"Shakespeare Fixes: Equitable Approaches to Shakespeare Pedagogy in U.S. High Schools" examines the world of Shakespeare professional development and pedagogy for high school teachers. Shakespeare's works occupy a unique place in U.S. schooling, where, due to both the entrenched status of his works in U.S. curricula and the challenging…

Teacher-researcher, Katherine Macro spent six weeks observing an eleventh-grade Advanced Placement and Composition class at Sunnybrooke Central High School to examine the teacher's use of creative drama to teach Shakespeare. In this article, Macro describes ways the instructor used theater-based instructional strategies, especially a staged…

We argue that students can understand an historical period by building on the foundations of their existing knowledge. Specifically, popular media can be used to develop students' historical literacies -- that is their ability to engage with past societies vastly different from their own. Our methodology takes inspiration from the ancient Romans'…

The resurgence of Confucian education in present-day China has received increasing academic attention over the last two decades. However, certain aspects of this trend remain poorly understood, particularly parents' involvement in their children's Confucian education. Based on a qualitative study conducted at a Confucian school, this article sheds…

Student enjoyment is important when creating any unit, but teachers should also consider if an activity will enhance learning. In addition to being enjoyable, drama-based activities enrich learning by disrupting passivity, encouraging participation, and enhancing comprehension. This article showcases ways to include these activities in a unit…

Historically, higher learning was based on the study of the Great Works of thought of the Western canon. These works span a broad range of time, from the Classical period, to early Christianity, and the Enlightenment, all the way to the 20th century. Presently, close study of Great Works is less common at most mainstream colleges and universities.…

As a relatively common tool and object of analysis in teaching Shakespeare and dramatic literature in general, live performance deserves further attention within the pedagogical literature. This is even more true now, since the development of digitally relayed live broadcasts has widened access to theatre, creating greater possibilities for…

The English classroom is an indispensable site to critically engage the social complexity of the climate crisis and COVID-19. A question comes up, however, about how to plan for such critical engagement when teaching canonical literature that is seemingly removed from the specific concerns of the current moment. The focus of this article is on…

The benefits of performance-based classroom approaches to teaching Shakespeare have been well-documented in pedagogical scholarship. This paper is an effort to push beyond the performance-based classroom and begin to incorporate ideas from the field of performance studies into a new pedagogical approach that capitalizes on my institution's…

This case study, which investigates twenty-four 11th-grade students of American literature, asks: What successes and challenges did students experience when reading "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" through a critical race theory (CRT)/critical Whiteness studies (CWS) lens? Findings reveal that applying a CRT/CWS lens helped students…

This short story illustrates an occasion of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogical practices in relation to the canonical texts which are often used in urban classrooms. In it, a lesson on Jane Eyre's childhood point of view and mode of introspectiveness delves into a tale of dancing and Otherness. The story shows that in spaces where…

Current trends in disaffiliation and declining enrollment in Catholic schools raise difficult questions about the perceived value of Catholic education and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (CIT). Following the work of theologian David Tracy, the author makes a case for engagement with Christian "classics" as a promising means not only…

Three academics reflect on how to stay positive during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sarah Higginbotham finds that some of her most heartening experiences during this time have been while enacting unrehearsed Zoom Shakespeare plays with colleagues and students. She usually experiences telepresence events as rather flattened interactions, while insulated…

Every year since 2007, the Globe Theatre has run the "Playing Shakespeare" project, largely funded by Deutsche Bank. This has three main components: school-based workshops, CPD sessions for teachers and free performances for school students. From 2014 to 2016, we were commissioned to evaluate this project. In what follows, we reflect on…

As a novel that asks how we can live in a world of uncertain values and urgent identity politics, James Joyce's Ulysses could be more relevant than ever, but its textual complexity poses a steep burden to new readers. Teaching Joyce's Ulysses models a new method of teaching Joyce's novel using the theory of fictional possible worlds, which…