Folger Shakespeare Library Releases First Titles in New Teaching Guide series with Simon & Schuster

The guides offer tools and lesson plans to make Shakespeare’s works accessible in 21st century classrooms

The Folger Shakespeare Library today announced the publication of the first three titles in its anticipated Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare series. Published by Simon & Schuster, The Folger Guide to Teaching Hamlet, The Folger Guide to Teaching Macbeth, and The Folger Guide to Teaching Romeo and Juliet are available at the Folger Shop, on the Simon & Schuster website, and wherever books, teaching resources, and guidebooks are sold.

Edited by Peggy O’Brien, the Folger’s Founding Director of Education from May 2013–July 2024, these guides offer educators fresh insights and innovative tools for teaching some of Shakespeare’s most frequently taught plays. Each guide takes into account the 21^st century classroom, provides teachers with strategies for teaching the issue of race within Shakespeare’s works, and suggests text pairings for each play, broadening the scope of literary connections while placing Shakespeare within a diverse world of literary contexts and companions rather than on a pedestal.

Based on the renowned Folger Method, developed by O’Brien in her own classroom, each guide offers a comprehensive, detailed five-week teaching plan with engaging classroom activities to make Shakespeare accessible and exciting for learners of all backgrounds. Like their predecessors in the Shakespeare Set Free series, these books explain the Folger Method of teaching Shakespeare, outlining an approach to language-based, student-centered, interactive, and rigorous classroom lessons.

“The Folger Method is collaborative, lively, and supports all students—across a wide range of learning styles and ability levels—in reading closely, asking good questions, and citing textual evidence,” O’Brien states.

Recognizing that the needs of teachers have changed dramatically since the 1990s when the Folger published its first set of teacher guides, the Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare are written by a broad range of scholars and teachers to be both welcoming for educators teaching Shakespeare’s plays for the first time and also reinvigorating for seasoned teachers looking for new approaches.

“We have developed relationships with teachers over decades, and more recently, through several of the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Teaching Shakespeare Institutes, we have had the opportunity to discuss with teachers not only about the texts and literature, but also how students and classrooms have continued to evolve, how we can better differentiate for students’ various needs, challenges, and strengths,” O’Brien shares about the evolution of the series. “Teachers had already asked for extended Folger Method plans for the entire plays, so we brought together teachers to design five weeks’ worth of lesson plans. We also considered what was changing in the world around us and in the world of Shakespearean scholarship, attending to issues of race and gender in the plays.”

Secondary English teachers and education specialists with diverse classroom and teaching experiences have contributed essays and materials for classroom application and practice: Jocelyn A. Chadwick provides an introductory essay in all editions considering the relevance of Shakespeare for new audiences; Corinne Viglietta co-contributes an overview of the Folger Method [with O’Brien], Donna Denizé suggests pairings with other texts in each guide, Roni DiGenno focuses on teaching students with learning differences, and Christina Porter provides a section on reading Shakespeare with English Language Learners. Secondary English teachers Ashley Bessicks, Liz Dixon, Debbie Gascon, Stefanie Jochman, Mark Miazga, and Amber Phelps created and tested lesson plans; comic artist Mya Lixian Gosling (Good Tickle Brain) provides a visual provocative plot map for each play; and Catherine Loomis and Michael LoMonico devised “Ten Amazing Things You May Not Know” lists.

This series also provides new scholarly essays written by Ruben Espinosa (Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Professor of English at Arizona State University) for Hamlet, Ellen MacKay (Associate Professor of English at the University of Chicago, Head Scholar at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute) for Romeo and Juliet, and Ayanna Thompson (Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies) for Macbeth.

“It’s been a labor of love for all of us—and a challenge for all of us—since the initial concept to create a new series happened almost a decade ago,” O’Brien states. “We had to keep adjusting as not only students’ lives and needs changed during the pandemic, but ours did too. And we had to pay attention to the evidence of racial reckoning we were seeing across the country because students and teachers were—and because Shakespeare has plenty to say about race. The guides reflect all of this: they are created from decades of perfecting the Folger Method, but they also emerge from this particular moment in time. We hope these guides continue to provide teachers with foundational principles and practices for their teaching of Shakespeare for many years to come.”

The Folger Guide to Teaching Hamlet
Hamlet follows the form of a revenge tragedy, in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against the man he learns is his father’s murderer—his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its fascination, however, lies in its mysteries.

• Published by Simon & Schuster (November 12, 2024)
• Length: 240 pages
• ISBN13: 9781982105655

The Folger Guide to Teaching Macbeth
In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne, becoming James I of England. London was alive with an interest in all things Scottish, and Shakespeare turned to Scottish history for material. The result was Macbeth, a bloody, supernatural tale of power found and lost, and of betrayal.

• Published by Simon & Schuster (November 12, 2024)
• Length: 272 pages
• ISBN13: 9781982105679

The Folger Guide to Teaching Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays, and certainly the one most commonly taught in schools. It’s the story of star-crossed young lovers who can’t come together because they live in a society governed by blood feuds, violent duels and acts of retribution.

• Published by Simon & Schuster (November 12, 2024)
• Length: 304 pages
• ISBN13: 9781982105686

All of the above titles are available November 12, 2024, for $23.00 each.

The Folger Guide to Teaching Othello and The Folger Guide to Teaching A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be released in March 2025.

For more information and to order, visit the Folger Shop: https://shop.folger.edu. 

About the Authors:

Ashley Bessicks is a Baltimore City Schools literacy coach who partners with school administrators, coaches, and teachers to implement evidence-based instructional practices and increase student engagement. After spending nearly a decade in the classroom serving Washington, DC, students in grades 9–12, Ashley works on teams to help schools redesign teacher professional learning models to include conversations about equity. A Buffalo, New York native, Ashley spends her time reading and exploring the world with family.

Dr. Jocelyn A. Chadwick is a lifelong English teacher and international scholar. She was a full-time professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and now occasionally lectures and conducts seminars there. In addition to teaching and writing, Chadwick also consults and works with teachers and with elementary, middle, and high school students around the country. Chadwick has worked with PBS, BBC Radio, and NBC News Learn and is a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. She has written many articles and books, including The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Teaching Literature in the Context of Literacy Instruction. Chadwick is currently working on her next book, Writing for Life: Using Literature to Teach Writing.

Of Haitian American descent, Donna Denizé holds a BA from Stonehill College and an MA in Renaissance Drama from Howard University. She has contributed to scholarly books and journals, and she is the author of a chapbook, The Lover’s Voice (1997), and a book, Broken Like Job (2005). She currently chairs the English Department at St. Albans School for boys in Washington, DC, where she teaches Freshman English; a junior/senior elective in Shakespeare; and Crossroads in American Identity, a course she designed years ago and which affords her the opportunity to do what she most enjoys—exploring not only the cultural and intertextual crossroads of literary works but also their points of human unity.

Roni DiGenno is a special education teacher at Calvin Coolidge Senior High School in Washington, DC. She earned her BA in Literature from Stockton University in Pomona, New Jersey, and her MA in English from Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. Her background in English and passion for special education led her to the educational mission of the Folger Shakespeare Library, participating in the Teaching Shakespeare Institute in 2016. She currently lives in Maryland with her husband, daughter, and two dogs.

Liz Dixon began her English/Language Arts teaching career in 1998 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has been at West Lafayette Junior/Senior High School (also her alma mater) in Indiana since 2003. Liz is an alum of the 2014 Folger Teaching Shakespeare Institute and has continued collaborating with the Folger ever since. She has co-directed fourteen high school musicals and eight Shakespeare plays. She has a master’s degree in Literature from Purdue and aspires to a PhD someday. In her spare time, Liz loves to read, hang out with family, cook, knit, crochet, sew, and dabble in just about any other handicraft.

Dr. Ruben Espinosa is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University and Associate Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He is the author of Shakespeare on the Shades of Racism (2021) and Masculinity and Marian Efficacy in Shakespeare’s England (2011), and co-editor of Shakespeare and Immigration (2014). He was a Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America (2018–2021), and he serves on the Editorial Boards of Shakespeare Quarterly, Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory, and Palgrave’s “Early Modern Cultural Studies” series. He is currently at work on his next monograph, Shakespeare on the Border: Language, Legitimacy and La Frontera.

Dr. Deborah Gascon teaches at Dutch Fork High School in Irmo, SC. She is a National Board-certified teacher of English and Journalism, and she also taught English in Romania on a Fulbright Teacher Exchange. Deborah is a 2012 Teaching Shakespeare Institute alum and a Folger Summer Academy mentor teacher. Her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction is from the University of South Carolina; her dissertation is about the teaching of Shakespeare to increase student comprehension, empathy, and awareness of gender and race issues. When she isn’t teaching, she loves to attend her weekly tap dance class, play tennis, travel to new places, and dig in the dirt.

Mya Lixian Gosling is the artist and author of Good Tickle Brain, the world’s foremost (and possibly only) stick-figure Shakespeare comic, which has been entertaining Shakespeare geeks around the world since 2013. Mya also draws Keep Calm and Muslim On, which she co-authors with Muslim American friends, and Sketchy Beta, an autobiographical comic documenting her misadventures as an amateur rock climber. In her so-called spare time, Mya likes to read books on random Plantagenets, play the ukulele badly, and pretend to be one of those outdoorsy people who is in touch with nature but actually isn’t. You can find her work at goodticklebrain.com.

Stefanie Jochman teaches high school English in Oakton, Virginia. She was a participant in the Folger’s 2014 Teaching Shakespeare Institute and has served on the faculty at subsequent Institutes in 2016, 2018, and 2021. In 2016, during her years of teaching in her hometown of Green Bay, Wisconsin, she earned the Golden Apple Award from the Greater Green Bay Chamber of Commerce. She is a contributing writer to the Moving Writers blog. She and her husband enjoy traveling to far-flung destinations.

Michael LoMonico has taught Shakespeare courses and workshops for teachers and students in 40 states as well as in Canada, England, and the Bahamas. He was an assistant to the editor for the curriculum section of all three volumes of the Folger’s Shakespeare Set Free series. Until 2019, he was the Senior Consultant on National Education for the Folger. He is the author of The Shakespeare Book of Lists, Shakespeare 101, and a novel, That Shakespeare Kid.

Dr. Catherine Loomis holds a PhD in Renaissance Literature from the University of Rochester, and an MA in Shakespeare and Performance from the Shakespeare Institute. She is the author of William Shakespeare: A Documentary Volume and The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen, and, with Sid Ray, the editor of Shaping Shakespeare for Performance: The Bear Stage. She has taught at the University of New Orleans, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Dr. Ellen MacKay is Associate Professor of English and Chair of Theatre and Performance Studies (TAPS) at the University of Chicago, where she teaches courses on Shakespeare, Renaissance Drama, Performance Historiography, and Theatre Theory. She has served as Head Scholar at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute since 2014. She has published articles in Theatre Survey, Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Yearbook, and Theatre History Studies, and in numerous edited volumes and disciplinary guides, including the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Religion.

Mark Miazga, a National Board–certified English teacher, has taught and coached Varsity Baseball at Baltimore City College High School since 2001. The winner of the Maryland 2014 Milken Educator Award, Miazga participated at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2008. He has presented at NCTE conferences about connecting students to Shakespeare, as well as Steinbeck, Wilson, Baldwin, and Morrison. An advocate for urban education, Miazga currently also works as adjunct professor in the Urban Teachers program at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Peggy O’Brien is a classroom teacher who founded the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Education Department in 1981. She set the Library’s mission for K–12 students and teachers then and began to put it in motion; among a range of other programs, she founded and directed the Library’s intensive Teaching Shakespeare Institute, was instigator and general editor of the popular Shakespeare Set Free series, and expanded the Library’s education work across the country. In 1994, she took a short break from the Folger—20 years—but returned to further expand the education work and to engage in the Folger’s transformation under the leadership of director Michael Witmore. She is the instigator and general editor of the Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare series.

Amber Phelps teaches in both the International Baccalaureate (IB) English Literature HL and AP Literature programs at Baltimore City College High School, in Baltimore, Maryland. Amber is an alum of both Teach for America (Baltimore 2010) and the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2012 Teaching Shakespeare Institute. In 2018, Amber was the recipient of the Kennedy Leadership Award for Excellence in Teaching. In addition to her instructional work at BCC, she is Assistant Director of the Speech and Debate Program and advisor of the school newspaper, The Collegian. When Amber is not teaching, she is traveling with her partner, Sam, and playing in the dirt along with their dog, Houston.

Dr. Christina Porter is a 2006 alumna of the Folger’s Teaching Shakespeare Institute. She began her career as an English teacher and literacy coach for Revere Public Schools in Revere, Massachusetts. Currently, she is Director of Humanities for her school district. She is also a faculty member at Salem State University. She resides in Salem, Massachusetts, with her two precocious daughters.

Dr. Ayanna Thompson is a scholar of Shakespeare, race, and performance. She is the author of many books, including Blackface and Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America. A Regents Professor of English and director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. In addition to her scholarship, Thompson collaborates with many theaters and theater practitioners.

Corinne Viglietta teaches Upper School English at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, Maryland. From 2014 to 2022, she was Associate Director of Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library, where she explored the wonders of language with thousands of amazing teachers, students, and visitors. Corinne played a key role in Folger’s national teaching community and school partnerships. Corinne is a lifelong Folger educator, having first discovered the power of this approach with her multilingual students in Washington, DC, and France.

Dr. Michael Witmore served as the seventh director of the Folger Shakespeare Library (November 2011-June 2024), the world’s largest Shakespeare collection and the ultimate resource for exploring Shakespeare and his world. Prior to leading the Folger, he was Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and at Carnegie Mellon University. Under his leadership and across a range of programs and policies, the Folger began the process of opening up to and connecting with greater and more diverse audiences nationally, internationally, and here at home in Washington, DC. He believes deeply in the importance of teachers; also under his leadership, the Folger’s work in service of schoolteachers continued to grow in breadth, depth, and accessibility.

About the Series

The Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare series is created by the experts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the nation’s largest archive of Shakespeare material and a leading center for both the latest scholarship and education on all things Shakespeare. Based on the proven Folger Method of teaching and informed by the wit, wisdom, and experiences of classroom teachers across the country, the guides offer a lively, interactive approach to teaching and learning Shakespeare, offering students and readers of all backgrounds and abilities a pathway to discovering the richness and diversity of Shakespeare’s world. The Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare are published by Simon & Schuster.

About Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library makes Shakespeare’s stories and the world in which he lived accessible. Anchored by the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, the Folger is a place where curiosity and creativity are embraced, and conversation is always encouraged. Visitors to the Folger can choose how they want to experience the arts and humanities, from interactive exhibitions to captivating performances, and from path-breaking research to transformative educational programming. The Folger welcomes everyone to connect in their own way—from communities throughout Washington, DC, to communities across the globe. Following a multiyear building renovation, the Folger’s historic Capitol Hill home reopened to the public on June 21, 2024. Learn more at www.folger.edu.

About Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster, a global leader in general interest publishing, is dedicated to providing the best in fiction and nonfiction for readers of all ages, and in all printed, digital and audio formats. Its distinguished roster of authors includes many of the world’s most popular and widely recognized writers, and winners of the most prestigious literary honors and awards. It is home to numerous well-known imprints and divisions such as Simon & Schuster, Scribner, Atria Books, Gallery Books, Adams Media, Avid Reader Press, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing and Simon & Schuster Audio and international companies in Australia, Canada, India, the United Kingdom, and VBK in the Netherlands and Belgium. It proudly brings the works of its authors to readers in more than 200 countries and territories. For more information visit our website at www.simonandschuster.com.

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