Rodeo and Juliet

#SOL18

"Mrs. Faulhaber, Mr. D wants to see you," the student beckoned me to the classroom next door.

As I entered my colleague's classroom, the kids, all 28 of them, turned to me. I'm a literacy coach in the district and I had worked in this classroom quite a bit. The kids seemed excited about what was going to happen next.

"Tell her," their teacher said. All eyes turned towards Catherine, a bright student who had researched skateboard tricks for the research project.

"Well," Catherine started, "I found a movie." The kids started tittering. They were wrapping up their reading of Romeo & Juliet this week, so I wondered if she had discovered the R&J version

"Okay?" I said.

"I was doing some research about Romeo & Juliet and well, I found this movie. It's called Rodeo & Juliet." Catherine, along with the whole class grinned. That was not what I expected to hear.

I got a little nervous. "Okaaaaay...."

"It's a movie about a girl who moves to the country and falls in love with a sexy cowboy," she explained. "It's so corny."

I have to admit, I was relieved. Based on the title, I was afraid this movie was something that would air on the After Dark channel. From her description, it sounded more like a Hallmark movie.

I wasn't quite sure where to go from there. Then, inspiration!

"How is this movie connected to the play?" I asked.

"Well, they fall in love but they're not allowed to be together," one of Catherine's friends piped up.

"Ah! That's an archetype," I dropped in the vocabulary word I knew their teacher was going to be introducing in a few days. I love a little purposeful front-loading.

I waved good bye to the students and headed back to my office where maybe I spent some time watching a little bit of a movie. It was for educational purposes, after all.