Absolutely! Good Shakespearean actors make the text comprehensible and engaging in a way reading can never.

But if we read the scene in contemporary translation, students can gather the needed info quickly, and we can spend way more time close reading Act 1, Scene 3, which is SUPER important to the rest of the play.

But the scene has not one but two different messengers report this information and early modern language for battles is particularly obscure: it’s confusing.

My favorite film adaptation leans into using this scene as establishing how chaotic battle is: unhelpful.

Maybe it’s because I now teach at a school with 35 minute periods, but I really believe reading everything in Shakespeare’s language isn’t a good use of our time together.

Take Macbeth Act 1, Scene 2: the point of the scene is Macbeth is that so good at war he’s rewarded with the title Cawdor.

I think hitting one in 9th or 10th and one in 11th or 12th is ideal. Repeated engagement with difficult material leads to greater confidence and comfort. Also, Shakespeare can be used to address so many different skills/standards, which makes it a boon as a teacher.

When I stopped being snooty about using summaries and films and contemporary translations, my Shakespeare units got way better.

I needed to get out of my own way, and be really clear on what the goals are. Using these tools didn’t make me a failure or my units less rigorous.

My biggest struggle is against my own expectations for what a good /rigorous Shakespeare unit looks like.

I would love to read shakespeare’s plays cover to cover with my students. That’s MY ideal unit. But for most students, that will be a slog.

This was not an honors class, and the assignment was designed so that they could have been successful using only the moments we’d read together. But they felt empowered to engage with the text to express their ideas.

Macbeth, 11th grade. We’d watched a film version of Macbeth and close read selected key passages. When my students started writing essays on “what caused Macbeth’s downfall?” Several of them went to read scenes we had not looked at together because they wanted to quote from those scenes.

Oh wow it’s just misogyny aaaaalll the way down. Fun. Love that for us.

In a women’s soccer landscape with no clear pipeline for female coaches, it is essential that we look carefully about HOW we talk about success and WHO we count as successful.

To me, there are a lot of men, and especially men with big followings, that are failing this test.

Is there an argument for Vlatko?Clearly.

The Amoros comparison highlights the way in which women often must be way more accomplished than men to be viewed as equally competent in the work place.

Men have been dismissive in their tone. They’ve said Yanez isn’t “ready yet.” That’s misogyny.