Connecting Students to Shakespeare

The best way for teachers to keep it relevant is to realize that the man really knew how to write, and to figure out how your students can make the connection with him and his words without you being the connector. To figure out ways that your kids can connect with his language and therefore his characters in his plays. And the Folger, through Shakespeare Set Free and a number of other kinds of materials, gives you a lot of ideas about this, so that they can make their own connection.

That’s where the power is, and certainly all the time that I worked with kids at the Folger, the most powerful connection was to get his words in their mouths. And it might make you screech, because it doesn’t sound like Gielgud, it doesn’t sound like Kevin Kline, it doesn’t sound like Emma Thompson, but there’s nothing more wonderful than Shakespeare coming out of the mouth of a seventh grader, because you know that that’s the beginning. That’s not a product, it’s not the end of something, it’s the beginning of something, and that’s what you want. You want to light that spark so that it keeps on long after they are out of your class and into their own lives in a big way.