My purpose in college is to eventually become a college literature professor with my very own PhD. I decided to start small and begin my teaching career as a teacher. Sounds like a common sense decision, but the difference between understanding literature and teaching literature seems to have missed many college professors. Only my education teachers have ever had teacher training before teaching in college. An argument for those of you in college: How many of you have ever read a test question and said to yourself, “that’s not a fair/valid question?” It’s most likely due to the fact that the poor college professor never really learned how to write a test question. Think about it for a bit.
Anyway, I am currently an undergrad for high school English. I will learn both my subject matter and how to teach that subject matter. Yay. I have already decided that I will not flinch from using t.v. or film in my classroom to help students understand a piece of literature. I decided this for multiple reasons. First; a t.v. show or film is nothing more than a story told in a visual way, rather than with text. (For all of you purists, please think about theatre for a moment.) I can teach many of the same story telling techniques (foreshadowing, dramatic irony, character/plot development, etc) and the students may actually understand. Second; if a student is busy talking about a t.v. show or movie he/she saw over the weekend then I am simply combining business and pleasure. Why waste valuable time trying to stop them from talking about something they WANT to talk about and use it to teach them something. Third; seeing the story told from a different perspective will add depth to the work the class is studying. It’s like a student voicing his/her own interpretation of a work. Multiple opinions usually make for good (and bad) dialogue. Fourth, but not last; who doesn’t like to watch t.v. or film?
I should qualify all of the above with this: I do NOT intend for the students to watch Jerry Springer or some reality show. I plan to study any t.v. show or film for literary value. I also plan to use adaptations more than original screen plays. While there can exist literary merit in any (although not all) film, I plan to incorporate the films with works that the students are reading.
Now, for all my blabbering, what is the purpose of my post title? Simply this. With my above plan already in my head, I chose to take Film and Lit for my required film class last semester. Film and Lit was exactly as it sounds – we read books and watched movies. We studied the adaptation process more than we studied the text, but I LOVED the course. It helped me see the many layers of film and how film can support an idea I had about a novel or change an idea completely. In conjunction with that class I took Shakespeare for teachers. My professor emphasized the importance of watching the plays and supported us when we went outside the typical theater domain. (Sidenote: watch Shakespeare Retold:Macbeth – such a good adaptation – I will post my paper on it soon.) This semester I needed an extra course just to fill in my credit hours. I choose a drama course because of the teacher. I took a poetry class with her and really liked her. She also is pushing watching the plays, both in theater and film. We have three papers to write that focus on the adaptation of the play. I walked out of class the other day with a smile on my face. The assignment is one that I’m not only familiar with, but hope to use in my own classes! The luck part of my blog title is that next semester is my professional semester. I will be teaching this fall. For me to have chosen these three classes so close to my professional semester makes me think that I’ll really be able to do it; to use film adaptation to help teach a work of literature. Maybe, it’s meant to be. Maybe it was just lucky planning. Whatever it is, I fully believe that this is one of my talents that I am meant to share with others.
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