Blog Post #3- Visit to a Small Planet

 
I connect with this reading on many levels.  Before I became an ESOL teacher, I was a theatre and English major who studied play writing and worked as a costume designer.  I have worked in theatres in many different technical roles from sound, to stage crew to costumes to scenery building.  My teaching career began working in the Binghamton University costume shop teaching college students how to sew and do wardrobe for department productions I am currently working at my school as the costume designer for "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown."  In addition to designing the costumes for the show, I also work with a student director and students who are learning how do so wardrobe run-crew for the show.  It is my job to educate these students not only about the process of putting on a production, but also about the world that we, as actors, designers, and technicians, are collaborating to create. 

In my ESOL classes we sometimes read plays.  This year my transitioning and commanding students read "A Midsummer Night's Dream".  The Fuchs reading had the constant image of a ball representing the world, or "planet" of a play.  This is so important for students because, especially when reading a play, there is nothing that compares to a text with  only dialogue and stage directions to paint a picture for us.  Fuchs suggests that "focusing on a character" makes the reading "too easy".  I agree- so much of what we learn about a character in a play is inferred by their actions and relationships.  Plays force us to reflect on our own ideas about human nature.  By focusing on the "world", we are seeing the characters for what they are: characters, often representing ideas rather than actual people.  In teaching Midsummer, we are forced to study the three "worlds" that Shakespeare portrays:  the lovers, the fairies, and the workmen.  I might start our next study of the play with three actual spheres for the students to see representing these three worlds.


Another takeaway would be Fuchs's reference to some of the literary elements that we teach students for fictional and theatrical text: mood, setting, plot, etc. I might refer to this article for the examples that he gives to describe these elements.  There are so many possibilities and ways to express them, particularly since plays are not a "look for evidence in the text" type of learning objective.  For my ELLs, it is nice to scaffold how I would want them to express their analysis of these elements, after they have done the work of inferring things such as mood and tone.

I wish I had more time in my ESOL classes to devote to teaching dramatic texts.  They are so unique and something to unfamiliar to many of my students.  This is something I hope I can build upon in coming years, even if we read little parts and scenes of bigger dramatic works.  My love of the theatre didn't happen overnight, but will stay with me for a lifetime.