Folger Education offers in-person and virtual options for professional development. We have a range of options to fit your schedule, whether you’re teaching in the Washington, DC, area or elsewhere in the United States.
By participating in our professional development trainings, you’ll learn the best ways to use the Folger Method in your classroom. The Folger Method is a way of teaching complex texts that enables all students to own—and enjoy—the process of reading closely, interrogating texts, discovering language with peers, and contributing to the ongoing human conversation about words and ideas.
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To find out when new professional development events are scheduled, sign up for our Education email list.
Virtual events
Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare
Join the Folger for a year-long series of virtual professional development sessions built around the Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare. Across five Saturday mornings from September through April, the Folger Mentor Teachers who developed the Guides’ five-week units will lead hands-on, two-hour workshops on the Shakespeare plays most commonly taught in schools: Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet.
This series offers a rare opportunity to learn directly from the educators who wrote the Guides, ask questions about their approach, and explore how they bring the Folger Method to life in their own classrooms. After each session, you will leave with ready-to-use lessons, a flexible unit framework grounded in the Folger Method, and practical strategies you can bring straight into your classroom.
Bundle and save
Register for individual sessions or subscribe to the full series and save 20%. Registration also includes a discount code for purchasing the corresponding Folger Guide to Teaching Shakespeare, whether you’d like to explore the Guide before the workshop or continue your learning afterward.
Explore the series
The 2026-27 series kicked off in September. Explore the remaining sessions below.
Teaching Macbeth with the Folger Guide
Teaching Romeo and Juliet with the Folger Guide
Teaching Hamlet with the Folger Guide
Teaching A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Folger Guide
Free, monthly sessions
Each month, join us online for a one-hour professional development session, usually held on a Wednesday evening. It’s free! Topics we’ve recently discussed include launching students into complex texts using 20-minute plays, teaching from the Shakespeare First Folio on the first day of school, using Folger Essential Practices like Tossed Lines and Choral Reading, and practical ways to collect meaningful data while making Shakespeare accessible to all learners.
Reading Like Writers: The Folger Method and Student Writing
Shakespeare’s Midsummer in December
Shake Up Your Classroom with the Folger Method
Cutting Through The Tempest
In-person learning
Weekend workshops
In the spring and fall, Folger Education usually hosts weekend intensive workshops in Washington, DC. At these workshops, teachers learn essential teaching practices, explore rare materials in the Folger Shakespeare Library collection, and see a play on the Folger stage.
Teacher Weekend Intensive: Shakespeare and Civics
The Play’s the Thing: Teaching Hamlet at the Folger
Summer Professional Development
Each summer, the Folger brings teachers together for immersive professional development that combines scholarship, performance, classroom practice, and exploration of the Folger’s collection. Our summer programs alternate between the Teaching Shakespeare Institute (TSI), offered every other summer with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Summer Academy, an intensive one-week program offered in alternate years.
Summer 2027:
Summer Academy – The Tempest
Our next Summer Academy will take place Tuesday, July 13 – Saturday, July 17, 2027, at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Centered on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the week will bring teachers together with Folger staff, Mentor Teachers, scholars, artists, and the Folger collection for an immersive exploration of the play and approaches to bringing it to life in the classroom.
Sign up for our email newsletter, Teacher Notes, to receive more information about the 2027 Summer Academy as it’s released later this fall, with registration opening in mid-December.
Past programs
For more than four decades, the Folger has hosted National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Teaching Shakespeare Institutes every other summer. The most recent TSI, held June 28 – July 17, 2026, brought 25 teachers from across the country to the Folger for three weeks of scholarship, performance, research, and classroom pedagogy. Learn more about the 2026 Teaching Shakespeare Institute.
The year prior, our 2025 Summer Academy, The Magic of Macbeth, offered teachers a week of hands-on exploration of Macbeth, with a focus on resources, strategies, and Folger Method practices they could bring directly back to their classrooms.
Professional development resources on demand
Teacher Members enjoy access to a library of resources that include on-demand webinars on topics such as Shakespeare and race, teaching Shakespeare to English-language learners, and pairing Shakespeare with other texts in the classroom. Browse a selection of resources below, including some that we’ve made freely available to all teachers. View all resources
Become a Teacher Member today at $40/year for access to all these resources and more member benefits. Join us
The Folger Method
Take a deep dive into the most effective method for teaching and learning any complex text.
The Key to Getting ALL Students Understanding and Interpreting Complex Texts
The Key to Getting ALL Students Understanding and Interpreting Complex Texts
Free resource
Trailblazing Women Poets You’re Probably Not Teaching—And Practical Strategies for Teaching Them Now
Trailblazing Women Poets You’re Probably Not Teaching—And Practical Strategies for Teaching Them Now
Getting All Students Inside Tough Speeches
Getting All Students Inside Tough Speeches
Teach Their Eyes Were Watching God with Rigor and Joy
Teach Their Eyes Were Watching God with Rigor and Joy
Master Class: Teaching Romeo and Juliet
Master Class: Teaching Romeo and Juliet
Master Class: Teaching Othello
Master Class: Teaching Othello
Shakespeare and Performance
Meet the artists behind visionary productions.
Directing Shakespeare: An Interview with Rosa Joshi
Directing Shakespeare: An Interview with Rosa Joshi
Directing Julius Caesar: An Interview with Michael Tolaydo
Directing Julius Caesar: An Interview with Michael Tolaydo
Juicy Lessons!
Juicy Lesson! Creating a Promptbook for Poet X (or ANY novel!)
Juicy Lesson! Creating a Promptbook for Poet X (or ANY novel!)
Juicy Lesson! Pre-reading: A 20-minute Hamlet
Juicy Lesson! Pre-reading: A 20-minute Hamlet
Free resource
Juicy Lesson! Choral Reading Dr. King’s I Have A Dream speech
Juicy Lesson! Choral Reading Dr. King’s I Have A Dream speech
Free resource
Juicy Lesson! Paired Texts: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing 2.1
Juicy Lesson! Paired Texts: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing 2.1
Juicy Lesson! The Monologue Project
Juicy Lesson! The Monologue Project
Juicy Lesson! Choral Reading Imtiaz Dharker’s “The Trick” and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43