#FolgerOfficeHours and The Winter’s Tale

Last Thursday the Folger Education department took to Twitter for our second ”office hours” session to talk with teachers about how they’re teaching Shakespeare.

We love having an informal time to interact with you, answer your questions, and find out what your students are working on.

Here’s a great question we received from James Evans:

@FolgerED Creating resources for Winter's Tale. Any ideas about effective classroom activities particular to that play? #FolgerOfficeHours—
James Evans (@JimmyE1599) February 20, 2014

The Winter’s Tale is a comedy with a happy ending, but there’s plenty of compelling drama along the way: murderous passions, man-eating bears, princes and princesses in disguise, and more.

Although this play may not be taught as frequently as Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, don’t let that discourage you from taking it on. The Folger has a curriculum guide put together by experts who believe, as the Folger does, that the best way to engage students in Shakespeare is to get them speaking the words and working with the language.

You can find more classroom ideas on the Folger website, where we have an entire page dedicated to The Winter’s Tale. Take a listen to our Insider’s Guide for the play, or explore a lesson plan that asks students to examine possible causes for Leontes’s jealousy by interpreting language and acting out scenes between characters.

Or have your students watch a behind-the-scenes interview with these two actors from the Folger Theatre’s 2009 production, as they discuss the play’s themes of love, forgiveness, and second chances:

Do you have more ideas for effective classroom activities related to The Winter’s Tale? Share them in the comments below.

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for information on the next #FolgerOfficeHours.

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Peggy Says: A Walk on the Wild Side

Lots of buzz around the Folger these days because Janet Griffin, Artistic Producer of the Folger Theatre, and Robert Richmond, director of our upcoming production of Richard III, are taking a walk on the wild side.

You know about the theatre here, right?  Background in case you don’t:  Folks here sometimes call the Folger Theatre “an evocation of an Elizabethan theatre”… not a model of any one in particular but with features like galleries and an inner above that make you think of the Globe.

It’s a sweet little 250-seat theatre tucked right inside the Library building.  Janet and her team produce three or four award-winning plays a year, and if you haven’t seen a play here, put us on your New Year’s resolution list right this minute.

So how do we get from an Elizabethan theatre to the wild side?

Even though the set can look different depending on the play, the Folger Theatre has always, always looked like this:

EXCEPT when Richard III opens next week, the theatre will look like this:

We’ve taken out all of the orchestra seats, built a platform stage in that newly available space, and put new seats on what has been the stage since it was built in 1932.

Wild side: for the first time ever, theatre in the round at the Folger.  (Below the platform stage, there are multiple traps and a trolley… a lot of bodies falling and ultimately rising in this play.)

The whole theatre in the round idea is anything but new… but it’s new here.  And I am fairly crazed about it because it’s that fabulous kind of change that forces us to abandon all of our assumptions and to begin to perceive differently.

Actors, audience, director, tech crews all have had to, or will have to, jettison all their previous ideas about that space and start anew.  Audience members will be much closer to the actors, and the actors must work in a 360-degree universe.

And that’s just for starters. To me—a future audience member—it feels risky and exciting, intimate and all about discovery.

So what does this have to do with teachers?  A few key things:

• We’re eager to see how our actors do here, but really . . . teachers are always working in the round.  This close, intense kind of work where real learning happens. . . you do it all day every day.  You are working in the round always, and without a net.  Impressive.

• Changing up the physical set-up in your classroom can be just as exciting as what’s happening at the Folger Theatre.  Encouraging new perspectives, and burying worn out assumptions.  (It’s worth thinking about, even though you might have to treat the teacher who shares your classroom to a dinner out.) Check out teacher Jennie Magiera’s perspective in Ed Week’s Teaching Ahead blog.

• Overall, it reminds us about the huge importance of risk.  OK, so as teachers, we are all challenged with required tasks that threaten to sap our energy and innovation chops.  But if we stop taking risks, we open the door to losing our edge.  And that’s unthinkable.  For you or your students.

I’ll keep you posted on how the Folger Theatre’s big risk turns out.  Or better yet, come and see for yourself.  Click here to see a time-lapsed video of the Theatre’s transformation.

Most important: in the comment box, share a one-sentence description of the last risk that you took in your classroom. We can inspire one another this way, and none of us are ever beyond the need for inspiration.

Peggy O’Brien is the Director of Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Follow her on Twitter at @obrienfolger or send her an email at pobrien@folger.edu.

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Shakespeare Festivals: Getting Students On Their Feet

Something very special happens when you have students up on their feet, with Shakespeare’s language in their mouths, performing for each other, and learning from each other.

That’s what we try to make happen each year at our Secondary School Shakespeare Festival.

In March, we’re bringing together 48 schools, with students in grades 7-12, from D.C., Virginia, and Maryland. Our goal? To create a gathering place where everyone is welcome, and where Shakespeare is the common ground.

Students come to the Folger for a full day and perform prepared pieces from Shakespeare, with students from other schools as their audience. Performances usually run for 25 minutes, and while we welcome abridged versions of the plays or theme-based montages, Shakespeare’s original language is king.

We’re particularly excited for this year because it’s the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birthday! Tell us, are you doing anything special at your school to celebrate? Are you teaming up with any schools in your area? Share with us in the comments or send Peggy an email at pobrien@folger.edu.

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Master Class Musings: Success!

Last month, Folger Education streamed a live master class on Teaching Romeo and Juliet.

Hundreds of teachers participated, and afterward we asked for your feedback. The response was so positive!

Many of the teachers surveyed said they appreciated the well-rounded approach embodied by our three video segments on scholarship, performance, and the classroom.

Here’s a sampling of what we heard back:

“I had no clue what to expect, but by ten minutes in I was wishing that the class was more than an hour. There were so many things packed into the time that I could not wait to start studying with my students.”

“Yes – the interviews, clips, and examples of actual classroom work gave a direct, personal-involvement feel. I felt more engaged than I have had with some live professional development! ( not the Folger’s, of course!)”

“I think it was very helpful to learn directly from the experts who are closely tied to the content that we ourselves only re-visit one month out of the year. Even though I’ve taught R+J to at least 14 different classes, I enjoyed the detailed glance into several different perspectives of the play.”

Also, here’s what we’re hearing from you about what you’d like to see in future master classes:

• more examples of in-classroom techniques and activities
• more lesson planning ideas, both things that worked and things that did not
• teaching strategies that could be used across multiple Shakespeare plays

It’s great to get this kind of feedback from you. Teachers are the rockstars in our book, and our job is to help you do what you do best. We’re on it!

And if you didn’t get a chance to participate in the master class live, you can watch a recorded version online. Happy teaching!

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Happy New Year!

With 2013 behind us, we review some of our most popular posts from the year:

How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare

Author Ken Ludwig introduces his children to Shakespeare using particular passages, which he puts in context for them and then has them memorize. His new book shares these techniques and strategies with parents and educators.

Centos: Mix and match!

A “centos” is a poem that has been created using lines from the works of other writers and is a form that has been around for almost two thousand years. Using Shakespeare quotes in these poems can be a fun activity for students.

Plays of Preference

Why is it that Shakespeare’s messy, uncomfortable plays stick with us so?

Is Shakespeare Literature?

“The beauty of learning Shakespeare through performance is that it provides students a deeply rigorous interaction with a complex text at the same time that it stimulates their creativity and their ability to problem-solve collaboratively. Oh, and yes — it’s a ton of fun.”

 

We also revisit some popular posts that, though written prior to 2013, still got plenty of views this year:

• Shakespeare…in other words
• Teaching Shakespeare and ELL/ESL
• Orson Welles and Macbeth
• Shakespeare and the Common Core Standards

 

What were some of your favorite Making A Scene blog posts from 2013? What blog topics should we explore in 2014?

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It’s Almost Christmas

We’re turning back the clock a few years, to revisit a blog post from Christmas 2009, written by Mike LoMonico. ‘Tis the season to be jolly and maybe think about Shakespeare.  Here are a few tidbits for your holiday pleasure.

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Teacher Tuesday: Shakespeare and Flipped Classrooms

Flipped classrooms are getting a lot of buzz right now. Can the model be used to successfully teach Shakespeare?

In a flipped classroom, instruction is offered during homework time (often in the form of short videos online), and teachers focus more on implementation activities while students are in the classroom.

Advocates say that students engage more with the material, have more opportunities to ask their teachers questions, and take more ownership over their learning with this model. If a student doesn’t understand an instructional video the first time, he or she is able to watch it again. But some critics say that this model creates problems for students who don’t have access to technology outside of school.

The New York Times Opinionator blog recently looked at the effects of the flipped classroom on Clintondale High School near Detroit, the first American high school to do a complete flip.

And in a segment about flipped classrooms that aired last week, PBS NewsHour interviewed Justin Reich, an educational researcher at Harvard University.

“What is exciting to me about the flipped classroom is that it gets teachers asking two really important fundamental questions,” Reich said. “What are the best ways for me to use my time, especially the very precious time I have in classrooms with my students, and then, what are the kinds of direct instruction that I could provide that could be digitized so people could watch it again?”

So, how about teaching Shakespeare’s plays in a flipped classroom? High school teacher Greta Brasgalla shares her ideas and methods in this video from the Folger’s “Teacher to Teacher” series:

In what ways are you experimenting with “flipped classroom” techniques? Do you think it’s a positive trend? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments below.

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The Folger’s Philosophy of Teaching and Learning

The Folger Shakespeare Library is a hotbed of education staff, scholars, actors, directors, curators, librarians, docents, and digital geeks in Washington, DC, teamed up with teachers all over the country – in an endless collaboration focused on your teaching and your students’ learning.

What do we believe about teaching and learning? Read on:

1. We believe that teachers are the most important and the most powerful people on earth. Period.

2. All students should have access to Shakespeare’s rigorous texts and compelling ideas. Students at all levels of proficiency can and should engage deeply with these plays.

3. You and all of your students can dive into, engage with, and make sense of these complex texts with great success. This work will enhance your students’ close reading and analytical skills. Yours, too. And all of you will have an enormous amount of fun in the process!

4. It’s all about the language. Approach, connect with, and befriend Shakespeare’s language head on. Your students’ direct connection with his language is the key to unlocking the plays – and everything in them. We don’t mean you, as teacher, translating for them. And we don’t mean using those “made easy” books. We mean THEM speaking and moving and figuring out HIM… words, lines, scenes, plays. His language in the mouths of your students is splendid and exciting all on its own. And it is the essential step that results in sending his ideas into their brains.

5. So… if you are teaching Shakespeare the way you were taught, you might need to give that up. If you are teaching Shakespeare from those dumbed-down versions of the plays created by publishers who believe that both you and your students are not smart enough to understand the real thing, throw them out. Right now.

6. The Folger continues to produce – with and for teachers – ever-evolving sets of language tools, active close reading strategies, performance techniques, and pathways through the plays that are energizing and fun, and that relentlessly focus on text. In DC and all over the place, we teach teachers how to do this work. A poorly kept secret: teachers use these tools and strategies to teach all kinds of literature, and subjects way beyond English.

7. Using these tools and strategies, you and your students work in the plays rigorously and vigorously in the way that scholars and actors do. Your students make their way actively – reading closely, thinking deeply, and citing textual evidence all over the place. They build their skills and their knowledge. And you do too. Research has shown us that learning this way dramatically increases students’ confidence – in their ability to tackle something hard, to figure it out, to “own” this playwright and his plays – and boosts their enthusiasm for learning the next hard thing: August Wilson, reconstruction, Lear, calculus, Arabic.

8. Any teacher can teach this way. You don’t have to know anything about acting or directing or any of that stuff. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. He knew how to write. You know how to teach. And if you’re worried about this last part, we can help you with that.

Peggy O’Brien is the Director of Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Follow her on Twitter at @obrienfolger or send her an email at pobrien@folger.edu.

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Peggy Says: Thoughts from Folger Education’s Director

In the rush of the holiday season, our director of education, Peggy O’Brien, pauses to offer these reflections, looking back at NCTE 2013 and ahead to a bright future!

On the Folger’s presence at NCTE…

• What a thrill to be in the midst of so many English teachers!  What possibly could be better? It’s so good to be home.
• We always want what we bring to NCTE—our sessions, offerings at the booth, materials—to be as useful to teachers as they can possibly be. People packed the sessions, many have followed up on email for more info… yes!
• Next year, NCTE is in DC! Or, more accurately, just outside of DC. We’ll present at the conference, but we also want LOADS of teachers to come to the Folger… see a play, hang out with some rare books and manuscripts, participate in hands-on, active workshops in the Folger Theatre, and more.
• Lots of folks interested in the Folger apps—Othello, Romeo, and Macbeth.  The techie way to plunge students (and teachers) right into the play. Hamlet and the Dream out before the end of 2013. Add these to the formats the Folger already offers: wonderfully edited plays available in paperback books (as they have been for ages) and free online versions in the Folger Digital Texts (www.folgerdigitaltexts.org). Love it!
• So happy to be distributing our new Folger Philosophy of Teaching and Learning. The philosophy’s not new, but the articulation is. It’s good to have our foundation in print.

On next week’s master class…

• Gearing up for our Master Class on Dec. 11: Our “teacher on the street” videography team—Lauren Chavey and Beth O’Brien—asking teachers at NCTE about their greatest successes and challenges teaching R+J. Got such compelling, splendid answers.  Teaser:  With a particularly tough ninth grade class, using Marvin Gaye to get everybody into the play. Big success story!

On great teachers and educators…

• Such a treat and a relief to be among folks who are talking passionately about good teaching, rather than the politics of the Common Core. Obviously, policy is important, but… great teaching is what really makes it all happen.

• Met Jim Burke, whom I have described many times as in “the Mount Rushmore of English teachers.” He’s great and so are his new books on the Common Core—they are just based on solid, excellent teaching.  Perfect.

• Big shout out to Eileen Landay and the Arts Literacy Project that she founded at Brown University… and her mention of the evidence provided by neuroscience that points to the difference between reading vs. reading and doing.

On the Folger’s Romeo and Juliet flash mob…

• THE FOLGER FLASH MOB:  FABULOUS!  150+ people in the cold, in the dark, in the plaza next to the Convention Center—Boston at 6pm on a Saturday night—all having the time of their lives doing the balcony scene. Now for our big question: What collaborative, public Shakespeare do we do at NCTE next year?

Peggy O’Brien is the Director of Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Follow her on Twitter at @obrienfolger or send her an email at pobrien@folger.edu.

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Relive Our Romeo and Juliet Flash Mob in Boston

We’re truly sorry if you missed our flash mob balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, at the NCTE annual convention in Boston last month. It was a blast! To console those who couldn’t be there, and to offer a happy remembrance to those who participated, we present these videos for your enjoyment.

Our goal was to gather as many people as possible, to perform in unison an edited version of Act 2, Scene 2.

“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” begin the Romeos.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow That I shall say “Good night” till it be morrow,” chorus the Juliets at the end of the scene.

Yes, the image is a bit dark, but what counts is the audio – which certainly comes through loud and clear! The second video gives you a view from above.

And now this has us thinking, what other scenes from Shakespeare would make for fun flash mobs? If you’ve got ideas, we want to hear from you! Please share in the comments below.

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