"Wizard Mode" is a documentary film (which was shown last week at the DOXA Film Festival here in Vancouver and can be seen through Vimeo on Demand) about a guy named Robert Ganyo, who is a legend in the world of pinball (obviously reminiscent of the Who's "rock opera", "Tommy", but Robert isn't a "deaf, dumb and blind kid" like Tommy was -- he has autism and when he was a child, his parents were told that he would never speak, or read or write). I confess I haven't yet seen the film; I just read about it on the CBC web page, but it does sound like a great story. If you are interested in getting insights into the world of autism, there is a great movie about Temple Grandin (called "Temple Grandin"!), who also has autism, and is a famous scientist whose work with farm animals is particularly of note. I was reluctant to watch the movie, because one of the foci of her work is creating more humane slaughterhouses, but although it is awful to think of animals being killed to be eaten, it is a fact of life (I eat meat, although not nearly as much as I used to) and her philosophy is that if we are going to eat meat, it is incumbent on us to treat the animals we eat as kindly and sensitively as we can. It is a funny, sad and engaging movie.
Telling these stories helps us see the world in a different way. We learn to walk through the world in another person's shoes. We learn empathy. We learn how to listen. That's one reason why theatre is so important. It gives us a chance to see the world through the eyes of other people. Lately, I have read a number of books that touch on the time of Richard III and Henry VIII of England. Of course, we can't know that what we are told in these stories is "true" -- "based on a true story" is a very loose description of some films, books and plays. But we are seeing someone's truth (maybe the writer's, maybe the actor's, maybe a combination of many people's visions). But seeing the stories acted out makes us ask the questions. What would I do in that circumstance? Why does she do what she does?
I stayed up late last night to watch "Anne of the Thousand Days" about Anne Boleyn. If you don't know the story, here is a very short synopsis. Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII's second wife. He was married to Catherine of Aragon when he was a teenager, but their 20 year marriage produced no male heirs (just the woman later known as "Bloody Mary", Queen Mary I) and he became infatuated with the young, vivacious Anne who was a lady-in-waiting for Catherine. He wanted a divorce from Catherine and when the Pope refused to grant it, Henry took England out of the Catholic church and declared himself the head of the "Anglican" church. And he married Anne. Poor Anne gave him a daughter as well (later Queen Elizabeth I) but miscarried the son that he wanted so badly. So a thousand days after he wedded her, he had her executed on trumped up charges of adultery. It is a shocking story and Henry continued his shocking ways, executing his fifth wife for adultery as well, annulling his marriage to Anne of Cleves, because he didn't like the way she looked and having people like Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell executed because they wouldn't or couldn't do his bidding. He fancied himself a true "Renaissance man", and played a number of musical instruments and wrote poetry and music, and loved sports. I read that they think perhaps a concussion he received after a fall while jousting might have been responsible for his erratic behaviour and violent tendencies. Of course, that didn't help any of the victims of his rage and disappointment.
Anyway, this focus on stories is one of the aspects of our new curriculum -- certainly a focal point of First Peoples' Principles of Learning. We already understand the value of sharing experiences -- that's why we tell stories at the beginning of drama class and why we act out stories in a variety of ways throughout the drama program from grades 8 through 12. I just finished Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian which tells the history of the first people of North America from contact to the present day (Thomas King is a very entertaining writer, and although he is angry about all the wrongs perpetrated against indigenous people, he still writes in a way that is very lively and even sometimes, funny) and am now reading Wab Kinew's The Reason You Walk which is the story of his dysfunctional relationship with his own father. Both books were recommended in the workshops we've attended recently to help us come to grips with the new curriculum. It's cloudy and cool today -- perhaps a perfect time to sit down with a good book!
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