Teaching Shakespeare Institute 2026

Who should apply

Teachers of English, Language Arts, History, Drama, or the Humanities who work with grades six through twelve are encouraged to apply, including those teaching in public, private, charter, parochial, or home school settings. This institute is ideal for educators who want to strengthen their knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays, expand their instructional practice, and bring new methods and materials back to their classrooms. For full eligibility requirements, please consult the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Participant Eligibility Criteria.

Program summary

For more than four decades, the Folger has hosted NEH-funded Teaching Shakespeare Institutes that combine the best of scholarship, performance, and classroom pedagogy. The 2026 program continues this tradition, bringing participants into conversation with leading scholars, mentor teachers, and Folger staff at the Folger Shakespeare Library. 

Head Scholar Dr. Ellen MacKay (University of Chicago) and Resident Scholar Dr. Kyle Grady (UC Irvine) will lead an exploration of this pair of couple-driven tragedies and the moral and emotional double binds they present. Together, they will guide teachers through a study of how Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra use language, time, and imagery to build worlds of love and conflict. 

Invited lectures by Folger Director Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper, Dr. Ian Smith (University of Southern California), and Dr. William West (Northwestern University) will add further scholarly perspectives. Mentor Teachers Noelle Cammon and Dr. Deborah Gascon will model the Folger’s hands-on, language-first approach to teaching complex texts. Performance Faculty member Caleen Sinette Jennings, Professor Emerita of Theatre at American University and a longtime Institute faculty member, will guide participants in embodying Shakespeare’s language through voice, movement, gesture, and action. Participants will engage with the Folger’s unparalleled collection, attend seminars and workshops, and develop their own classroom-ready materials rooted in the Folger Method, which emphasizes active, language-centered learning that helps students make discoveries through close reading, collaboration, and performance. 

Daily rhythms and activities

Each day at TSI blends scholarship, performance, and practice. Mornings feature lectures, seminars, and text work, while afternoons focus on performance-based activities and pedagogy workshops led by mentor teachers.

Participants will also take part in a day-long field trip to Historic Jamestowne, exploring the early American connections to Shakespeare’s world.

Teachers will conduct individual research projects during the Institute, working directly with rare books and primary sources in the Folger collection. 

The Shakespeare plays

Participants will explore two tragedies that create both opportunities and challenges while revealing rich parallels. Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s most familiar play and a fixture in many ninth-grade classrooms. Antony and Cleopatra draws on a major episode in both Egyptian and Roman history and classical literature but appears far less often in K-12 settings. Studying the plays side by side allows teachers to deepen their understanding of a well-known text while gaining confidence with a less familiar one, and highlights the strong thematic and dramatic links that connect the two works.