Shakin' It Up in the Classroom with Twitter
Over the course of these last three weeks, I’ve been grappling with my approach to my current unit with my high school seniors on Justice. We’re reading Merchant of Venice and the students’ task is to wrestle with quesitons of Justice. The play is well-suited to the task, but are they? I have 22 seniors-- lovely kids-- perfectly lovely but just done. They have studied long hours every day of their academic life, ultimately preparing for their SATs and college essays. Many of them are quite accomplished-- winners of high-caliber choral competitions, inventors, debators. But now, in the last semester of the senior year, they’re tired. They’re also legal. In Korea, birthdays all roll over at the same time with the passing of each year, so suddenly, all of the seniors are old enough to drink, vote, drive, you name it. They’re suddenly adults and all of their preparation for college is over… in their minds. How was I going to peel their sleeping faces off their desks and re-energize them to tackle a play like Merchant? How was I going to get them to wrestle with the ideas of Justice and Revenge? Merchant is tough for those who already love Shakespeare, much less high school seniors whose second language is English. The success of this unit depended on discussion, and their engagement in school will, too. Back to this in a moment...
Right around the end of the first semester, a colleague-- Steve Katz (@stevekatz)-- convinced me to get on Twitter and give it a good, college try. I was reluctant for a couple of reasons: 1. Twitter just seemed like a lot of nuthin’ to me, just a mess where people vomited tiny, vacuous thoughts, and 2. It just seemed so huge-- it felt to me that finding information of interest and breaking into conversations in a meaningful way would be like wading through an endless bog with boots that were too big. But, I was delightfully surprised. Twitter proved to be fun, interesting and navigable. I woke up one morning with the idea that I wanted to bridge the seemingly disparate worlds of Twitter and Merchant of Venice-- I wanted to use Twitter to invigorate my seniors and the quality of their discussions.
But, how was I going to do that in any meaningful way?
Next installment: Developing the Project
