“Folger Shakespeare Library's Teaching Shakespeare Institute” is a four-week institute for twenty-five secondary school teachers to examine Shakespeare's plays. Robert G. Young, Director of Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library, leads an institute on four plays: The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Pericles. Participants examine the texts, other related primary sources, and performance histories; they also stage scenes from the plays and explore the incorporation of pedagogical technologies in the classroom. To consider similarities and differences among the plays in genre, theme, structure, and “the variety and relative depth of the characters that inhabit them,” the institute also probes Shakespeare’s creative process and use of sources, as well as questions of “authorship, collaboration, and revision.” Teachers work with institute faculty and staff to discover new ways of understanding and teaching Shakespeare. In addition to the project director, the institute faculty includes scholars Jay Halio (University of Delaware), Margaret Maurer (Colgate University), Stephen Dickey (University of California, Los Angeles); actor-directors Caleen Sinnette Jennings (American University) and Michael Tolaydo (St. Mary’s College); and curriculum coordinators Michael LoMonico and Susan Biondo-Hench. Staff from the Library, including curator of art Erin Blake and research director David Schalkwyk, also contribute. Participants join the Folger’s Teaching Shakespeare online network, home and launch pad for the participant-developed lesson plans and annotated primary sources, as well as for discussions with Shakespeare teachers across the nation.
