Teacher Members enjoy access to two kinds of Folger professional development: upcoming live-streamed webinars full of real-time interaction, and webinars on demand, available for viewing anytime! From practical workshops that let you experience the Folger Method as your students would to provocative conversations with scholars and artists, join us for never-ending learning. Connect with like-minded teachers and the institution that is cheering you all on.
Upcoming professional development
Shakespeare’s They/Thems
Pairing Texts Across Time, Place, and Experience
Teacher Conversation with Dr. Ian Smith: Shakespeare and Race
Cutting and Performing Scenes – Put Students in the Driver’s Seat!
Explore Shakespeare’s World: One more diverse, compelling, and surprising than we thought!
Professional development on demand
Folger Education a growing library of archived professional development sessions just for teachers. Some of our favorites are below. Don’t see what you’re looking for? Check out our entire library of professional development videos.
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
Watch live students tackle tough texts online and IRL. Learn how to get every single student not only understanding but also speaking back to a vast range of 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
Susan Barber and Corinne Viglietta dive into poetry by trailblazing women poets. Learn how to design learning so that ALL students live inside the language of these extraordinary poems written by trailblazing women.
Getting All Students Inside Tough Speeches
Getting All Students Inside Tough Speeches
How can any student encounter a speech for the first time and make meaning from it on their own, without any teacher explanation?
Teach Their Eyes Were Watching God with Rigor and Joy
Teach Their Eyes Were Watching God with Rigor and Joy
How does the Folger Method help students discover and interpret Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Master Class: Teaching Romeo and Juliet
Master Class: Teaching Romeo and Juliet
What are the most essential, and eye-opening, things any teacher must know about Romeo and Juliet? What are wildly effective approaches to teaching it?
Master Class: Teaching Othello
Master Class: Teaching Othello
What matters most when we teach Othello? How can all students grapple with the language of race, religion, gender, and power?
Shakespeare and Performance
Meet the artists behind visionary productions.
Directing Shakespeare: An Interview with Rosa Joshi
Directing Shakespeare: An Interview with Rosa Joshi
What drives Rosa Joshi to direct Shakespeare today? What does Shakespeare have for diverse casts and audiences?
Directing Julius Caesar: An Interview with Michael Tolaydo
Directing Julius Caesar: An Interview with Michael Tolaydo
What can readers of Shakespeare learn from performing the text? What wisdom can we gain from a longtime actor and director?
Juicy Lessons!
Juicy Lesson! Creating a Promptbook for Poet X (or ANY novel!)
Juicy Lesson! Creating a Promptbook for Poet X (or ANY novel!)
Are you thinking about teaching, Poet X, Elizabeth Acevedo’s emotionally piercing story about an Afro-Latina heroine? Join FolgerED for the simple instructions you need to get students doing rigorous literary interpretation and evaluation–all without you!
Juicy Lesson! Pre-reading: A 20-minute Hamlet
Juicy Lesson! Pre-reading: A 20-minute Hamlet
Don’t miss this juicy lesson on how to introduce students to the plot, setting, and characters of a play in a straightforward way so that quickly get inside the language of the play.
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
Powerful speeches are meant to be spoken and heard. Muscular language is meant to be flexed. This lesson is all about helping students discover the power of Dr. King’s groundbreaking 1963 speech from Washington.
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
Get students thinking deeply about control and power by pairing soliloquies in two plays: August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
Juicy Lesson! The Monologue Project
Juicy Lesson! The Monologue Project
A much more exciting, authentic, and rigorous final assessment than an essay or test. Try the monologue project with virtually any text. Find out how and why this project works with any text, every student.
Juicy Lesson! Choral Reading Imtiaz Dharker’s “The Trick” and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43
Juicy Lesson! Choral Reading Imtiaz Dharker’s “The Trick” and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43
Learn how to let these two poems talk to each other—and how to get your students talking back to both of them. Walk through the what, how, and why of this paired text lesson with the teachers who created it: Dr. Deborah Gascon and Corinne Viglietta.