Spreading love

Lucy Fanto
Blog post #5
Understanding Lit
November 20, 2017

Spreading Love 

In this week's reading, Shakespeare's play describes a love triangle between three characters, Orsino, Violet as Cesario and Olivia. This love triangle caused the characters to act out and challenge their values. To me, this related to the way the children at tunbridge have competition with each other for different things.  It's not easy being at a young age and feeling the stress to be a specific way or to act a specific way. However, It is easy to feel the need to change yourself to fit in or be liked. 

In Shakespeare's play, the character Viola decides to disguise herself as a male with the name Cesario to get a job with the Duke. Although the disguise works, a love triangle occurs between Viola, Orsino and Olivia. Viola loves Orsino, Orsino is falling for Olivia, and Olivia is in love with Cesario because she is not aware that he is only disguised as a guy. The lack of honestly and self identity comes back to challenge all the characters when Sebastian, Viola's brother who she assumed was dead or still lost at sea, returns and everything is revealed. All the characters become truthful and decide to open their hearts to the one's that they really love. The siblings are reunited and Viola no longer has to hide who she is. This is an important story to understand because of the way that the characters identity is challenged and they aren't being themselves. Once the truth came out about who they were, thats when their true love for each other was able to shine through and benefit them. The values of identity, honestly, pride and self confidence are all apparent in this work by Shakespeare. We learn how important it is to hold these values true to yourself and to never hide who you are.

While volunteering at Tunbridge Charter School, I have learned a lot about the way children view themselves and how they act with each other. The teacher that I work with, Mrs. Grimm, runs an activity with her students called, "giving toodles". This activity is a way for her to pick a student and have the class complement the student while also giving the student a chance to complement themselves in front of the entire class. When I first experienced this activity, I was in awe of how it affected each individual and what it truly meant for them and their self-confidence. Every student was so anxious and excited to raise their hands and complement one another. They often went on long in depth stories of what they liked about one another, even when they weren't receiving a complement in return. The student of the day that was complemented would also walk around with a huge smile on their face after receiving their toodles and would feel more encouraged to raise their hand and participate the rest of that day.  This is an important value for them to learn to boost their self confidence and make them comfortable in their own skin and identity. 

It has been very important for me as a volunteer to also remain them of how to interact with each other when they get frustrated. Although the students are only in the first grade, I witnessed one interaction between two boys both disgusting how they felt about one of the girls in the class. They continued on with funny banter as to why she would like one of them more and began to show off their dance moves to try to get her attention. Listening to their conversation, I couldn't help but be baffled by the way that they felt the need to show off or speak overly highly about themselves, just for the attention of a girl at such young age. They were not comfortable with themselves enough to just act normal and talk to her, but instead were bragging and dancing in front of her to get her attention. 

I think this not only shows alot about the kids but also the society we live in today. The students are only in first grade and have all been felt the pressures of the toxic society, that they aren't good enough and have to boost themselves up by showing off and talking badly about the other person. Sometimes it can be very difficult to be who you are, especially if you're different from those around you, but there is nothing more powerful and special then being exactly who you are and who you want to be.

This incident with the students and the play have a lot in common about identity and our self confidence. We are constantly told that we need to hide, or change who we are because were not good enough or won't be liked. This should be something that we work on for the younger generations and for each other. No one deserves to grow up and think that aren't enough. I think it is important for every school, every classroom to teach like Mrs. Grimm and enforce the beauty in individuality and strength that it takes to stand up and be yourself. I believe that once it becomes a trend for people to be themselves, young students would be way more confident and successful with themselves. If the characters in the play were to do the same, the most likely would have found their true love much sooner.