Overview
After twenty-five years away from Shakespeare, I have reignited my curiosity, determination, creativity, and desire to understand the humor and tragedy within Shakespeare's plays through the topic of communication. In order for my students, as well as myself, to be motivated and connected to Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, I have designed a unit that sees these plays as studies of the problems and media of communication.
Keeping this in mind, I note a recent statement in a publication of the San Francisco Unified School District strategic plan which is called, "Beyond the Talk: Taking Action to Educate Every Child Now". In a statement, by Superintendent Carlos Garcia, he said, "The San Francisco Unified School District sees the achievement gap as the greatest social justice/civil rights issue facing our country today, there cannot be justice for all without closing the gap". Within this plan, there are three goals:
- Access and Equity-making Social Justice a reality.
- Student Achievement-engage high achieving and joyful learners.
- Accountability-keep our promises to the students and families.
As a sixth grade teacher at Alice Fong Yu K-8, Chinese Immersion School, with twenty-two years of experience, one who teaches Language Arts, Earth Science, and Social Studies to sixty students, how do I plan to attempt to meet the goals of my student and school by teaching this unit? First of all, with the guidance of Paul Fry, I will target the two plays of Shakespeare and discuss the plight of the young lovers in each as a set of communication problems. The nine-week unit will include Technology, Art, English, Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts. Within this integrated unit the students will learn about Shakespeare and his plays through a wide variety of project-based learning embedded with technology, literary circles, self-guided lessons and a scaffolded writer's workshop.
The student populations that attend schools in San Francisco are diverse in academics, economics, and languages, and ethnicities— which include Chinese, African American, Filipino, Vietnamese, Japanese, Latino, Korean, American Indian, Russian, and Caucasian. Even though many students may have been born and raised in San Francisco, the families tend to remain in their neighborhoods, thus never experiencing the cultural opportuninities offered by the arts, from the museums, to the plays, to the opera. Within my school community, Ms. Szeto, the principal, has formed partnerships with the DeYoung Museum, Palace of Fine Arts, Asian Art Museum, and San Francisco Opera, to give our students the opportunity to be introduced to and experience the arts. These experiences offer a different means of educating the students.
The students that attend Alice Fong Yu K-8 Chinese Immersion learn Cantonese as a first language and Mandarin in the Middle School. To the outside world, this school is the first Chinese Immersion School in the nation, but many people are not clear what Immersion means. The students—African American, Latino, Pacific Islanders, Chinese, and Caucasian—attend this program without the ability to read, speak, and write in Cantonese and Mandarin.
The students that attend the elementary division develop a competency in the Cantonese language and use the two languages to actively and successfully access the California State curriculum. As entering elementary students, they learn to read, write, and speak Cantonese through the curriculum. On the first day a student enters kindergarten the student experiences 90% of the day in Cantonese, with only 10% is in English. The California State curriculum is taught primarily in Chinese during grades K-3, with an increase in English instructional time during the Fourth and Fifth grades. As the students move through the grade levels, the amount of time allotted to Cantonese decreases without sacrificing the format in which the immersion program has been successful. The Alice Fong Yu students can effectively communicate and are literate in both English and Cantonese by the Fifth grade. When the students enter the Sixth grade, they continue to learn Language Arts and Social Studies in English, whereas this is the first time that the students have had Science in English. I have the flexibility to teach in a block schedule, which is about 110 minutes long, and allows depth and detail in the curriculum. Language Arts in sixth grade are on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The Chinese component in Sixth grade includes Math, and Language Arts taught in Cantonese. Keeping that in mind, the students receive an additional language, Mandarin, which means that they are learning to grasp three languages at one time. The fortunate part of this process is that Mandarin has four tones, whereas Cantonese has eight tones, but they both use the same characters that the students have been learning since kindergarten. The daunting part for the students is that the English alphabet has twenty-six characters, whereas the Chinese language has over 3,000 characters.
Current conditions at our school show that our students are achieving at a high level academically, with the 2008 (API) giving us a 948 Academic Performance Index, and a ranking of a 10—compared to other schools with the same criteria— by the State of California Department of Education, thus demonstrating to our school community and our school district that our program is meeting at least two of the goals set forth by our superintendent. Our African American students have met and exceeded the targeted district scores, but compared to their peers within our community, are lacking in some areas of Language Arts and Math.
Bringing Shakespeare into the mix with a connection to everyday life has many advantages. Just for example, Romeo and Juliet are young adults, or teenagers, whose parents do not want them to associate with each other. At one time or another, a child has gone through the same issue, being forbidden to play with a child of another ethnicity, economical background, or gender. These common connections make the play relevant to the students.
In many classes across the United States, technology at times becomes the ultimate carrot for students, but should it seem so special? It should be an automatic part of the curriculum. As I know from past experiences in my classroom, technology enables the student take on an active role rather than a passive role. At times they become the facilitator, and I become the student. That process alone can be quite empowering for the student who does not play with anyone at lunch, or goes home right after school without participating in a sport.
As with many schools, at Alice Fong Yu there are tremendous roadblocks facing a project like this: using cell phones for text messaging, twitter, You Tube and Facebook, are considered off limits. It states in the SFUSD School Handbook: "no cell phones", and many websites and social networks are unavailable. One would have to have a conversation with the superintendent, the parents, and the SFUSD School Board to allow the introduction of text messaging to the classroom. But if that is not to be, there are ways around this ban. For one, (IMS) instant messaging: many students have their own email account and are presently instant messaging each other. Another way around this would be to include a blog on my school loop website that students could interact with. Another concern is with the language of text messaging. Presently online there are a variety of lists that prescribe a common language for texting. Designing an appropriate list of terminology will be essential in this unit, to be shared with the parents, to whom it will also be necessary to explain why communication today and communication in Shakespeare can be mutually illuminating.
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