{"id":190,"date":"2011-04-01T10:28:46","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T08:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=190"},"modified":"2011-04-01T10:28:46","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T08:28:46","slug":"the-day-i-threw-a-pair-of-slippers-at-a-student-in-class-and-he-seemed-to-enjoy-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2011\/04\/01\/the-day-i-threw-a-pair-of-slippers-at-a-student-in-class-and-he-seemed-to-enjoy-it\/","title":{"rendered":"THE DAY I THREW A PAIR OF SLIPPERS AT A STUDENT IN CLASS (AND HE SEEMED TO ENJOY IT!)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\tThree of my first year students were supposed to offer a dramatised reading of <em>Pygmalion<\/em>\u2019s Act IV. In it, after her successful impersonation of a lady at a posh party, Eliza quarrels bitterly with her teacher Higgins because she thinks he\u2019s not considered in depth what\u2019s to become of her once this odd experiment is over. I didn\u2019t want the students to simply read, I aimed this time at a more properly theatrical performance, and, so I was carrying simple props, like a couple of plastic envelopes shaped as the slippers she throws at him at the start of the quarrel.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the girl supposed to play Eliza never turned up, aghhhh, and, whether dismayed or inspired, I&#8217;m not sure, I volunteered to play the role. My, that was fun!! I got to throw the \u2018slippers\u2019 at the student playing Higgins and he had the pleasure of calling me names. I recommend this to any teacher, really!!! What amazing therapy!<\/p>\n<p>\tAlso, I think the point of the exercise was accomplished, indeed for my own benefit: we learned to see in the text what is usually missed in our fast, silent, private reading. And it turns out I myself had missed a key passage with Pickering\u2019s comments on personal style, the very subject of my previous entry. This is what the student playing Pickering read, and I finally <em>heard<\/em>, when Higgins complains that the party was mortally boring and \u201cThe whole thing has been simple purgatory\u201d:<\/p>\n<p>PICKERING. You&#8217;ve never been broken in properly to the social routine. I rather enjoy dipping into it occasionally myself: it makes me feel young again. Anyhow, it was a great success: an immense success. I was quite frightened once or twice because Eliza was doing it so well. <em>You see, lots of the real people can&#8217;t do it at all: they&#8217;re such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There&#8217;s always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.<\/em> (my emphasis).<\/p>\n<p>There you are!! Pickering, the party animal thirsting for glamour. He\u2019s boasting that Eliza shone out almost professionally and I see here the pride of her other Pygmalion. Sorry, Shaw, I\u2019d missed this but I\u2019ll still insist that Pickering should be allowed to leave the closet&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three of my first year students were supposed to offer a dramatised reading of Pygmalion\u2019s Act IV. In it, after her successful impersonation of a lady at a posh party, Eliza quarrels bitterly with her teacher Higgins because she thinks he\u2019s not considered in depth what\u2019s to become of her once this odd experiment is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-tools-and-rules","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}