FUN FACTS

FUN ALWAYS

I stand on top of my desk, a blunted, fencing sword in my hand, a copy of Hamlet in the other. A student, looking uncannily like Queen Gertrude, sits opposite me, her hands wringing, eyeing the “body” of the recently slain Polonius lying on the floor.

“Leave wringing of your hands!” I yell and poor Gertrude looks on with fear. The scene freezes for an instant before I pass the foils to a waiting “Hamlet”.

“Now you try it,” I say.

The scene repeats, this time with a new Hamlet, and the class is once again a captive audience at the Globe. This is my theater. And my students, more than the audience, are my fellow actors in our yearlong traveling troupe through English and Writing.

We come from different backgrounds. They are a generation raised on the internet, iPod, and Nintendo Wii. I remember the Brady Bunch, record players, and something called a typewriter. Some of them drive Hummers to school, others catch the bus. Some eat sushi from the restaurant a couple blocks away, others are on the free lunch program. They are 17 years old and just touching the true freedom waiting around the corner. I am 38, having been there and done that and trying to keep them young for a bit longer before they rush into adulthood.

But for one hour a day, I am the producer, director, and set designer of their minds. I need to bring 14th Century writers up to their speed, I need them to find wisdom in 200 year old words, and so I am more than a teacher. I am an actor, an entertainer, a comedian. I don’t want them to just listen, I want them to experience.

My “set”, my classroom, is filled with color and excitement. Wherever my students’ eyes wander, they are learning. When they are writing, I choose the musical score. When we discuss, we animate. I set the lighting and use candles for the gothic novels. We turn the class into the “deserted streets” from T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock, and we act out The Hollow Men so that the student’s eyes are the eyes in the poem. We dance to Langston Hughes. We beat drums as we sail down the Congo in Heart of Darkness. We meet Vietnam veterans after Tim O’Brien shares his tales with us. The authors walk the room among us and whisper in our ears.

When I became a teacher I made a solemn vow to myself that I would not become like some of the teachers I had when I was in high school. If a student ever fell asleep in my class, I would reprimand myself, not the kid. My class, I decided, would relate to the students. Voltaire, Camus, even Kafka. Everyone can relate to their ideas. Everyone can be passionate about something.

My class maintains my firm belief that in order to learn one must experience. I am part of their experience. And even though it is only a moment in their lives, for that one moment, my students are the main characters in a glorious production of great thinkers, writers, and artists.
About the Author

ASAD STTAR M.ED UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE FAISALABAD.
POSTED BY:FUN ALWAYS