Teaching Colleagues,

Hello, hello, hello! We know where you are...sailing along, w-a-a-a-y into the semester. Changing lives almost every minute of every day even though—oh my—it doesn’t feel like that a lot of days. It’s true though. You know it! And we know it!

And yet...where the heck have we been?! Like you, working hard on all kinds of stuff and, as always, working in your service. Even though, embarrassingly enough, this is the first Bard Notes of the school year, they’ll be coming more frequently and regularly from now on because we have a lot to tell you and ask you. Stay tuned!

First things first: we have worked hard on putting in writing the WHAT and HOW of the very powerful Folger Method. It’s the very effective—and best—way that compels students to navigate their way with enthusiasm through all kinds of complex texts...including Shakespeare. We demonstrate this all the time when we work with you in person—in institutes, academies, PD in your school, at NCTE and more. Since our work is ever-expanding, though, we saw the need to capture all of this in words. It took us a while, because it’s like capturing lightning in a bottle.

The Folger Method boils down to a basic set of Principles and Practices. Today, the Principles. Next up: The Practices. Here we go:

The language is what enables students to discover amazing things in the texts, the world, and themselves. 

• Shakespeare’s original language
• Primary source materials from the Folger and elsewhere
• Facts that present a complete picture of the Early Modern world
• Honest conversations about the hard questions raised in the plays

Every single student can learn this way, and every teacher can teach this way. Use our tools to help all students read closely, interrogate actively, and make meaning from texts.

If your Shakespeare lives on a pedestal, take him down and move him to a space where he can talk to everyday people...and other great writers like Toni Morrison and Julia Alvarez, Scott Fitzgerald and Azar Nafisi, James Baldwin and Homer, Frederick Douglass and Joy Harjo, Jane Austen and Pablo Neruda, Amy Tan and George Moses Horton. 

Together with your students, embrace the questions.

Set up the interactions through which your students and Shakespeare discover each other.   

Shakespeare has something to say to everybody, and everybody has something to say back to Shakespeare. The future of the humanities—and our world—depends on the insights and contributions of all our students.

When students learn this way, these things improve:

• their ability to read closely,
• their ability to cite evidence from the text,
• their confidence in tackling the next challenge.

Next on deck, putting these principles into practice!

Thanks and love,

PO’B

Peggy O'Brien, Ph.D.
Director of Education 
Folger Shakespeare Library 
201 East Capitol Street, SE 
Washington, DC 20003 
202.675.0372 
folger.edu/teacher-membership
@obrienfolger

P.S. Speaking of “on deck” and baseball...how about the WASHINGTON NATIONALS headed to the World Series???!!!! So good to have something to cheer about in DC! We’re all pretty excited as you can see.