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 »
Posts Tagged: tales from the classroom
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 »
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 »
I consistently feel like an incredibly lucky teacher for many reasons: the incredible young people I work with, the supportive and progressive district which employs me, the opportunity to engage with material I love every day, and so many more. One quality of my job that makes me feel particularly fortunate at the beginning of… Continue Reading »
I had taught English 9 for eight years straight when my teaching assignment changed and there followed a five-year hiatus in which I didn’t teach it at all until this year. Fortunately for my students this year, in the intervening years I attended the Folger Teaching Shakespeare Institute. Our English 9 curriculum includes the classic… Continue Reading »
Dale Dworak, an alum of the Teaching Shakespeare Institute 2016, teaches history at a public high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After spending four intense weeks at the Folger, he rethought how he’d been teaching primary source documents and informational texts. We’re sharing with you one of his brilliant ideas for connecting students to the words… Continue Reading »
I work at a college preparatory school for students with language based learning differences, and I teach a yearlong course on the works of Shakespeare. My students’ learning profiles are diverse. I like to say that the only thing my students have in common is that they all learn differently! So how do I teach Shakespeare… Continue Reading »
On April 23rd 2016, while the whole world seemed to be celebrating the life and work of William Shakespeare for the 400th anniversary of his death, I was in mourning. I did not expect to be. After all, experiencing grief for the four-century-dead is certainly what Claudius would call, “obsequious sorrow.” However, I wasn’t so… Continue Reading »
“I don’t have to condone it to understand it. The pain that people feel is real.” While most watched DeRay McKesson, Baltimore native and #blacklivesmatter activist, deliver these words in April 2015 (describing the unrest that occurred shortly after Freddie Gray’s funeral through the screens of their television), my students and I watched it… Continue Reading »
This year, I joined the Folger-DCPS professional learning cohort, a group of DC Public Schools teachers working in 9th grade ELA and Special Education classrooms—all implementing the new unit on Romeo and Juliet developed by the Folger Shakespeare Library for our district. This experience meant new curricular materials, new approaches to teaching and learning, new… Continue Reading »
