As a participant in the four-week Teaching Shakespeare Institute 2016, I undertook academic research that took me deep into Shakespeare’s language and the Reading Rooms of the Folger. I was intrigued by the role marriage played in two of the plays we studied, Othello and The Merchant of Venice—especially the manner in which particular women… Continue Reading »
Posts Categorized: Shakespeare/teaching-shakespeare-2
I teach high school English in St. Louis, Missouri, just miles from Ferguson, Missouri. Three years ago, after the Black Lives Matter movement started, I tried to bring the conversation about power and injustice into my classroom with the classics. Shakespeare raises tough, nuanced questions about identity, difference, community, and violence. His language is a… Continue Reading »
Distributing copies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream fills me with a bit of hope, but also a little anxiety. There’s always a risk of losing student engagement when teaching a text students perceive to be beyond their level and interest, especially as they are developing their analytical thinking skills. While students may be skeptical (but… Continue Reading »
Last week, my classes were right in the middle of two tragedies–Othello and Hamlet. My Senior English class had just finished Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” speech and my Junior Dual Enrollment class had just read the temptation scene in Othello (3.3). I wanted to do an activity that had some novelty in… Continue Reading »
We’ve heard from many of you at our face-to-face teacher workshops and over email, too, about ideas for integrating the visual arts in Shakespeare learning. Specifically, you have shared questions and ideas related to using painting, drawing, and design to deepen students’ connections to Shakespeare’s language. Here are 4 more resources to inspire your thinking… Continue Reading »
The longer I teach English, the more interested I become in etymology. I find that learning and then teaching the roots of English words has a way of illuminating texts both for myself, as a lifelong learner, and for the students that I am lucky to encounter. For instance, I think something about reading Hamlet… Continue Reading »
At the start of our Romeo and Juliet unit, I had my students begin a Digital Shakespeare Portfolio: a blog account that would house all of their annotations, as well as a place to discuss their thoughts on the interactive approach we’ve been trying out in class. So far, engagement has been high and responses… Continue Reading »
The anticipation and excitement of beginning a new text always invigorates me in my classroom. It feels like a fresh start, a chance to really create some magic in my classroom. I always think, is this going to be the text that they remember 10 years from now? My students do not always share my… Continue Reading »
Today we’re re-posting one of our favorite throwbacks: an incredibly thoughtful and intelligent meditation on language, identity, difference, and community—and a teaching idea getting at those big ideas, too. Thank you to Folger family member and high school English teacher Amber Phelps for sharing this powerful blog post with the world. “I don’t have to… Continue Reading »
The juniors and seniors in my Shakespeare elective are exploring the flawed characters and twisted plot of Measure for Measure. By the end of Act 4, Angelo has offered an indecent proposal to Isabella, the Duke has countered by orchestrating the bed trick with Isabella and Mariana, the Provost has received orders to behead Claudio… Continue Reading »
