Teacher Weekend Intensive:

Teaching with the Folger Method

Experience the Folger Method in Action: Step into the role of both learner and teacher. You will spend two days inside the text, first as a student making meaning through performance, then as an educator reflecting on how the approach works in real classrooms. Every activity is one you can take straight back to your students. 

Practice the Skills of Democratic Participation: Working closely with Shakespeare—and with complex texts more broadly—builds the habits a democracy depends on. Weighing evidence, holding more than one perspective at once, and making an effective argument are the foundations of critical literacy, and they are exactly what students practice when they take Shakespeare’s language into their own hands. 

Connect Shakespeare to Civic Life: Together we will explore how questions of power, justice, mercy, and belonging run through the plays, and how those questions invite students to think about their own communities. You will leave with text-based strategies for turning a Shakespearean scene into a genuine, student-led conversation about the world they are inheriting. 

Bring It Back to Your Classroom: By the end of the weekend, you will have a flexible plan and a set of Essential Practices you can use on Monday. Sessions will be led by Liam Dempsey, Associate Director of Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and Missy Springsteen-Haupt, Assistant Teaching Professor at Iowa State University. 

Explore the Folger Collection 

Beyond the workshops, step into the world of Shakespeare’s words and the stories they have inspired. Explore the Folger’s Exhibition Hall and Learning Lab, see the 82 copies of Shakespeare’s First Folios—the book that gave us Shakespeare’s plays—and see how books were printed on our working replica of a 17th-century printing press. Handle rare materials that connect Shakespeare’s plays to their early performances and to the readers who kept them alive for centuries. You will discover how these experiences and the Folger’s vast digital resources can enrich your students’ encounters with Shakespeare, connecting their learning to the same sources scholars use every day. 

See the Play, Then Dig Deeper

On Friday evening, you will attend the Folger Theatre production of Shakespeare’s rarely produced comedy, Measure for Measure, where human nature collides with the letter of the law. Saturday morning opens with a seminar drawing directly on that shared experience, using the performance as a text to be discussed and analyzed. Together we will examine the production’s questions about power, mercy, and justice, and what that experience reveals about teaching Shakespeare as a living work rather than a static one. 

By the end of the weekend, you will leave the Folger with: 

• Hands-on experience using the Folger Method 

• Monday-ready lessons and activities built on the Essential Practices 

• Strategies for using Shakespeare to anchor conversations about civics and community 

• A strengthened national network of educators committed to active, inclusive teaching