Embodied Learning
I wasn't exposed to the works of William Shakespeare until I was 17-years-old. I can't even remember what play we had to read. It was probably one of the best known ones like Hamlet or A Midsummer Night's Dream, but I barely understood a word. I blamed the material, of course. It couldn't be me: I was a good reader, something I'd been told since first grade when I was placed in "Reading Group 1" by my teacher Mrs. McCutcheon. This archaic crap might have been a best seller back in the 16th century, but today, in the modern world of 1979, it had clearly lost its relevance. Forcing us to endure it was an example of academic hazing or something.
I wasn't the only one who struggled, so our teacher had the idea of reading parts aloud to us so we could "hear the poetry." Aside from making it feel a bit like we'd been transported back to kindergarten, she was right, it did help. Shakespeare's meaning was more clear and I began to make some of my first approaches toward something like CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Embodied Learning