Katherine B. Branch

A student said he wanted to "go back in time and take Shakespeare's quill so he couldn't write anything. He doesn't speak my language." I said, "Let's sit down and talk about it." The student said he was frustrated by his inability to express exactly what was in him, that he could never write any papers or poems or stories he was happy with, that he could never "understand literature." "Maybe you don't need to start by understanding it," I suggested. "Maybe it already understands you." The student shook his head. "Nah. They're just words." "Words, words, words," I said. Then I pointed to where Hamlet says this in frustration. The student cracked a smile. Together, slowly, we read some more of Hamlet's words: "I do not know Why I yet live to say, 'This thing's to do'" "I have that within which passes show" "in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep." After about fifteen minutes of passing the text back and forth, reading passages aloud, the student looked up and said, "That...that's how I feel." "Write about that," I said. His paper, which earned an A+, began, "Shakespeare speaks my language."

We are teaching in an age where accountability has been shifted almost entirely from students/parents TO teachers.