It's spring in Brooklyn and why 8th graders are amusing to me.

First, a note on the weather. There is something truly great about walking down the street in Brooklyn on one of the first 65 degree days. I swear, light feels more real and the buildings look different as the old timers pull out plastic chairs to sit on the sidewalk. Spring officially starts on Friday. Ok. Just had to get that out.

Second, I have to share one of my favorite, most laugh out loud moments as a teacher:

Background: We are currently in the depths of Romeo and Juliet. The namesakes have fallen in love/lust. Mercutio is dead. Tybalt is dead. Our class conversation yesterday revolved around violence: how something light hearted and entertaining can turn disastrous when a weapon is pulled, or how easy it is to cross the line when "the mad blood is stirring." I always share the idea that in Romeo and Juliet "it's all fun and games until Mercutio dies." And yes, my 14 year olds had some excellent insight into the issue.

Today, since it was so nice out, kids were all over the place after school: sitting outside every local coffee shop and park, so obviously I ran into a few and they called me over: Ms. Robbins, you'll never guess what he did! They proceeded to tell me how a boy in my homeroom was trying to get ready for gym and they were horsing around in the locker room around a door that didn't have a handle. There was pushing from both sides, each boy on either side trying to alternately close or open the door to block the other. Then. The boy in my homeroom slammed the door not realizing that the other kid's fingers were in it. Ouch. And no, I am not heartless, this is *not* the laugh out loud moment. I hope that poor boy is ok. The humor came when the boy in my homeroom said:

"It's all fun and games until Mercutio dies, Ms. Robbins."

[How] to be or not be...a teenager. According to Romeo and Juliet (and some fantastic 8th graders)

For the past six weeks, I have been delving into the story of the world's favorite star crossed lovers. I've mentioned before that this posed a huge challenge for me as a teacher because it took my until graduate school to really really love Shakespeare and understand his depth, brilliance and relevance. Much to my surprise, my students were ready for William and have gobbled up the play and our discussions. We are nearing the end and had a debate today about whether Juliet was courageous/bold/romantic or rash and stupid. Things got a little heated, and as I was listening, the conversation became very interesting. They didn't realize it, but they were analyzing what it is like to be a teenager and to be pressed with choices that may affect the rest of their lives. I thought I would share some of their insight and questions. After hearing what they had to say, I had no choice but to think about their points. Hopefully I can prove just how briliant 8th graders (yes, 8th graders are) and show you how valuable it is to listen to what they have to say.

Parent/Child relationships:
Juliet is open minded toward her parents' ideas in the beginning of the play, but this changes as she becomes engrossed with her relationship and secret marriage to Romeo. Then we see a Juliet who is very courageous standing up to her parents. The unfortunate part is that though she refuses to marry Paris, she isn't open with them about her love for Romeo. Enter complexity. How open should children be? What role do children/teenagers have in making decisions about their futures? How does culture play into this?

Juilet's father wants Paris to "woo" his daughter and win her heart in the beginning of the play, rather than marry her right away. He seems to understand his daughter. Then he appears to be a completely different person as he rages against her in her refusal to marry Paris after Tybalt's death. What are his true feelings toward his daughter? Was is right for him to demand this marriage of her since he thought it in her best interest? Could he have presented his request in a different manner? Would it have changed the outcome of events? How sensitive do parents and adults have to be when dealing with teenagers who are in between childhood and adulthood?

There are quite a few adults who give both Romeo and Juliet advice. Students noticed that Juliet seemed to only listen to what she wanted to hear...and both threatened suicide when they weren't hearing the answers they wanted. How do adults talk and reason with teenagers who may be blinded by passion? Even if the adults can see that the passion is because of youth, how can they be convinced that the feelings are very, very real?

Young Love:
Is is possible to love someone when only knowing them for a few days? Is love at first sight real? Can you trust the emotions that exist at the beginning of a relationship? What is love? Do Romeo and Juliet know what it is or means?

How can she believe what Romeo has to say and the promises that he is making? Isn't there a chance that he has ulterior motives?

Students argued that Juliet was being rash because she had no life experience to judge her decisions by. They debated whether she could trust herself to know what she was doing. Some students thought that she was being young and stupid (followed by, and I quote: "We're young. We're stupid.)

Students raised the question of suicide again in relation to this passion...is this violent passion understandable or just merely dangerous? Would it change if they were adults?

Is living in the moment brave or completely ridiculous?

Wrapping Up
Of course, as literature often goes, there is not an "answer" to any of these questions. We left it as food for thought...to critically examine these complex relationships and events...to dig into these fictional moments and pull from them what we are able. Such is the reading life.

I Heart Young Adult Lit.

This post is not designed to merely justify my recent...indulgence? love? of Stephenie Meyer's young adult Teenage/Vampire/Romance series. I fully own up to the fact that I was up until 1 am on Wednesday night reading New Moon, the second book in the series and that my alarm goes off at 5:30. But here are the reasons why this book makes me excited:




1. It keeps kids (and adults) reading. Any book that gets 13 year olds pumped about spending their time in front of print has to be good.

2. I'm getting ready to teach a philosophy unit to my 8th graders and this book is the perfect kind of text to use as support. It forces the reader to think about right and wrong and the curious gray space that sometimes appears between. ("Jacob was my best friend, but he was a monster, too? A real one? A bad one? Should I warn him, if he and his friends were murderers? If they were out slaughtering innocent hikers in cold blood? If they were truly creatures from a horror movie in every sense, would it be wrong to protect them?" page 298)

3. It engages the mind and imagination in an incredible way. ("What kind of place was this? Could a world really exist where ancient legends went wandering around the borders of tiny, insignificant towns, facing down mythical monsters? Did this mean every impossible fairy tale was grounded somewhere in absolute truth? Was there anything sane or normal at all, or was everything just magic and ghost stories?" page 294).

4. We have spent a bit of time studying the theme of "ancient grudges" while reading Romeo and Juliet in class and this book parallels the play. This is so thought provoking for my students (and for me) as they see real connections and deepen their thinking. The quote that opens the story is from Friar Lawrence: "These violent delights have violent ends/And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,/Which as they kiss, consume." Act 2 Scene 4. Sigh. So complex. Love it.

... And I have to mention that the guy playing the main character, Edward, in the movie version is Robert Pattinson--who also played Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter. (And, one of the villains is one of the ones I love to hate from the OC: Cam Gigandet, Volcheck!) So, adults, jump on the bandwagon of teenagers and read this series before the movie comes out.

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life: and Brooklyn teenagers listen.

In the most valuable class that I took in grad school, we read a book called "Six Walks in the Fictional Woods" by Umberto Eco. One of his biggest premises is that "the text is a lazy machine," meaning that the true value of a piece of fiction comes when the reader takes it upon him or herself to really think through they find in front of them; a story can still be entertaining of course, but the meat of it is beyond just the plot.

I'm having one of those moments with Romeo and Juliet right now. I've mentioned before that my relationship with Shakespeare has gone through many phases: complete misunderstanding (Romeo and Juliet, 1995) and hatred (Julius Caesar, 1996) in high school, to appreciation (The History Plays, 2001) and admiration (The Tragedies and Comedies, 2002) in college to actual enjoyment (MacBeth and Twelfth Night, 2003) in graduate school. Actually teaching a play or book requires that you really dig deep into the text; not only understanding all of it, but looking for its intricacies and ways that your students can find and enjoy them. Teaching a text is the best way to become intimately familiar with it: literally, aesthetically, philosophically. There is accountability for my thinking, as well as new insights everyday from 13 year olds (true).

Enough of my pedagogical views on the teaching of reading, though. What I want to write about is the beauty that I have been witnessing reading Romeo and Juliet. Drama, specifically Shakespeare, really is the essential "text as lazy machine." It is almost all dialogue with few stage directions. It is up to the reader/director/actor to cast a vision of what is happening on the page. These questions force us to do the most magnificent critical thinking. But, it is hard to ask a thirteen year old to think critically--especially about Shakespeare. A moment I will never forget is when my CTT class (students with broad learning needs, a class diverse in every sense in the world) was exasperated after we read the prologue, which tells the entire story in sonnet form. It wasn't enough to know the bones of the story. He wanted to know why Romeo and Juliet kill themselves. What kind of love was this, Ms. Robbins? Why would they do it? What did their parents say? I just smiled and told them that this is why it's not just about the plot, and watched the wheels begin to turn. I love it.

We've been doing a bit of film study alongside of our reading. We've been watching the Zepherelli version (1968) of the play, as well as the one Baz Luhrmann directed (1996), better known as the "Leonardo DiCaprio" version. The Luhrman version is brilliant to me. It doesn't get old watching each scene three times a day with my different classes because the interpretation and the incorporation of music and visuals is absolutely mind blowing.

The best part of the week was reading Act 1 Scene 5 with each of my classes, which is when Romeo and Juliet first meet. We debated whether love at first sight was possible, talked about whether Juliet is shy or intentionally playing with Romeo's mind and what it must have felt like to learn that they were from enemy houses. Once the kids (and me) knew and understood the dialogue, the visual aspect of the film becomes quite deep. The bell rang for the kids to pack up and go home--for a week long vacation--and only 5 of them got up to go to their lockers. Boys and girls alike stayed in their seats to watch the last few minutes of this scene that I confess I was equally wrapped up in--even on the 6th viewing in recent weeks.

If I were to direct you anywhere to just get a taste of the brilliance and room for interpretation and thought, I think right now it would be Act 1 Scene 1 lines 170-182. Romeo has a string of oxymorons about love that encapsulate so so much. Shakespeare's language is amazing. That's basically all I wanted to say. So rich and open. Such a beautiful, tragic, complex story. I highly recommend.

I am not Lady MacBeth. I am not Lady MacBeth.

A friend recently described me as tormented...no, not in the crazy way, per se. But if you read my last post about "The Poisonwood Bible" and any other posts that talk about living justly you will catch threads of it. My mind never totally stops thinking about major issues in the world and my inability to fix them. I finally received a bit of peace about tonight in the most roundabout of ways.

My fellowship group is studying the book of Acts and we read tonight about how God began to change the hearts of the Jewish Christians toward Gentile Christians, as there were huge cultural gaps between them. In chapter ten, in relation to the Jewish law and the customs about what was deemed clean or unclean, God talks about how *He* makes things clean. All of a sudden, pieces started falling together. Stay with me.

Lady MacBeth is the mastermind behind her husband's violent, short lived rise to power in Shakespeare's MacBeth. The most telling moment of the play is when she stands alone on the stage, tormented by her actions. She speaks to the blood that is metaphorically on her hands: "Out damned spot!" But she can't cleanse her mind of what she has done.

No, I'm not in the same place as Lady MacBeth, but the parallel is striking in this: I keep thinking that somehow I'll get my act completely together and be able to live a life that looks exactly how it is supposed to look: loving unconditionally and giving sacrificially to all. This kind of standard would torment anyone because it's impossible. I was listening to Sandra McCracken's version of "Thy Mercy" today and realized that I forget about the beauty of mercy and grace. I forget that I don't have to make myself clean. I forget that I can fall to my knees and admit that I don't have anything figured out. The end of the song is the repetition of "Hallelujah" in the most beautiful and haunting, yet confident voice.

"Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground/And weep for the praise of the mercy I've found." This is peace. This can change me. This can dissolve the weight that has been on me. And point my life and my heart in a direction not founded on guilt and falleness.

Hallelujah. In every sense of the word.

A Confession. Of sorts.

My book club is reading "What is the What" by Dave Eggers and I've already read too far for Wednesday's meeting. So you understand the predicament I was in on Thursday--something in my brain doesn't let me fall asleep until I've read for at least a half and hour before I go to bed. I didn't want to start another intricate book, fearing it would distract me from our book club choice. I decided to consult my classroom library and went in search of a Young Adult novel that could hold my attention for a few days. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer was recently recommended to me because it follows many of the same themes that are in Romeo and Juliet, which is the next unit I'm teaching. This book also incredibly popular with my students, so I thought I'd check it out. It's over 400 pages, so I thought it would hold me over for a while.

Hmm. Yeah, it didn't. I became completely engrossed in a Young Adult, Teenage Vampire Romance. A new genre for me, so I don't know if it stacks up to other vampire stories, but I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Since I was reading it while actively studying Romeo and Juliet, I was able to pick up on a few interesting themes--otherwise, the fast paced plot and new world of vampires would have distracted me entirely.

I'll just mention one, mostly because my literary conscience is laughing right now. The complication of forbidden love is what stood out to me most. Romeo and Juliet are star-crossed because they hail from feuding families. Edward and Bella are star crossed because he is a vampire and she isn't... just a small conflict of interests. Their relationship is quite thought provoking, as well as heart breaking.

But I have to say, that while I was reading this book I was in "the zone," (Michelle? Kate B?) a term coined by the master English educators, who claim this is the goal of teaching reading workshop: to get kids reading books that transport them somewhere else as they are turning the pages. So if nothing else, I have met the standards of a middle school reader over the past 2 days. Lucky for me it's a series, so the next time I want to lose myself for a while, I may have to pick up the next one.

A Little Will For You

Tomorrow’s high temperature is 18. 18! If you know me, you know that I have issues with the winter. But more than the winter pulling me down, I think the haunting of spring might be worse. There’s a flower store on my walk to and from work in Brooklyn that puts potted hyacinths out in February. February! Apparently they don’t know that such an essential smell of spring messes with my Seasonal Affective Disordered mind. It is impossible for that scent not to travel directly inside of me and make me truly believe, for a moment, that the beloved season that ends winter has come. But then I look at my ankle length, down coat and the wool mittens threaded through its arm holes. Blast.

The spring is in front of me, but I continually refuse to believe that it will actually come. I have no patience, especially in March. One of my best friends from high school and I used to go hiking every March 1st wearing shorts, declaring to our friends that spring had finally come. We searched for tiny flowers as proof and clung to them until real spring appeared sometime in mid April. Upon return from a week long camping trip in Florida to cold Oxford, Ohio, my friend and I cooked dinner on a camping stove and hung bags of oranges from our porch. It was as if I refused to trust the promise that spring would actually make its way into my life.

I recently revisited Macbeth and saw the same thing. The witches are the trickiest characters in the play to understand. They haunt Macbeth and Banquo with visions of the future and each time I read it I picture their tone differently. Sometimes I see them as strange and prophetic, sometimes haunting and crazy, mysterious or funny. Regardless how their message comes across, though, they paint a picture of future glory in front of these men. They are able to disregard the witches’ craziness for the beauty of the promise they speak: that Macbeth would be king and that Banquo would father kings.
Macbeth is completely unwilling to wait around for that day, though. Instead of letting his future wind its course, he jumpstarts it all by planning ways for it to happen by his power as soon as possible. Macbeth refused to trust in the promise. He has Banquo, among others, killed to ensure his way to the throne.

Banquo’s ghost appears at Macbeth’s dinner party, and only Macbeth can see him. We have two options here: Macbeth is either hallucinating because of all he has done or Banquo’s ghost really is there and is trying to warn Macbeth about what he is doing. I guess this is the beauty of drama—it really is up to interpretation (translation: read or see the play and tell me what you think. Seriously.) Regardless, his inability to trust in the promise is haunting him and causes even more distress.
The question of this play rings in my mind—did the witches know this would happen? Could it have happened another way? Are they the reason it happened at all? The only insight into that question I have is that the play is called the Tragedy of Macbeth. There is a lot of blood spilled and minds lost. So what’s the moral of the story? Is there ever just one?

What I see today is wanting myself to trust wholeheartedly in what I am promised in the future—heaven—and not the hallmark heaven that people talk about in bad poetry, but the heaven that is the home that my heart hears calling. I need to trust that the longing that my heart feels on so many levels will be fulfilled. One day. I’m promised the kingdom of heaven, but not given many more details about what will happen in between. But lucky for me, God isn’t a (pick one: sadistic, scary, prophetic) witch whose mood we can’t read for the life of us.

I just hope that I can begin to trust in the promise rather than taking it all into my own hands, thinking that my ideas might get me there faster.

And maybe just for now, I just need to begin to trust that winter will end and I will get to hang up my sweet coat.