Bringing Literature to Life for Urban Adolescents: Artistic, Dramatic Instruction and LiveTheaterAuthor(s): Janine Certo and Wayne BrindaSource: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Fall 2011), pp. 22-37Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jaesteduc.45.3.0022 .

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Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 45, No. 3, Fall 2011©2011 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Bringing Literature to Life for Urban Adolescents: Artistic, Dramatic Instruction and Live Theater

JANINE CERTO and WAYNE BRINDA

The abilities to read, to write, and to compute are of crucial impor-tance. Students who cannot read, write, or compute are in deep trou-ble. But important though these skills are, they do not encompass all of what people know or the ways in which what they know.

—Eliot Eisner

Engaging Urban Middle School Students

An innovative literacy/theater project implemented in two sixth-grade classrooms of a high-poverty, urban, western Pennsylvania middle school was designed to help urban teachers address aliteracy by engaging their students in the discovery of three young adult novels.1 The project was built on a partnership with a semiprofessional theater company that produced adaptations of the literature and designed instructional support materi-als to meet literacy challenges identified by research and the participating teachers. The authors of this article studied the teachers’ perceptions of the lessons, as well as students’ engagement with artistic, dramatic instruction and their responses to seeing theatrical adaptations of the literature. As a team, con-sisting of an external evaluator, the producer and director of the adaptations,

Janine Certo is an assistant professor of language and literacy in the Department of Teacher Education and a principal investigator at the Literacy Achievement Research Center (LARC) at Michigan State University. Her research interests include poetry in schools, aesthetic education, childhood education, literature response and discus-sion, and teacher development. She teaches undergraduate and graduate writing, language arts, and poetry courses at Michigan State University.

An educator, researcher, and stage director, Dr. Wayne Brinda is an artistic director of Prime Stage Theatre and an assistant professor of secondary education at the Uni-versity of Pittsburgh at Bradford, where he focuses on adolescent literacy. A former instructor of English and theater for Sewickley Academy and the Oakland School, he is a reviewer for Middle School Journal. He delivers papers and presentations for the National Council of Teachers of English, National Middle School Association, Col-lege English Association, and International Reading Association.

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Bring Literature to Life for Adolescents 23

and a graduate education major with a background in education and theater, we explored the question, what is the effect of artistic and dramatic instruc-tion and live theater on reluctant readers’ interest and learning? The year-long study examined how this program that blended reading, experiencing, seeing, and responding to multiple works of literature can help teachers address specific literacy issues of middle school, urban, re-luctant readers. Another goal was to assess if this could be a model for all teachers to easily use when a theater presents literature or plays in a school’s curriculum. Could the strategies also be adapted by teachers in schools that present musicals or theater productions to make theater experiences into literacy learning opportunities?

The Challenges

Achieving success with reading among nonreaders, transforming reluctant and struggling readers into engaged readers, and providing alternative strategies for teachers of urban students were the subjects of this program and the study. Scholars of adolescent literacy find that reluctant readers typically do not know how to interact with literature or sustain their read-ing beyond the opening pages. For her book Adolescents Talk about Reading: Exploring Resistance to and Engagement with Text, Anne Reeves interviewed adolescents who were “discouraged by long books [they] thought would be boring, which included just about all books that were not about one of [their] particular interests.”2 Students forced to decode text without seeing pleasure in the process tend to not care about what they read. For them, reading has “lost its purpose and pleasure.”3

Struggling readers also typically see a mismatch between their interests and the assigned literature. Their struggles become embarrassments that create anxieties. The students’ anxieties are further complicated by teach-ing practices where reading is getting through many stories quickly, iden-tifying selected literary devices, and writing book reports. Sumara stressed how those approaches work against the goal of raising students’ interest level for them to actually enjoy reading the literature.4 This is particularly significant in urban schools where students are not meeting the standards or grade-level expectations. Other than getting through school, reading is not seen as being necessary to survive in their world. A practical solution presented by those who research adolescent literacy is for students and teachers, particularly in urban settings, to approach comprehension not as the ultimate goal but as a gateway for critical thinking and learning, as well as aesthetic enjoyment. Delpit stressed that “answering fill-in-the-blank questions or focusing solely on the minutia of learning will not create educated people. . . . Chil-dren [should be] demanded to think critically about what they are learning

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24 Certo and Brinda

and about the world at large. A key word here is demand.”5 Hale, author of Learning While Black, defined classroom instruction as “a foundation compo-nent”6 of helping inner-city African American students grow beyond what they see as their limitations and their worlds. She called for schools “to cre-ate salient instruction that connects African-American children to academic achievement. The instruction should be so delightful that children love com-ing to school and find learning to be fun and exciting.”7

Defining how adolescents can see reading as enjoyable aesthetic experiences was the goal of a pioneer in adolescent literacy. In her ground-breaking book Literature as Exploration, Louise Rosenblatt defined two dis-tinct approaches to reading. What she called “efferent” reading focuses on the purpose of getting information. When literature is read from an efferent stance, the need is for content, requiring the reader to attend more to the writer’s message than to how that message is delivered. In contrast, what she referred to as “aesthetic” reading involves concentrating upon the im-ages, associations, and feelings the text invokes and how the writer crafts words to bring those reactions about. “When the student has been moved by a work of literature, he will be led to ponder on questions of right and wrong, of admirable or antisocial qualities, of justifiable or unjustifiable actions.”8 Rosenblatt helped students go beyond comprehending texts to discovering the aesthetics within a story and emotionally responding to those moments. A blending of efferent and aesthetic reading can be achieved, as Sumara recommended, by having teachers and students learn how to go beyond approaching reading as skimming texts to get information. They must learn how to approach reading as a slower process “to notice how details are used to create literary effects.”9 However, while these approaches are critical to create positive literacy experiences, several teachers reported having lim-ited or no time to develop aesthetic enjoyment of literature while ensuring that their students meet the districts’ and states’ testing demands. Frustration is also felt by students who are convinced that their poor grades are caused by factors beyond their control. As a result, they gravitate to activities and peers that, as Taffel stated, “don’t expect much of them. . . . Such children balk at participating in things that don’t provide instant grati-fication, or worse, activities that require work, practice, or the frustration of being a beginner.”10 On the other hand, Dweck found when students are given opportunities and the skills to “relish a challenge,”11 critical thinking is realized. Considering the degree to which today’s students are visually oriented and seek instant gratification, could theater be an effective instructional tool to help students discover aesthetics in literature? Research shows how the-ater environments stimulate active, immediate, emotional, and intellectual responses to literature. Wilhelm and Edmiston noted how theater “creates a

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Bring Literature to Life for Adolescents 25

virtual world—or mental model—from the textual symbols called words.”12 Audiences do not have to work to comprehend the action. As a result, gratification is easily and quickly obtained. Characters, language, settings, sounds, images, and conflicts come alive. The authors of this study agreed with literacy and theater scholars who proposed that “because literacy is fundamentally about learning to use language to mean, drama and good books go together.”13 While not spe-cifically referring to theater, Gardner described the results of blending art with literature: “A work of literature, though it may be read silently by an audience member, fails in its effect if it does not arouse sensory images. . . . Once one is within the art work, the play of ideas, themes, forms, and other nonsensory elements will contribute substantially to the artistic ap-peal of the work.”14 Swartz found additional benefits of enhancing literacy curriculum with theater experiences: “What makes theatre-going impor-tant, is that children come to experience an artistic representation of the world. . . . They learn about having conversations, telling stories, getting along, arguing and loving.”15 Theater provides experiences for students to tap their prior knowledge, connect the story to their lives and interests, and quickly respond to textual, visual, and multisensory stimuli continually pre-sented around them. By witnessing events as if they were happening for the first time, reluctant readers become engaged in the behavior, thoughts, and words of characters, the conflicts, and the resolutions. Literature, when properly introduced and blended with artistically presented theatrical expe-riences, creates opportunities for young people to also discover that it takes time for a story to be told; and when questions arise, they will be answered in good time to the satisfaction of all.

The Theater Company and the Literature

The project’s theater partner was Prime Stage, a semiprofessional company that produces adaptations of literature that are relevant to adolescents, teachers, and families in southwestern Pennsylvania. Recognized by the American Alliance for Theatre and Education as one of the nation’s out-standing children’s theater companies, the company creates productions and projects that encourage adolescents to read and develops resources for educators to address adolescent literacy, critical thinking, and appreciation for literature and theater. Prime Stage educational programs are grounded in research that demonstrates the importance of tailoring experiences to the needs and in-terests of students, particularly in urban schools, in order to generate signifi-cant growth. Productions and projects are selected based on the following factors: (1) literature included on school reading lists or used in classrooms; (2) relevancy to its target audiences; (3) successful production history of

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26 Certo and Brinda

scripts or successes of playwrights if scripts are adaptations or new work; and (4) potential to activate, stimulate, and expand the students’ intrinsic motivation of wanting to read, discover, and learn the literature. One story used in the project was The Cay. It is a story of how a young white boy relies on a Jamaican man for survival after being shipwrecked in the Caribbean during World War II. While the story contains racial com-ments from the boy to the Jamaican man (and the Jamaican man says some unfavorable things to the boy), a teacher used it because “it is about a re-lationship between unlikely people who are thrown together and become friends.” Tuck Everlasting was selected for its social dilemmas. I Never Saw Another Butterfly introduced students to the Holocaust and themes of loss expressed through children’s poetry and art.

The Participants and Method

The project and study involved two sixth-grade classrooms in a Pittsburgh K–6 public school that had a 97 percent African American student popula-tion; 83 percent of the students received free or reduced-price lunch. Ad-ditionally, this school had no formal program in the arts. Only 33 percent of sixth graders scored at the proficient level on the state standardized test in reading (the state average is 66 percent); none of students scored at the advanced level. Pennsylvania’s annual standardized test is a criterion-refer-enced assessment used to measure a student’s attainment of the academic standards while also determining the degree to which school programs en-able students to attain proficiency of the standards. Although over 40 sixth graders participated in the theater/literacy program, 22 students (14 girls and 8 boys) and their parents or guardians consented to participate in the study. These students reported reading from zero to two hours a week out-side of school and had never seen a theater production. As a team, we collected qualitative data because of the need to obtain a greater depth of detail about the lived experiences of the participants. Moje reminded us that only by listening to adolescents do adults gain in-sights about their learning.16 Therefore, data collection included observing and interviewing students in class and at the theater during the academic year. Teachers and students studied the three books and experienced lesson plans using artistic, academic, and dramatic instruction implemented by the theater/teacher. Culminating each novel study, students attended the ad-aptation of the novel. During postshow “chat sessions,” we noted students’ questions to actors, and end-of-year focus groups investigated students’ re-actions to performances, responses to lessons, and perceptions of the novels (see appendix A for the classroom interview protocol). Teachers were also interviewed at the end of the year to define their perceptions of the program and reflections of their own professional development (see appendix B for the teacher interview protocol).

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Results and Discussion: Students and Teachers Weigh In

For Tuck Everlasting (see Lesson Plan 1), students were encouraged to ex-press how they envisioned a character, “The Stranger,” by referring to Bab-bitt’s text as the primary source in anticipation of seeing the play. Students had completed reading chapter 4, and then the theater teacher read aloud the passage where “the Stranger” is first introduced.

He was remarkably tall and narrow, this stranger standing there. His long beard faded off into a thin, apologetic beard, but his suit was a jaunty yellow that seemed to glow a little in the fading light. A black hat dangled from one hand, and as Winnie came toward him, he passed the other through his dry, gray hair, settling it smoothly. “Well, now,” he said in a light voice. “Out for fireflies, are you?”17

The students were encouraged to explain how they would react if they were first meeting the stranger and support their answers from the text. Through this exercise, students learned how to locate textual clues and language that delve deeper into the Stranger’s physical and personality traits. Students then drew their visualization of this character.

Lesson Plan 1LITERARY and THEATRICAL CHARACTERIZATIONTuck Everlasting: “The Stranger”Lesson Time: 45-90 minutesMaterials: Construction Paper in various colors, Markers, Crayons, and Pencils, Copies of Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt

Lesson IntroductionTime: 5 minutes*Teacher proposes: “What if I stumbled into the classroom on a hot day carrying a case of bottled water, and I walked around each desk, giving a bottle to every student. You are really thirsty and rush to break open the cap. I stop you and yell, ‘No, no, no, no! If you drink that water, you’ll live forever. You stay a child . . . forever.’ Would you drink the water?”*Students answer the question, backing up their answers. The teacher then asks how the family felt about the water. What about Winnie? What about the Stranger?

Read-Aloud and DiscussionNatalie Bobbitt’s Characterization of the StrangerTime: 15 minutes*Teacher talks about Bobbitt’s use of description in Tuck Everlasting.*Teacher reads aloud the passage where the Stranger is first intro-duced (chapter 4) without stopping.*Students tell the teacher how they would react if they were Winnie first meeting the Stranger and back their answers up with textual clues.*With student assistance, the teacher re-reads the passage, stopping at other textual clues and particular vocabulary that delve deeper into the Stranger’s physical and personality traits.

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28 Certo and Brinda

Art Activity*Draw your physical interpretation of the Stranger, based on your mental images generated from the text. Think about his facial expres-sion, what props he might have, his costume design, etc. Label your drawing with brief explanations about your decisions and write a couple of lines describing what you are looking for in an actor to play the part.*Students spend time drawing and prepare for volunteering to show-case and explain their work.

Closing Discussion and QuestionsTime: 10-20 minutes*Students discuss their work with the class.

Lakeisha reflected on the artistic approach that the theater teacher used (see Figure 1): “We had to read a Chapter for homework, then we re-read a description in the book then figured out what the man in the yellow suit would look like. I liked Tuck Everlasting because it let us put our imagina-tions on paper.” Students traversed between text, their interpretations via the lesson, and anticipation of seeing the play. In response to addressing the stated need to go beyond comprehension and develop students’ skills of visualizing text, one student visualized “the stranger” by referring back to the text:

She [theater teacher] came, and she was like, “What do you think he is going to look like in the play?” [the man in the yellow suit from Tuck Everlasting], and we drew different faces and stuff. I had a loooong beard on mine, because he [the man in the yellow suit] was always running his hands through it. I drew my suit as a patchy

Figure 1. Lakeisha’s interpretation of “The Man in the Yellow Suit.”

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Bring Literature to Life for Adolescents 29

yellow, dirty yellow. The book, it just says a jaunty suit. We talked a lot about if we were making a play, what kind of yellow we would pick. [see Figure 2]

In his book, Reading Is Seeing, Jeffrey Wilhelm argued for an approach where students learn how to create images and visualize scenes, characters or ideas.18 He believed that this would improve comprehension, critical reading, and enjoyment. In our study, further exemplified in Figure 2, ur-ban reluctant readers used this approach to construct understanding of the text. They challenged one another about their visual interpretations while the theater teacher maintained intellectual rigor by having students return to the text to back up their imaginative drawings. At the same time, students used personal experiences and the text to explain the drawings, understand the narrative, and fulfill their own intentions. This model, where visual in-terpretations and responses were allowed to vary, gave reluctant readers au-thority and opportunity to read beyond the literal text.

During the I Never Saw Another Butterfly workshop (see Lesson Plan 2), students artistically recreated a comforting memory involving someone special in their lives. They explored the idea of spirituality in clandestine writings, poetry, and artwork that was emblematic of irrepressible human dignity and defiance in the face of evil. They also examined art created by Holocaust survivors and explored how it documents life prior to the Holo-caust and experiences within concentration camps. Connecting the poetry and art of I Never Saw Another Butterfly to an adolescent’s own worlds and memories not only made this lesson powerful; it also kept the concept of “home” alive by using art to engage urban learners. One student, Tyrone, reported, “[I liked] I Never Saw Another Butterfly, because we made collages on the back of our cereal box. . . . I made

Figure 2. Adolescents’ interpretations of “The Man in the Yellow Suit.”

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a collage about my grandmother who just died. And I never made a collage before.” Applying the ideas provided by the 2004 Position/Action Statement from NCTE’s Commission on Reading—“Through extensive reading of a range of texts, supported by strategy lessons and discussions, readers become familiar with written language structures and text features, develop their vocabularies, and read for meaning more efficiently and effectively”19—the study found that students were eager to see and discuss the plays and the directors’ interpretations of scenes. Their enthusiasm and curiosity about what they had read are reflected in this response to the story about the Ho-locaust: “I wanted to know how they [Terezin children] were treated in the Holocaust. And I wanted to know how they eat and stuff and how they survive. [I wanted to know] how did they hide and stuff? You got to see how they [victims of the Holocaust] wore their symbols on their shirts, you know, how they said stuff.” We concluded that anticipation of seeing a play was absolutely critical to their engagement, enjoyment, and understanding of text. Artistic and dramatic instruction married with live theater can sup-port reluctant readers’ efferent and aesthetic reading; it can help them com-prehend and enjoy literature.

Lesson Plan 2THE MEMORY COLLAGE—Art Therapy and SurvivalLesson Time: Approximately 60 minutesMaterials: Personal pictures of family and friends that you wish you see more often, example of a memory collage, copies of I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concen-tration Camp, 1942-1945, PencilsCollage material suggestions: glue, cardboard, cereal boxes, cotton balls, bottle caps yarn/string, fabric swatches, crayons, toothpicks, drinking straws, egg crates, newspapers, popsicle sticks

Lesson IntroductionTime: 15-20 minutes*The teacher asks students How do you get through a bad day? What makes you feel better? After students respond, she/he asks students to close their eyes and recall a memory with someone special that would cheer them up if they had a bad day. They should attempt to capture this mental image using all five senses: Who is with you? Is it someone you miss spending time with? What can you smell? What are you doing? Where are you? What colors do you see? What sounds can you hear? Does this image make you smile, laugh, or give you comfort? The teacher tells them to keep this happy memory with them because they will do something special with it later.*The teacher reads the poem In Terezin aloud and tells the students about how the Terezin children secretly created artwork and wrote poetry that helped them get through the long days at the concentra-tion camp. Based on this poem’s descriptions, does Terezin sound like a place you want to live? How would you feel if you were separated from your family and told that Terezin was your new home?

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*Children at Terezin recreated images of their homes, family, and friends with art materials and sometimes described pleasant images in poems to help them survive hard times and keep their memories alive. They miss their friends and family and want to remember spending time with them. The teacher shows students several rela-tive child-made artworks from the collection in I Never Saw Another Butterfly.*The teacher shows selected pictures of a family member/friend that she/he does not see often. Share with the students the breadth of memories those pictures release (example: my grandmother’s raspy voice, how she took me school shopping every August, the smell of her French toast cooking, the beautiful things she sewed, etc.). One picture can remind a person of so many pleasant memories, bring loved ones to life although they are far away, and give much comfort. The children living in Terezin had no photographs and used what materials they could find to make drawings and collages that pro-duced the same effects.*The teacher shows a collage that he/she made about spending time with the special person she talked about while showing personal photographs. Now the students will make their own collages about the memory they developed at the lesson’s introduction.

Making a Memory CollageTime: 35 minutes (includes 5 minutes for clean-up)*The classroom is arranged for students to sit in groups of four or five. Each student gets a flat cereal box panel for their collage founda-tion, and each group receives a materials packet from the workshop instructor. Because the Terezin children could only create artwork with whatever few supplies they could find in the camp, they had to be creative in using unconventional things to make a picture. Going along with this idea, the teacher explains that students may only use what limited materials their group is given.

Closing Discussion and QuestionsTime: 5-10 minutes*Students can share their memory collage with the class. What pleas-ant memories do your collages give you? Would you be upset if someone stole and destroyed your memory collage? Or photographs from home? The teacher tells the students that the Terezin children had to hide their artwork and poetry from SS officers who would burn them if discov-ered. Even though they faced many dangers, these children searched for and saved as many poems and drawings they could find so that those memories and the children who created the work would never be forgotten.

These are only two example lessons in a series designed to help teachers transform the literacy attitudes of urban students. The objective was for teachers to develop former reluctant readers’ aesthetic enjoyment of literature by encouraging and supporting personal connections with text. Other examples include an interactive lesson with The Cay. Upon learning that the urban students had no prior knowledge of hurricanes,

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the theater teacher utilized the degree to which the participants were visual learners and loved performance-oriented activities. The lesson incorporated interactive, musical, and rhythmic activities that tapped into their preferences for active emotional response, live images, and creating sounds. To mimic the storm, the students played finger cymbals, wind chimes, tom-toms, simple drums, and their own bodies and environments (slapping their desks, clapping, stomping feet on floor). To sustain connections be-tween the students and the text, the teacher referenced passages from the book to adjust the pace and crescendo of their playing:

It was well after dark when the first drops of rain spattered the hut, and with them, the wind turned cool. When it gusted, the rain hit the hut like handfuls of gravel. Then the wind began to blow steadily [Timothy] shouted, “Dey boilin’ ovah now, Phill-eep. ‘Tis huurican’, to be sure. We could hear the surf beginning to crash as the wind drove waves before it. . . . Rain was now slashing into the hut, and the wind was reaching a steady howl. . . . It was strange and eerie in the eye of the hurricane.20

This dramatic activity transported students to the world of that storm and also built excitement about learning, along with their anticipation to see the adaptation of the novel. This experience helped students comprehend the sounds and fury of the story’s hurricane. One student, Rajean, reported, “We had to read how the storm exactly happened then act that out with the instruments.” Another student, Aida, stated, “I liked when we did the hurricane . . . shaking up and rattling everything. The hurricane was the most fun because it was really loud and crazy, and it had instruments. I couldn’t wait to go see that play to hear that scene.”

Aesthetically Connected: Good Books and Theater

Similar to the responses of students who worked with Louise Rosenblatt, our students felt love, fear, and enjoyment when reading the books, par-ticipating in the activities, and seeing the plays. Reading and seeing the lit-erature created what Rosenblatt called “transactions” between the students’ personal histories, present conditions, and the texts. Sharing emotional and aesthetic responses became part of the students’ discussion about the literature and the theater. Overwhelmingly, in focus group discussions, stu-dents expressed how they appreciated beauty in phrases and images that enhanced themes of love or death.

It [Tuck Everlasting] was so pretty like, wow. It was so excellent . . . cause I liked Jesse and Winnie and she was all running away, and she knew the secret, but she didn’t tell. And I liked how she wanted to stay with them, but she had to go home to her mother, but she kept

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the secret and she could be trusted. I liked it when she would be there when he came back . . . and she was, but she was dead.

I read the book, but I still couldn’t believe it. I hoped in the play she would live. I cried because I thought she [Winnie] was going to be there, and I thought she was going to drink the water. But I guess she just decided, “I just want to live my life.”

I liked how he [Angus] saw the toad when he was by the water, but the toad got hit, but was still fine and alive. The toad was by her grave, and that was so beautiful.

A student who participated in the study discovered aesthetics and emotional responses to literature after seeing I Never Saw Another Butterfly: “It was so sad. Those pictures and poems were so sad. Little kids drew those pictures of their family members that died, of their homes they missed. It was so sad that like, you could pay attention to it [the play] the whole time.” She responded to the interpretations of character, conflict, and language. Unfamiliar or complex words, ideas, or characters became comprehensible and meaningful. The important balance between “effer-ent” and “aesthetic” reading became reinforced by using theater. In this study, it was intriguing to find how the students wanted minimal interpretative deviation from the text—they wanted precise, character-filled detailed scenes from the text. Although students were engaged with the plays, they verbalized preferences for the authors’ original interpretations. This suggested a deeper understanding and engagement with text than oc-curs when merely answering worksheets.

We could picture the sounds and everything [in the book]. You could see that there was more characters and everything, you could like think about Stew Cat and everything, and when I seen him [in the play] it wasn’t what I really expected . . . I could picture different scenes [in the book], and they [directors] just had one scene [in the play] and they was pulling stuff off [changing the set] and there was only 3 characters.

Another student explained how there “needed to be more build up” in the play to lead into Timothy’s blindness: “Timothy woke up and showed him in the water and he couldn’t see. And in the play, they just said ‘a blind Timothy’ and brushed right over everything. There needed to be more of a build up. If I were blind, I’d be freaking out!” The Cay is a story of tremen-dous growth, understanding, and friendship, and our sixth-grade students all made personal connections to the text.

Phillip’s mom said people are just the way they are, and it was the same thing with I Never Saw Another Butterfly. It reminded me of my-self when I went to this camp. There were kids that wouldn’t let us play with them, because we were different. So, we just played oth-er games. Those books were the same because people were treating

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other people badly because they were different from each other. But, we’re all the same.

At times, a few adolescents responded apathetically to characters. The theater teacher heard one student remark that the Terezin prisoners were “just a bunch of whinny rich kids.” She encouraged the student to explain. He elaborated that the Terezin experience “was not a big deal” and he saw his own uncle get shot through his living room window. The poems in the original book and the workshop focused on remembering a loved one. This evoked emotions in one student who voiced his opinion openly, perhaps a first step to healing. We reflected that one should not force students to be empathetic toward characters but discuss what is right and wrong in hu-man behavior. We were grateful that this student confronted his belief and verbalized it.

Teachers Respond to Using These Practices

Authentic, theater-based experiences supported teachers’ reading of the literature as well. But success is ultimately achieved by enthusiastic teach-ers who guide students through literature and adequately prepare them for watching adaptations of the books. An important outcome of the study was ensuring that teachers would see the ease and value in integrating art, music, theater, and movement lessons and experiences into their structured curriculum. Ms. Ellis responded:

I would love to continue this practice. I, myself, found it so engaging. I never thought to include drawing as a way to assess comprehension. I also think that my kids were given an opportunity to experience the-ater in a way they probably would not have gotten otherwise. They felt special getting all the books, having the theater teacher come in, going to not just one play, but three.

Another teacher, Ms. Clay, reported that the program “added to the school’s reading curriculum and to Reading First initiatives” and went beyond sim-ply answering questions at the back of the book or responding to the book in a reading log. Both teachers remarked that their students were engaged by the workshops and often asked when the theater teacher was coming again. Ms. Clay reported that her students were able to look at the books in a “new way.” Artistic, dramatic instructional activities, along with continual exposure to theater, are pathways to reading enjoyment, engagement, and compre-hension. One teacher commented: “I’ve never seen my students respond to reading the way that they have. I know, for one, I’m going to be think-ing very differently about how I get kids’ attention, and how I get them fo-cused back on the text to back up everything they say, and do and draw and write.” She found how theater can effectively address literacy problems that

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Bring Literature to Life for Adolescents 35

result when young urban students do not understand the process of read-ing, or they may not have met with a book that captured their imaginations or been motivated to read anything longer than a few pages. Ms. Clay reported how her students went beyond a basic interest in texts and plays to the world of acting:

My students were able to participate in something new to them and especially gained valuable experience in attending live theatre. I was really proud of my students, for the most part, with the way they handled themselves. Many of them want to be actors now! In the chat sessions, they were so curious about the actors’ lives. I hope this pro-gram will stay with us, but I intend to go back to Prime Stage as a field trip.

This project affirmed the recommendations of those who study adolescent literacy and theater regarding the importance of using multiple experiences to effect change and engage students.

Conclusion: Implications for Literacy Pedagogy

The study demonstrated how artistic and dramatic instructional strategies are pathways to comprehension, engagement, and enjoyment. These results are essential to urban learners who often receive the worst kinds of instruc-tional activities tied to standardized test scores and lack opportunities with the arts. Transformation occurred with a series of activities designed to guide the process of reading and activating enjoyment. We urge educators to include art and theater in conjunction with literature study in language arts classrooms. For teachers across the professional continuum, we encourage implementation or adaptation of the engaging lesson plans offered in this study. We imagine that teachers and administra-tors would consider a study plan for a novel that incorporates broader views of comprehension and reader response that culminates in attending live theat-rical productions. Teachers, librarians, and literacy coaches can research local theaters within a two-hour radius to determine what productions are being offered. Then, when the play’s theme and characters are relevant to students, teachers can build curriculum and instruction around novel study. Although this project was supported by local foundations and Prime Stage, we believe that all educators, literacy specialists, librarians, and ad-ministrators can “bring literature to life” as we did in this project. Artis-tic and dramatic pedagogy culminating in live theater can help to address the needs of urban and all adolescent reluctant readers. Our hope is that teachers will draw on local theaters as resources for building enjoyment and excitement with reading, and theaters will see themselves as literacy resources. For the urban adolescents in our project, the play was the thing. What part will you play?

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36 Certo and Brinda

Appendix A. Classroom Focus Group Protocol

1. What was your opinion of the Prime Stage workshops in school? Probe: What did you learn that was new about reading?

2. What book did you like the best that you studied for Prime Stage? Tell us why.

3. What play did you like the best that you attended this year? Tell us why.

5. What play did you like the least that you attended this year? Tell us why.

6. From the Prime Stage workshops in school, what did you learn that was new about the theatre?

7. From attending the Prime Stage play (or plays), what did you learn that was new about how a play is performed?

8. From attending the Prime Stage play(s) and reading the book, what did you learn from the play and reading the book?

9. What else would you like to tell us?

Appendix B. Teacher Interview Protocol

1. From the Prime Stage in-class workshops, please share with us any-thing that you learned that was interesting about teaching literature.

2. Please share with us a strategy or practice you saw in the Prime Stage in-class workshops that you would like to incorporate on a regular basis in your future teaching.

3. Do you think your students were positively impacted by the Prime Stage in-class workshops? (Please circle) Yes or No. Tell us why and/or how.

4. Do you think your students were positively impacted by attending the live theatre performance(s)? (Please circle) Yes or No. Why do you think that is the case?

5. If applicable, please share with us a memorable observation or anecdote about your students when they were participating in the in-class workshops.

6. Please share with us a memorable observation or anecdote about your students while seeing or after seeing the live theatre performance.

7. Please share with us how you were impacted as a teacher by partici-pating in the Adopt-a-School program.

NOTES

1. The epigraph is from Eliot W. Eisner, The Arts and the Creation of Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 204.

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Bring Literature to Life for Adolescents 37

2. Anne Reeves, Adolescents Talk about Reading: Exploring Resistance to and Engage-ment with Text (Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 2004), 47.

3. Cris Tovani, I Read It, But I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers (Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2000), 9.

4. Dennis J. Sumara, Why Reading Literature in School Still Matters: Imagination, Inter-pretation, Insight (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), 156.

5. Lisa Delpit, “Lessons from Teachers,” Journal of Teacher Education 57, no. 3 (2006): 220-31.

6. Janice E. Hale, Learning While Black: Creating Educational Excellence for African American Children (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 112.

7. Ibid., xxii. 8. Louise M. Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration (New York: Modern Language As-

sociation, 1976), 17. 9. Sumara, Why Reading Literature in School Still Matters, 122.10. Ron Taffel, The Second Family: Dealing with Peer Power, Pop Culture, the Wall of

Silence—and Other Challenges of Raising Today’s Teens (New York: St. Martin’s, 2001), 45.

11. Carol Dweck, “How Can Teachers Develop Students’ Motivation—and Suc-cess?” Education World, http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/chat/chat010.shtml (accessed May 6, 2008).

12. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Brian Edmiston, Imagining to Learn: Inquiry, Ethics, and Integration through Drama (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998), 31.

13. Jerome Harste, Foreword to Dramatic Literacy: Using Drama and Literature to Teach Middle-Level Content, by J. Lea Smith and J. Daniel Herring (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001), viii.

14. Howard Gardner, The Arts and Human Development: A Psychological Study of the Artistic Process (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 33.

15. Larry Swartz, “Theatre for Young People: Does It Matter?” in How Theatre Edu-cates: Convergences and Counterpoints, ed. Kathleen Gallagher and David Booth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 205.

16. Elizabeth B. Moje, “Re-Framing Adolescent Literacy Research for New Times: Studying Youth as Resource,” Reading Research and Instruction 41(2002): 212.

17. Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975), 17.

18. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Reading Is Seeing (New York: Scholastic, 2004), 9.19. National Council of Teachers of English, “A Call to Action: What We Know

About Adolescent Literacy and Ways to Support Teachers in Meeting Students’ Needs: A Position/Action Statement from NCTE’s Commission on Reading,” National Council of Teachers of English, http://www.ncte.org/positions/state-ments/adolescentliteracy (accessed May 6, 2008).

20. Theodore Taylor, The Cay (New York: Laurel Leaf, 2003), 109-10.

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