I'm here to tell you I have never read Macbeth.
And bam! Here it is in next year's book for my eleventh and twelfth graders.
I'm liking it. I've never taught Shakespeare.
In five years of teaching, I've never had a Shakespeare play put in my curriculum.
In five years of teaching, I've had to renew my license without ever teaching Shakespeare....
So, my palms are a little sweaty. I'm looking down at the dirt and tilting one foot. I'm a little shy on the idea.
So, I take out my text and read. I find resources online and consider which resources are useful to the kids and which resources sound like a thirty-nine year old chubby lady trying to make Shakespeare cool and hip. Maybe I'll go for the meaningful.
And I take out my text and read again.
And I remember my Shakespeare 314 and Brit Lit 200. This is why I became an English teacher. I remember sitting across from Tina Mar and Kurt in our tiny classroom and trying to figure it out while Dr. Drake asked just the right questions.
And even so, this is the first time I've ever read Macbeth. But alas, it will be the second time I read Macbeth when I read it with my senior high this fall!
1 comment:
Ah, Shakespeare. Was there really ever a Shakespeare? I have read that the works attributed to Shakespeare are like the Bible - written by assorted scholars of the time. Whatever, some of the works are fabulous if you can get past the language and the references only understood in the context of the times. I don't find them easy, light reading. It takes work, concentration, and sometimes research to really GET it. And then I suspect we loose a lot of the meaning just because of the context since we all tend to carry around our own context that we apply to our reading. Still, I have no doubt you'll do a superb job of introducing your students to Macbeth - just bubble and toil and all will work out.
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