Next week, nearly two-dozen K-12 educators will meet at Brigham Young University and in Cedar City to attend the annual BYU Shakespeare Workshop sponsored by the Center for the Study of Europe (CSE) at the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies.
The workshop will bring together educators who will explore new ways of teaching Shakespeare in their classrooms, consisting of a day of training on BYU campus and three days of activities at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City.
The focus and title of this year’s workshop will be “Shakespeare’s World, Our World.” Wade Hollingshaus, assistant professor of theatre, will lead the main training activities for the workshop, but participants will also get the chance to learn from actors and education specialists at the Shakespeare Festival. Among the instructors in Cedar City is Michael Bahr, education director for the festival.
Teachers from a variety of grade levels and disciplines will discuss how to understand and navigate the relationship between Shakespeare’s world and the modern world and how to help their students understand this relationship as well.
In addition to the instruction, teachers participating in the workshop also attend the three Shakespeare plays running this summer: "King John," "The Tempest" and "Love’s Labour’s Lost." They will also participate in other activities such the festival’s backstage tour and literary seminars.
Many of this year’s participants expressed in their applications that they personally enjoy studying Shakespeare but admitted they do not know how to help their students understand and appreciate Shakespeare’s works. Hollingshaus hopes that, among other things, this workshop will help teachers get their students enthused about studying Shakespeare.
First instituted in 2005, the workshop has become a staple event in the CSE calendar. The online application for next year will become available in the fall, and information will be sent to teachers and schools in early 2014.
To learn more about CSE and its objectives, visit cse.byu.edu.
Writer: Lee Simons
