Shakespeare and Spidey

I’m an English teacher in an urban high school. I’m currently working on a unit with my senior classes about decision making.  One of our touchstone texts for the unit is Hamlet.  I could have given my students two choices for the study - A) here’s the book, now go home and read various acts to yourself, or as I’ve done so many times before - B) we’re going to read this aloud in class since “it’s a play and should be performed.”

Then this. 

I read “Stop Reading Whole Class Novels” by a blogger called Mr. Chase.  In it, the author points out that despite what a curriculum or lesson plan says, every student is never doing every assignment.  Devastating to a teacher who likes to point out to the one or two students who get caught not doing the reading that they are probably the only students in the history of my career who didn’t do an assignment. So the question became, how do I teach my students Hamlet without having them read Hamlet the way I had taught it so many times before? 

So I started developing projects around the concept of decision making, which is really what this unit has always been about. I decided my students watch the PBS video “Shakespeare Uncovered: Hamlet with David Tennant”.  It’s an engaging look at the character as well as the actors who have played him.  It covers a lot of the plot as it seeks to determine why a 400-year-old play is still as relevant and popular as it is. The video is supplemental in nature, and when discussing major soliloquies or scenes, we open the play and read as a class.  From there, we can analyze and discuss the importance to the characters and plot. 

When the video discussed Hamlet and the concept of a son vowing revenge for his father’s murder, I cheered inside when one of my seniors, Tommy (a notorious non-reader), connected the concept to Spiderman.   

I cheered outwardly when one of his classmates, Amory (who I often admonish for his treatment of desk as pillow), questioned him on it, and he defended it with the example of Norman Osborne’s death and Harry Osborne’s subsequent vow to kill Spiderman, his father’s murderer. 

I stood on my chair and watched as the conversation began to spread through the room.  Dyllon told him it wasn’t the same because the Osbornes were villains, and Hamlet was the good guy.  That didn’t jive for Tre, as being on a revenge mission against a murderer doesn’t automatically make you the good guy - after all, Hamlet was letting his emotions get the best of him, and he ends up killing Polonius. 

Speaking of Polonius, the students have embraced the advice he gives to his son, Laertes. They have been creating reverse memes to demonstrate what the advice means.  (Reverse memes are what I refer to as using pre-written words with found images rather than what they do with meme creation in which they take a picture and add their own words.)  

Here’s an example from a student:

 

Once the students have created these, they will view them, art-gallery-style, and analyze what about the picture is representing the words.  Going back to our original purpose in the unit - what led the creator of the piece to make the decision he or she made.

I’m still feeling out this new way of teaching Hamlet through a lens rather than for the sake of it’s-third-marking-cycle-and-I-have-to-teach-this-play-now.  It’s out of my comfort zone due to its newness, and there are days I worry that I’ve underprepared.  What my students are showing me is that I don’t have to fill the areas I perceive as gaps.  They are eager to have a voice in this because of how they are engaging in the work.  It’s been a rejuvenating lesson.