Reading a film II

The first step was choosing a film for the group.  I knew immediately which one I wanted to use.  I had used it before and most students found it not too difficult but very moving and were quickly hooked by the story line.  The Mighty is about two boys who were marginalized at school, the kind of boys that other kids call “Freaks”.

Although Sharon Stone plays in it and the other actors are well known and Sting does the music, the film doesn’t seem to have been a big box-office hit.  The only reason I had ever heard of it was that one of my students had brought it to me and insisted that I watch it. He was a nice boy and I always associate him with my first stumbling attempts at TPRS.

In those days I was doing it all wrong.  I was working with Shawshank Redemption and I wanted to prepare students for the scene in the prison yard where Andy meets Red.  I had a long list of vocabulary words that my students wouldn’t know.  Pickax, skull, gem shop, rock hound, bull queer, lawyer, etc.  My plan was to use a TPRS story to introduce the vocabulary.  Now I know that stories are used to teach structures, not vocabulary, which should be sheltered as much as possible, but in those days I had not yet been able to attend a workshop and I had just started reading Ben Slavic's TPRS in a year.  I scripted a story about a thief getting shot at in front of a gem shop and needing a lawyer.

I began my story with a chimpanzee.  This was a TPRS story, right?  What color was the chimpanzee?  The class eventually proposed purple, and I went for that.  I needed an actor, so I chose the boy who seemed the most likely to play along.  He was a bit of a loner and not very “cool”, but he gave the impression that he enjoyed my classes.  What was the purple chimpanzee’s name?  The class made several suggestions, and someone called out “Darwin!”  My actor grinned at that, so I went with Darwin.  We actually did get through the story and I was able to work in most of the vocabulary I had listed, although I doubt they retained much of it.  But the name Darwin stuck.  The kids started calling him that and he even signed his papers “Darwin” from then on.  Thinking back, I’m sorry I took a chance of making him appear ridiculous in front of the whole class by acting out the story of a purple chimpanzee.  But that was when he brought me the film to watch.  Perhaps he wanted me to understand what it can be like to be a “freak” and how some very brave souls are able to assume the fact that they are different.  

Today I still use Shawshank Redemption with students, but I approach that scene differently.  I give them a short summary of the scene in three versions as an embedded text.  Once they have read through all three versions, they are ready to watch and understand the scene on screen. I now realize that using a story to introduce over twenty vocabulary words is not effective.  As a matter of fact, it's not much different from traditional methods.  But the students enjoyed the story, Darwin found an identity that suited him, and though I blush at the memory of my mistakes, I console myself with the thought that "bad TPRS is better than no TPRS".

I recommend The Mighty to anyone working with teenagers.  I think even students who appear very self-confident worry about not being accepted by others and they adopt the two characters whole-heartedly.  They buy into discussing their problems because they share the same problems.   Personalization doesn't always have to be called personalization.    To be continued …..