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There he was in Komatke, Arizona, facing all the local problems of high dropout rates and low test scores. He couldn't get his students, Native Americans who came from primarily oral cultures, interested in writing.
However, one day he found some old 8mm films from the Blackhawk label. So he decided to employ Laurel and Hardy as teacher's aids. The working assumption was that physical comedy, like music, has universal appeal. He chose Big Business and The Music Box to start.
Spencer ran the films without letting the children see any of the silent movie titles or hear the "soundie" tracks. Then he asked the kids to fill in the blanks by writing their own scripts. They didn't always guess exactly what was going on, but all their solutions were creative and fun -- and more often correctly punctuated! Students felt encouraged to consider writing as another form of storytelling, and the analogy was reinforced by their explorations into screenwriting.
If you want to read the whole story, check out the March 1995 issue of English Journal, available in public and university libraries.