Teaching Colleagues:

Most of you are either just back after break, or you’re on break now, or you’re holding your breath until later in April. Right here, right now, we are bemoaning the fact that the Folger Shakespeare Library doesn’t have a spring break and we’re wondering if spring is ever, ever coming.

We’re also thinking about Dr. King whose life and painfully early death— fifty years ago this week, as you know—challenged us to come together in ways that we still have not accomplished. Like the orchard walls in Romeo and Juliet, the peaks on the way to the mountaintop are high and hard to climb. We continue to climb in earnest . . . 

 . . . as you do, every day in class. Of course, as always, we’re thinking about YOU. As you head down that home stretch, we want to make sure that you have a sense of Forsooth!, our online teacher community. 

Have you checked it out? Have you taken the plunge and become an inaugural Folger Teacher Member? 

Here’s just a quick highlights list of what’s available for you when you hop on Forsooth! as a Teacher Member:

• Four different one-hour Master Classes—each featuring lively discussion with scholars and classroom teachers. Check out the Master Class on Othello, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, or Hamlet. Excellent PD at your convenience! 
  
• Conversations with your teaching colleagues from over 55 different territories/states! 
  
• A discussion group on assessment 
  
• A discussion group on literature and social justice  
  
• A big confab about the question of summer reading, including reading recommendations for students of different ages  
  
• Lesson plans for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth, 1 Henry IV, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado, Othello, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s sonnets, and more  
  
• All handouts from Folger’s 5 sessions at NCTE 2017 in St. Louis – play-specific activities for Hamlet, Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth.