I'm about to compose another metaphorical salad. To return to
two of my old favorites, 1) language is a vehicle, and 2) good teaching is actually
coaching. I'm also a fan of Star Trek,
so I shall use it as one more ingredient of today's composition.
It is almost time to bring it all together, but let us first
examine more closely each of the main ingredients:
I played sports and coached for thirty-five years. It took
retirement for me to fully perceive how coaching and teaching are connected.
It makes little sense to merely "appreciate" a
Chevy. We drive it. We shouldn't be teaching "appreciation" of
Shakespearean plays either. We should be teaching students to read them.
But a Shakespearean work isn't a Chevy. It's among the most
advanced language vehicles known to humankind, and the only means by which it
is possible to personally explore the universe of Shakespeare. It is the
starship Enterprise, designed to take a
student where none has gone before. Your crew are Spock and Crusher and Data
and Scotty and Ohura and Checkov, and all of your students.
You are the Captain, Pike, Kirk, or, as I prefer, Jean-Luc
Picard. It is his syntax, his rhythm, and his persona I have assumed and shall
continue to express for the duration of this composition. Hear now his deep and
resonant voice: "Engage!"
Once under way, I tell kids that it's my responsibility to
get them into the captain's chair of a Shakespearean starship and train them to
fly. I reassure students that they won't injure themselves by crashing or
disintegrating in the atmosphere, or even falling into a black hole if they
start reading Shakespeare, but I warn them that, if they don't try, they won't
learn those skills they will need to take an ACT or SAT intelligently. In my
class, I make them read it, and at regular intervals, I make them fly solo.
Too many teachers do something else. They cover "the
bases" (and other things), by trying to give kids declarative knowledge
about the great classics, hoping that, if they run into any of those authors in
a standardized test, they can perhaps fumble through and get some right
answers.
Your students' reading skills don't improve if you present
them with videos and sound recordings instead of making them read. Yes, you can
show them what Hamlet is "all
about," but when they encounter a passage from Shakespeare's As
You Like It on the ACT, you won't be
available. They must learn how to discover for themselves "what it's all
about," and you must force them to the task.
Yes, I did say that. You must "force" them to do
what they don't want to do. I'm comfortable using force. I don't teach
Shakespeare; I coach reading of Shakespeare. I do not hot-wire his starships by
skipping over the reading and showing videos; I coach kids and force them to
take the controls and perform, just as an athletic coach teaches fundamentals
and forces players to perform. Then, after they've had a chance to fly, I show
how others engage the same vehicle, by means of sound and video recordings.
Kids very much want to perform in sports, of course, so
motivation in athletics is obviously easier. They volunteer for the sport; they
yearn to perform. The whole point is to go where they've never gone before, to
get out on the court or the field and find out for themselves "what it's
all about."
You don't teach kids to be athletes. You don't even coach
them to be athletes. They either are athletes or they are not. But many of
those who "come out for" a sport aren't the best athletes, and you
need to do what you can with what you've got.
As a coach, you train their bodies to do what athletes do.
They imitate athletic movements, and they either become comfortable moving in
those ways, or they don't. If they train hard and stay in the sport long
enough, they get their opportunities to perform. And kids who love sports,
whether they're athletes or not, stay and learn to perform. Most will never go
on to perform in college or in the pros because they don't possess rare
athletic gifts, but they will have opportunities to do what they love, and they
will learn all those "intangibles" you hear about (they are
intangibles, yes, but they are also very real): determination, courage,
concentration, persistence, patience, etc., etc.
It took me a long time to realize that you can't teach kids
to be intelligent readers and writers. But you can coach them and foster the
growth of "intangibles."
American schools generally require all kids to "go out
for" college preparatory language arts. Some of those kids don't have the
gifts, and they shouldn't be compelled to join an endeavor in which they lack
abilities and skills.
This is where they need to be given a choice. They have
other gifts, and they should be allowed to pursue development of them and
prepare for something besides college. Our inferior system, however, fails
them, not at the end of a term, but there at the beginning, before they even
get started.
The fact that all students are forced to "go out
for" Shakespeare right now is ridiculous, but we're stuck with it. The United
States Educational System is not the United Federation of Planets, and your
crew does not matriculate from a space academy. It is what it is, and you've
quite a diverse crew to work with as a result.
But you can't change that reality, and it's no excuse for
you or anyone else to quit coaching. You must do your best to coach them all.
And you need to remember, when you're reading Hamlet in front of a classroom, you're not just coaching;
you're a pro - you get paid for this. You're the best the system can find. Take
pride in it; read it beautifully - But force them to read also.
You're coaching free throws, showing them how it's done. You
describe what you're doing, and then you do it.
They mispronounce one of those strange Elizabethan
contractions, such as, "cat i' th' adage," and you correct them. You
show them what it means and you say it, and they say it, and then you show them
the "follow through."
With free throws, it's "all in the wrist."
With a Shakespearean star ship, it's all at the ends of his
lines of blank verse. That's where they need to "follow through"
without halting the meaning; otherwise, it doesn't work right. You ask them to
try, and sometimes, they still stumble over the line, but you praise them for
incremental improvements.
And the result may be horrendous. The ball misses the iron
by a foot or so, but you say, "Nice effort," and they try again.
They learn to love Hamlet, or they don't. Nevertheless, you force them. They're members of the
crew now, and your responsibility is to force them to practice the fundamentals
of operating a Shakespearean star ship. If they stay with it, they do their
best to imitate actors, and they become better readers, but best of all, they
learn those same intangibles: determination, courage, concentration,
persistence, patience, etc., etc.
Coaching has it over on teaching every time. In athletics,
you rehearse body positions, postures, and movements. You drill, drill, drill.
Then you perform.
In the language arts classroom, their reading of Shakespeare
is a performance. You don't read it all for them! You don't just show videos
and have them listen to recordings!
Your crew aren't in your room to observe performances. They
are there to learn to perform. You need them to rehearse mental approaches to learning.
You must always remember, you're coaching them to encounter Shakespeare.
Shakespeare is not the enemy. He is not Borg. Shakespeare is a magnificent
cognitive universe, and his plays are the vehicles that provide a means to
explore it.
You can't go out on the field and play defensive end for a
kid who's having trouble. You show him what's wrong. You demonstrate in
practice. You force him to imitate your postures, body positions, and
movements. Then you correct him when he resorts to old habits and makes
mistakes. During an actual scrimmage, you take a time out occasionally and
remind him, but you can't do it for him.
Young people have to read it themselves.
My study guides take them through cognitive reading habits.
They force reflection. They focus attention. They position the mind and impose
movement. They drill, drill, drill.
I command my students to develop their own proper habits of
constant questioning by forcing them at regular intervals to fly solo and
explore a sector of the Shakespearean universe. I order them to formulate their
own internal dialogue with one of his star ships and, "Engage!"
(Yes, sometimes I literally impose this entire metaphor on a
class.)
Upon their return, I evaluate their performance with
quizzes. (They always get reading quizzes from me for their first reading of an
assigned segment of a play.) Perhaps their skills are not yet what they should
be. No matter. There must be no deviations. They must read. We play for keeps.
They need practice games, but we keep score. My assessment of their performance
is as fair and as just as Vulcan logic.
As a football coach, you take teams through two-a-day fall
practices filled with the utter misery of training and drills. You show them
what they have to do and force them to do it right. Some stubborn athletes
despise you for the misery. They prefer to sit on the bench than listen to you.
But when they see others having success, they come around. Soon, some of the
most incorrigible develop into the most courageous, the most persistent, and
the most devoted.
Yes, that is what happens in sports. Believe it.
Some athletes quit. They are assimilated into the Borg, the
nameless, unconscious crowd. They watch from the stands. Perhaps they are yet
conscious enough to admire how their former crewmates execute their plans, but
they admire from the sidelines. It's a shame.
Some of your language arts students will sit on the bench
and refuse to perform, and some will quit, right in your classroom. They will
become Borg among your crew. That's not your fault! The system doesn't let them
"go out for" something else and develop their other talents. Right
now, they all must "go out for" Shakespeare, and you have to deal
with it.
So, do all you can do to win them back. Coach them and
encourage them. Parse the task. Cut down the amount of work so they can
concentrate on one or two concerns at a time; see them during tutoring time and
give them more coaching. But never allow your students to escape their
responsibility to perform.
Athletes deliver their gratitude at the end of a season.
They're exceedingly grateful that you believed in them and insisted that they
perform, long before they even believed in themselves.
It will take approximately ten years before your students
will thank you. It will take that long for them to encounter authentic reading
tasks in real life, and your training will come back to them, and when they
have to, they will line up.
They will! They'll focus and position their minds. Even some
of those bench-dwellers will take unfamiliar controls of vast vehicles into
their minds and execute well-rehearsed cognitive movements that you had the
termerity to force them to learn. They will persevere as never before. They
will probe strange new language structures and execute perfect follow-throughs.
They will perform, and then, they will perform better, and they will at last go
where they've never gone before.
And suddenly, they will understand it is because of you.
And one day, back on earth, you'll be having a refreshing,
well-deserved adult beverage in the local pub, and one of your former crew will
happen upon you and say, "Thank you, Captain. You truly taught me. I
didn't appreciate you then, and I'm sorry. But thank you."
And you will know that you were not just their teacher; you
were their coach. You believed in them, and you forced them to go - Well, you
know.
You are their captain! Engage!
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