The Dread of Something

My Advanced Drama classes and I decided to memorize some of the big Shakespeare speeches lately. We already had "Romeo, Romeo" and "Two households" down pat, so I pulled out "All the world's" and, of course, "To be, or not to be".

It's been fun. The kids dove into the dictionary work willingly enough (I tested my new theory that kids will try anything that is referred to as a "game". While reluctantly giving in and writing down the ninth definition of a word, one kid grumbled, "Waterhouse, this feels more like dictionary work than a dictionary game!" I just laughed to myself and walked on.), and they came up with some fantastic moves for gesturing the lines. They like doing the poems, and they're proud of what they're memorizing.

There is a little shadow of worry in my mind, though. One of my girls, Valerie, her older sister committed suicide last year. I checked with her when we started it to see if she would be okay with playing with a poem about suicide. She said she's "totally fine with it".

Still. Every time we do it, every time we do a line where the students assigned a gesture of stabbing yourself, I either furtively look at Valerie or deliberatly try not to look at Valerie to see if she's okay.

There's really nothing big to report - she does seem fine with it. But I wonder what you, my fellow teachers, think about/do for the kids for whom the tragedies are all too realistic?