I'd love to see them read a comedy & tragedy. Maybe a history, if only to dive into the idea of plays as propoganda.

When the push is for shorter texts - it is hard to justify Shakespeare all the time when there is so much else that might pull students into being readers rather than push them away.

The language is a STRUGGLE, especially for kids who'd never struggled with reading in their lives. Suddenly they had NO idea what to do.

I sometimes found it hard not to hand it all to them on a silver platter. I loved it, and I wanted them to see the genius. They needed to see it for themselves.

This AND I taught Twelfth Night to 6th graders. I leaned hard into how they were only allowed to read this "wildly inappropriate text" because it was Shakespeare.

I think at this age, kids are ripe for a good comedy because they get to see that potty humor is universal. Getting them there is hard.

A4: Sixth grade boys didn't know what a 'eunuch' was. I told them to look it up. They looked it up, then asked me what the word 'castrate' meant. I told them to look it up.

Very pale-faced boy: Uhhh...Ms. Espo....this CAN'T be right?!

Me: It is.

This is really hard.

A1: Starting off w/evolution of language & Shakespearean insults.

A2: As an end of the unit wrap-up, kids wrote love letters from 1 character to another. They had so much fun w/these.

A3: We'd play Survivor: Illyria (back in the day). Kids would hold a final tribal council.

I've only ever taught Twelfth Night. It is SO much fun.

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage. (Feste, 1.5)

The kids all thought it meant one thing until the year we took them to see the play in person and it became VERY clear it meant something else. Kid fell out of his seat at the theater.

I bought a copy, but left it at school. I'm going to have to go grab it tomorrow!

We're an IRC resettlement city. This happened during his first term. A precipitous drop in newcomers. In 2021 it shot right back up again, especially after October of that year.

I haven't read that one yet. It's on my list, but I'm reading a lot of fluff at the moment. All the Sinners Bleed was one of my favorite books of all time.

For many students, school isn't about learning. It's not abt knowing enough to be a caring citizen.

It's abt getting the best grade, beating the kid sitting next to you so that you can get a bigger piece of the pie.

We need to - from elementary on - making learning interesting & the whole point.

Just wow. Bad enough he did that at 22. Worse that, years (looks like decades, maybe) later, he still can't see he was squarely in the wrong.

My kids were early middle school, but we did a biography unit that culminated in a museum. They picked a person they wanted to research. They came up w/a theme for the museum, they created the artifacts, wrote the PR materials, the didactic panels. You name it, they were in charge of it.

Thank you!

COR-FUCKING-RECT.