Sunday, Apr. 24, 2005
Hurling Shakespearean insults, posted at 9:45 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com We are beginning Romeo and Juliet with my 9th graders. It's my second time teaching it, meaning I'm much more comfortable with the material and what I want to do with the text. With that in mind, I had one of the best classroom days in recent memories on Friday.As a warmup to beginning Act I, I handed kids a pretty standard handout from the Shakespeare Set Free series (Thanks, Jason!) that basically is a variation on this website. Kids take one Shakespearean word from column A, one Shakespearean word from column B, and one Shakespearean word from column C. They had a "Thou" in front of it, and end up with insults like "Thou dankish, beef-witted canker-blossom!". We look up the words in the Shakespearean dictionary so we know what it means, and then we prepare to hurl our Shakespearean insults at each other.
In the past, we've all stood in a circle, tossing a ball to each other and shouting our insults. This time, though, I decided to make it a contest between sides of the room. I told them that they throw the ball to a person on the other side, and then both people hurl their insults at each other. The most expressive and best insult would win a point.
It was hilarious, as kids really got into it. Some kids tried accents, and other kids just really shouted them loudly. But my favorite moment involved this quiet girl named "Ginny." Ginny is shy, a little slow, and a bit of a loner. She hails from Jamaica and, while a sweet girl, she finds herself in an Honors English class that is too tough for her. I'm easily frustrated by her, as well, because all the time she complains about her grade, yet she continually forgets her homework or loses her notes. That day in class, she told me she had forgotten her homework, and I just straight up asked her how much special treatment she expected from me this year.
Anyhow, the kids on the other team were quietly "calling" Ginny. As in, they thought she would be the weakest insulter because she's so quiet and sometimes seems so out of it. So this one girl who I have a particular distaste for (because she lies) was saying over and over again to her teammates, "Don't take who I want. I call her." I didn't know who she was talking about, but was not suprised when this girl threw the ball at Ginny.
Well, first off, the mean girl tripped over her insult. Right away, this puts her at a disadvantage. As Ginny caught the ball, she waited for the insult to be hurled at her, and then she paused. The room was silent. Then, as if she had been practicing it in her head for the last fifteen minutes straight, she shouted her insult back across the room at the girl who threw the ball at her. The girl was so stunned that she literally fell on the floor. The class exploded in applause. You see, Ginny has a real accent - a Jamaican one. When she hurled her Shakespearean insult in her angry Jamaican accent, it sounded like she was putting a curse on the girl who threw the ball. She had everything down - the stare, the concentration. It was the most confident I'd seen her all year. She not only got the point for team, but she got the respect of the class. And of me... frankly, I would have been happy with her just paying attention, and her performance was just gravy.
The whole class had a ball during the exercise, which sufficiently warmed us all up and got us shouting Shakespeare at each other. We were more than ready for the dueling Montagues and Capulets in Act I.
I tried to ride Ginny's wave of self-confidence by casting her as Abram in Scene 1. She did alright before descending into cluelessness soon enough. It took three times of me asking her to put the emphasis on the word "us" for her to get the "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" line right. Still, it was a good moment for her, and a great fifteen minutes in class. The acting out of the scene went pretty damn well, too.