Followers

Friday, November 29, 2013

Dead Poets Society Real Time Notes 10/19

John Keating- Robin Williams

Robert Sean Leonard –Neil Perry

Ethan Hawke – Todd Anderson

Good Teaching: Robin Williams enters the classroom whistling his first day teaching them. He then has

them follow him out of the classroom and asks the class if they know where ”Oh captain my captain”

and lets them know it’s from a poem. He then explains his history as a student at the school and makes

some jokes. He makes fun of a few names in good fun.

“We are food for worms” a line he says to explain life.

He shows them students who since passed and makes a fake ghost sounds “Carpe Diem (Seize the day)”

“Make Your Lives Extraordinary”

The students walk out after the bell and call Mr. Keating’s class weird and spooky.

Mr. Keating asks the class to rip out a page in the book that is an introduction to poetry that gives a

formula for deciding if a poem is good. He does this while graphing on the chalk board. He motivates the

class by telling them they will learn to love poetry by how words and poems can change the world. He

is really upbeat and engages the class the entire time. He then has a huddle where he explains why we

read and write poetry (we are members of the human race) and why poetry is important to life as we

know it. He says that each person’s life is a verse and asks what their verse will be.

Robin Williams explains to students what the dead poets society is at the request of the students. He

gets down on his knees outside the school in the grass field and enthusiastically explains what it was and

then whistles and walks away.

Neil finds the dead poets book in his room with Mr. Keating’s name inscribed on the inside cover.

Mr. Keating called on Todd Anderson who didn’t want to speak so he instead called on Perry without

causing a scene. He then uses several impersonations to inspire the students to want to learn about

Shakespeare. Then he has students stand on his desk to see that sometimes you must look at things

from a different perspective.

Mr. Keating takes the students outside to kick balls and recite Shakespeare while listening to music. He

acts like a coach as he encourages them to be excited.

Mr. Keating lets Student Hopkins get away with joke as he lets him know that he should never be

ordinary.

Mr, Keating has Todd Anderson stand in front of the class and YAWP and answer questions to get him

over his fear of speaking in front of class, and to let him know that he has the ability to be a poet/writer.

Mr. Keating gets the class motivated with sports as classical music plays in the background.

Mr. Keating explains conformity outside with a walking exercise. “ Two Roads…”“ I took the one less

travelled” quote.

Bad Teaching:

Neil’s dad comes into the dorm room and tells him in front of his friends that he should drop

extracurricular activities in favor of academic success. He then asked if they could be excused with Neil

and then exits to the hall and tells him not to defy him and how much it means to his mother that he

attends medical school.

First few teacher scenes seem that they are all very rigid and strict. They seem to be obsessed with

discipline and order.

Library scene: The teacher smoking asks the students to stop chattering and sit down in the library as he

smokes off his pipe. Smoking pipe teacher guy asks the students to shut up.

Mr. Keating later calls out Todd for being shy ion front of class.

No comments:

Post a Comment