Professional Development

Teachers are an essential part of the Folger. Work with us face-to-face and online! 

Virtual Professional Development

Become a Teacher Member of the Folger and be the first to receive invitations to special programs like these upcoming Zoom sessions: 

• December 1, 2021, 8-9pm ET- December Keynote: "This Illness is No Metaphor: Romeo and Juliet and the Plague," Dr. Ellen MacKay, University of Chicago   *Zoom link forthcoming*
• December 9, 2021, 8-9pm ET - Teacher Workshop: "Black Shakespeare," Reconstruction.us + Folger   *Zoom link forthcoming*
• January 13, 2022, 8-9pm ET - Teacher Workshop: "Reading Fred Wilson's Art Alongside William Shakespeare's Words," Smithsonian American Art Museum + Folger   *Zoom link forthcoming*

Folger Teaching is HERE!

Check out Folger Teaching, our online home for Teacher Members of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Become a Teacher Member to enjoy exclusive access to live-streamed workshops and a video library of on-demand professional development. Explore lesson plans that get students grappling on their own with a wide range of complex texts. Dive deep into the content that inspired you to teach it as you explore specially curated performances, exhibitions and research from the wide world of the Folger.

Don't miss our on-demand and live workshops on Folger Teaching Live! And check out these popular resources that might help you these days (and beyond). 

• Juicy Lesson! 20-minute Hamlet
• Race, Racism, and Shakespeare with Dr. Ruben Espinosa
• Teaching Black Women Poets with Teri Cross Davis
• Master Class: Romeo and Juliet
• The Key to Getting ALL Students Understanding Complex Texts
• Juicy Lesson! Choral Reading Imtiaz Dharker's "The Trick" and Shakespeare's Sonnet 43

To access this goodness, you'll need to be a Teacher Member. If you're not yet a Teacher Member, find out how to join below!

Become a Teacher Member!

For a $40 donation, become a Teacher Member of the Folger Shakespeare Library and receive unprecedented support for the deeply important work you do. Have the very best of the Folger at your fingertips, all the time, at Folger Teaching. As a Teacher Member, you’ll have exclusive access to live-streaming and on-demand webinars, along with a growing library of lesson plans and other classroom resources. Be a part of this institution and of our robust teacher community that stretches across the country and around the world. Let us work together to make teaching and learning exciting, rigorous, and inspiring for all.

Teaching Shakespeare Is Teaching Race

As with any Folger program for teachers, participants will leave with scholarly knowledge and classroom tools to help students grapple with the real thing: Shakespeare’s words, critical race work, representation and power in literature, and how all these things connect. Learn about the #ShakeRace movement and what trailblazing scholarship on race and Shakespeare has to do with you and your students. Study recently uncovered elements of early modern and early American history that explode assumptions about our racial past. Learn techniques for getting every student seeing, interrogating, and responding to the language of race in Shakespeare (and any text). Help students use their own minds and voices—and the power of the humanities—as a force for good. Teach Shakespeare for a changed world. This virtual workshop for teachers took place July 19–23, 2021.

DC Public Schools

We love our city and its teachers. We have partnered with DCPS to lead the teaching and learning of Shakespeare in our city’s public schools. From developing a new high school Shakespeare curriculum and providing professional development for English teachers to hosting student matinees and public demonstrations of student learning, we are committed to supporting the work of DCPS teachers and students. This initiative is multi-faceted and growing, so please check back, or email Corinne Viglietta (cviglietta@folger.edu), for more information.

Teaching Shakespeare Institute

Most often with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Folger offers many summer programs for middle and high school teachers—intense, collaborative and joyful deep dives into Shakespeare, his world, our world and more—from the perspectives of scholarship, performance, and classroom practice. This summer’s Teaching Shakespeare Institute, Teaching Shakespeare 2021: Shakespeare and the Making of America, goes virtual!