Shakespeare Magazine
Presented February 27, 1998
NCTE Teaching Shakespeare Conference
Chicago

Imagine that you are getting ready to teach a Shakespeare unit and are thinking about how to design the teaching plan. You consult a trusted mentor who:

• has more teaching experience than you
• is your biggest fan
• has a predisposition to teach Shakespeare by performance
• has the talent of drawing out your opinions and desires rather than imposing an agenda.

All right, we concede that it’s weird, but really—imagine this mentor. Visualize the setting in which you talk. Smell the smells. Feel the fabric. Now answer the questions your mentor asks.

Have you chosen the play to teach?

How will your students react to its characters? Its plot situations?

What kind of video support have you found? Can you get enough videos—two minimum, more if possible—to set up comparisons of productions?

What do you most want your students to take away with from this unit? What skills? What ideas? What knowledge?

How much time do you have to teach the unit?

Can you accomplish your goals in this time? Do you need to adjust what it is you want your students to take away?

What about when they’re forty—what do you want your students to remember about this experience with Shakespeare?

Tell me about the students who are going to study this play with you. How much experience do they have with Shakespeare? Have they ever studied a Shakespeare play of this genre (comedy, history, tragedy)? How much work will you have to do to get them able to read and understand the language without your help? Can they read parts of the play as homework, or do you need to do it all in class?

What about your students vis a vis the issues the characters in this play are facing? Is there any common ground? Will your students have to stretch to understand the trials and desires of the characters they meet?

What’s the one scene of this play that will hold your students fast?

OK, let’s think about some of the things that might go on during the unit of study. Tell me about the ending first. What will be the culminating event for the unit? Is a test necessary? A paper? Will you end with a festival of scenes? How will you lay the foundation for these events? How much time at the end do you need to allow for the culminating event?

All right, now tell me about the beginning. How do you want to start? Can you jump right in with a trigger scene or do you need to do some work on language or theme or such?

Have you thought about your trigger scene? Is it short—about 60 lines or less? Does it contain some of the problems students will find in the play at large? Does it contain language that students will have to work to figure out? Does it contain physical action?

After the trigger scene, what will you do? Will your students need some kind of summary of the plot?

Big question—is it necessary to read every word of the play? What scenes can you skip? Do you need to summarize those scenes?

Another big question—what scenes do you most want to emphasize? What will you do with them? How much time will you spend on this group?

At this point, can you do some time calculations? Total days allotted minus the days it will take to do the advance work (optional) + trigger scene + emphasized scenes + culminating activity = X days remaining.

Do you need to make adjustments?

What do you most want to do with those X days?

Are you going to teach students to cut scenes?

Do you want to add a research component? If so, what sources will you point them to? Will they do online research?

How are you going to evaluate the work of this study unit? How will students let you know what they have done and what they are taking away?