LITR 4370 TRAGEDY Model Assignments Midterm2 Samples 2017 (midterm2 assignment) Model Answers to Part 2. Begin Research Report

Part 3. Begin Research Report: Write at least 3-4 substantial paragraphs with two sources toward completion of your Research Report on selected special topic (to be completed on Final Exam)  (Index)

Calyssa Rosene

Teenagers and Tragedy

          Literature has always been a huge passion of mine. While other little girls dreamt of being Disney princesses, I dreamt of having the library collection from Beauty and the Beast that Belle had access to. As a future high school English teacher, one of the main challenges I will be facing is getting my students excited about reading literature they normally wouldn’t choose. I used to be very close minded when I was in high school. While I loved to read, there were some genres I couldn’t stand and tragedy was actually one of them. Coming into this class with that mindset really opened my eyes to how wrong I was about the genre. As we are winding down to the end of the semester, I have learned so many strategies and I can’t wait to retain them all to use in my future classrooms.

          I think the main problem with getting the attention of teenagers is that most required reading in high school isn’t very modernized. As educators we have to find ways to make the content relatable to the students. During my freshman year of high school, one of the issues my English teacher had was trying to get us excited about Romeo and Juliet. We all knew how it ended, and we could see the reading assignment coming from a mile away, but in order to make it more modernized for us he showed us the Baz Luhrman production of the play that was set in modern times and we were able to relate to it. In the end we were reading the play aloud to each other and acting scenes out, and we were actually excited about the assignments that followed.

          As the first part of my research, I reached out to the teacher mentioned above on Facebook and asked him questions on how he would come up with ways to get students interested in learning about literature, more specifically tragedy. He told me that the first main part to teaching anything to anyone, is trying to figure out what that person’s interests are. When he showed us the modern movie adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, he assumed we would know who the actors were, the songs throughout the movie, and that we would be able to keep up with the dialogue if it was shown in a modern world. He was correct in assuming so. When I asked how he would go about teaching ancient Greek tragedy to students, he said something similar to what I’ve heard Dr. White mention. He said “Not every student is going to understand it, and not every student is going to care, but there will be students who try to understand it and when they finally do they can appreciate the beauty and hard work that these playwrights put into making these masterpieces. If you can even find one student who appreciates the work, that’s enough to make your day because you know you’ve made a difference in at least one student’s life.”

          As I move forward and take his advice into consideration, I also reflect on strategies I very recently learned from a woman named Sarah who came into our classroom from the Actors of the London Stage theater group. She had an excerpt from Antigone, a powerful speech delivered by Creon. I’ll be completely honest with myself when I say that it was hard to stay focused when originally reading Antigone. I didn’t understand much of the dialogue because it didn’t interest me, but then Sarah walked in and within an hour opened my eyes to multiple teaching strategies. The one that stuck with me the most was one she called “hot seating”, in which she chose one person from our class to be Creon while the rest of us were his followers ready to ask him questions in a pretend panel. The student designated as Creon had to quickly get into character and provide quick fire answers to the questions we asked them. After reading the speech throughout the hour over and over in different exercises, I became comfortable with the dialogue and understood why the speech was such a large part of the work itself as well as the character development of Creon. It was also a fun way to interact with my classmates, whom I wasn’t quite involved with prior to these exercises. I believe that using exercises like those Sarah taught us will definitely help me teach my students smoothly in content areas that they may find tiring or boring.

          Looking through the model assignments, one written on my same research topic really caught my eye. Kaitlin Jaschek states “Tragedy does not worry with passing events or popular culture; instead, it concerns itself with essential human problems.  Tragedy raises questions about justice and morality for individuals and the world.” Reading this proved to me that tragedy can’t always be relatable to the students of today or the students of the future because of the events it has been written on, however I can find ways to make it relatable to them so they can maintain knowledge of the content. Ms. Jaschek also states “To effectively and enjoyably explore Tragedy, teachers need to create the desire within students by providing understanding of the above benefits and importance within the genre.” In my eyes this translates to needing to teach my students the importance of the content as well as the events, rather than just teach them the non relatable events.

          On the tragedy term page from the course website it states “pain is the strongest teacher, it impresses our imagination and memory more strongly than pleasant situations or outcomes”, and that’s what I look forward to making tragedy for my students. Not just a school lesson, but a life lesson. By the end of this semester I want to be able to fully grasp the concept of tragedy and be able to relate it to the modern world and language. I want to be able to see the faces of my students light up as they make connections to the literature and understand the meaning behind each work. I would like to dive deeper into the genre as a whole outside of the class, and possibly look into taking any other classes that would give me insight to the genre of tragedy so I can learn more information and appreciate it further. I am certain five months is not nearly enough time to learn all of the greatness that lies behind tragedy, but taking this course has opened my eyes to a whole new world of literature, and my future goals is to be able to do the same for my own students.