher. So when I get up to make my acceptance speech, you know, when I win that Academy Award/Man Booker Award/Tony; Mrs Doherty – this is for you.

where have all the blogs gone?

I've been feeling a bit bad lately. I've been letting this blog slide in an alarming way. It's not really a sudden thing - I've been slowing up for a while now. I remember when I started I wrote the first 100 posts by the end of November (a little under 4 months after starting) It was another 11 months before I reached 200.

I did feel bad - that is until I noticed that I'm not the only one. Practically everyone I read appears to be taking a break. Some for a week or so, some for months - even Dave hasn't added anything for ten days (of course in that instance it may be because he has better things to be doing right now)

Where are you all and why have you stopped? Has the blogging bubble burst in your life? Have you run out of things to write about? I sometimes feel a bit like that. Recently I have been putting all of my creative juices into writing a play for my year nines to peform and thinking of witty comments to put at the end of my marking. What's your excuse?