Getting lucky with Bartleby The Scrivener
Teaching project with Melville's classic is a success.
The name “Marzano” still gives me the willies. Every year, in just about every school system in America, teachers are about ready to head back into the classroom understanding that at the end of this school year, every damn thing they do or don’t do is going to be jiggered into the cursed Marzano Focused Teacher Evaluation form. The principal or an assistant is going to offer “an evaluation” of what that teacher had or hadn’t done in his or her classroom, “according to Marzano.”
Even if they hadn’t spent a damn minute in your room, watched you work or noticed how your kids’ skills went from here to there. If it didn’t fit in the form, you might as well have not taught it to them. It was crap.
One year, Leon County Schools actually brought in the inventor, Dr. Robert Marzano, to speak to all the teachers, supposedly to jack them up for the year ahead. As you might expect from someone who concocted such a tortuous, devious scheme, he was about as colorful, as entertaining as Bartleby, that famously reclusive Herman Melville character famous for saying “I prefer not to” at every opportunity.
The great irony for me was the one time I genuinely hit the damn Marzano Teacher Focused Evaluative System out of the park with a brilliant, you-bet-your-ass-it-couldn’t-be better evaluation was because of Bartleby! Still makes me laugh.
It was one of those years where I had just a great bunch of kids in my AP Literature class, the cream of the crop at Gadsden County High School. I couldn’t wait to see them every day and, they might not admit it, but I think they pretty much felt the same way.
We’d done “Hamlet” and “The Dead” and “Macbeth” and Hemingway and Twain and they had improved so much and were so hungry to learn and to be challenged, I had to find something special, one last thing before they took the AP test. So I came up this: “The Bartleby Project.”
Though Melville’s classic tale of this Wall Street silent resister is long and deep, I thought his strange character might really engage them. And I also expected to hear echoes of Bartleby’s famous line “I would prefer not to” about every assignment from then until graduation. And I did. (Grin)
The twist to the project was, each of them would have a different Bartleby assignment AND they were sworn not to share what they each were working on.
I was convinced that individualizing each assignment for each pair would more or less force them to come up with their own distinct interpretation of this really strange but compelling story. I also knew that since they were a competitive bunch (God love ‘em) they would want to make sure their project was the best. I wanted them to own it and by God, they sure did.
Now, once I had this grand idea, the issue was, could I find enough varied interpretations and presentations of Melville’s story to give a different one to each group. I scoured YouTube and Vimeo for Bartleby material and found an absolute gold mine.
Perhaps the most challenging was an online Bartleby class offered by a Columbia literary professor. It was over an hour long, it was profound and challenging and I made sure to assign it to my two brightest students.
What was really neat about the Columbia online course was while the professor was teaching the story, writing material up on his board, there was a side panel that allowed commentary to come in from online folks watching it. I assigned one group to look at and write about those comments. And since they had to listen to the professor, too, it was like a double-lesson.
I found an old BBC radio production of Sir Laurence Olivier as Bartleby and gave that to another group. (It’s no longer available, darn it.)
Since I had a couple of Hispanic students, I found a Spanish rendition of the story and assigned them that. Were they excited!
I also found a wonderful old Encyclopaedia Brittanica short film of the story. Brittanica actually did a few short films on short stories, another great one was on Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” So it was wonderful for the students to read the story themselves, then see how it adapted to film.
Another group got a videotaped discussion among veteran educators, discussing the story and doing a great job. On Vimeo, I even found a couple of modern-day Bartleby short films and assigned them, too.
As fate, destiny, good fortune, luck would have it, the day for their presentation - and I didn’t plan it this way, God did - just happened to be the very day the principal was to come to my room for my Marzano evaluation. That NEVER happened. If I had to pick ONE day in my entire school year to brag about my kids and what we had build together, it would have been that day.
To this day, I wish I’d have had a videocamera in the room to show you - and them - what an absolutely amazing presentation it was by every single group, all of them just killed it. And after their presentations, we had just enough time towards the end of class to have the kind of discussion that would have knocked the white socks off a college professor. It was thoughtful, profound, even and damn it, was so much fun.
What was genuinely exciting for me, watching all this, was how excited THEY all were, to see how every one of their classmates had so raised their game. And I think they also knew it probably wasn’t a bad thing for me to have the principal they to see all this. I remember about halfway through these dazzling presentations, one student caught my eye and she winked.
The funny thing now is, once a week I have lunch with a bunch of retired teachers. They’re a wonderful group of guys who spent a lot of time in the classroom, many of them on the athletic fields, too, trying to help kids. But when the subject comes around to teaching, they are of one mind - THANK GOD IT’S OVER.
While I’ll admit, I’m in no rush to get back in a classroom and deal with cellphones and absent students and missed assignments and lesson plans and lesson plans and LESSON PLANS, when I remember classes like “The Bartleby Project” and, uh, that ONE Marzano sheet I think I kept, I know that magic CAN still happen in classrooms. I just wish - as every teacher does - it’d happen more often.
HERE’S WHAT I GAVE THEM (Teachers: Feel free to borrow!)
The Bartleby Project – AP Literature
Herman Melville’s classic, mysterious tale of the power of refusal.
Literary experts still debate what Melville was after in “Bartleby The Scrivener” this puzzling tale of a man and a life gone astray. Next week, we will dive into this strange and penetrating story, examine it from all sorts of different angles as we try to understand what Melville had in mind. What was he trying to share with us about compassion, about society and interpersonal relationships.
You all will have different assessment assignments –hand-picked by me - but they have to remain Top Secret – just between us. We’ll share them at the end of our time with this unusual tale.
We will read the story together – some in class – some on your own. Near the end of the story, you will get an email from your teacher with your wrap-up Bartleby assignment – BUT again, you must keep what you’re working on a secret. Everyone will have their own interpretation of this unusual tale.
I want you to come up with yours – on your own.
THE LINK: http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/LCS/bartleby.pdf
I would have loved your classes!