I’m so sad.

A lot of my ELA colleagues have stopped having the kids read Shakespeare, and it’s a shame. Maybe I’m biased. I was a Theatre major my first time through college, and I studied a lot of Shakespeare. I love it. That’s why I’m so sad that so many teachers have stopped teaching it.

Unfortunately, by failing to teach Shakespeare, we are putting our kids at a massive cultural disadvantage. I tell my own students about the concept of “cultural currency”–the idea that there are certain things that “smart people” and “educated people” are expected to know. Shakespeare is one of those things. Allusions to Shakespeare’s works show up in contemporary music, movies, and television; if you don’t know anything about Shakespeare, you miss the joke–or even worse, the entire point. Shakespeare is still important.

Here are the main reasons I think teachers avoid teaching Shakespeare:

1. Kids balk. They think Shakespeare is stuffy and lame, and they have heard that it’s boring and hard to read.
2. The language is dense. Parsing through the language with the kids can be an agonizing task that sucks all of the joy out of the endeavor.
3. Reading a whole play aloud in class is boring AF. Not to mention how terrible most of the kids sound when they are reading. Not to mention all the kids who aren’t paying attention and have to be prompted every time their character has a line.
4. Reading a whole play silently is a recipe for kids to not read it. And, also, plays suck when you read them silently like a novel. Plays are not novels.
5. Teachers, themselves, find Shakespeare dull or difficult and want to avoid teaching it.

Instead of ditching Shakespeare altogether, I’d like to advocate for a soft-pitch exposure to his works for most kids. I designed a unit called a E2E Crash Course in Shakespeare (see a sample of the first few pages of lessons here) with three goals in mind:

1. Give my kids an overview of his most famous sonnets and his eight major plays so they won’t be totally ignorant, without having them read a whole play aloud in class (which, I reiterate, sucks a lot) so they’ll recognize allusions when they hear or see them.
2. Give the kids a small dose of analyzing Shakespeare’s language and structure without making it a chore.
3. Encourage kids to see the value and relevance of Shakespeare’s ideas today.

I’ve taught the Crash Course a few times now, and my students have nearly unanimously said they really enjoyed it. I know every teacher claims they design lessons that make learning fun, but this actually IS fun.

I’ll highlight a couple of ideas from the unit that have helped me be successful:

1. Instead of having kids read an entire play, I designed a March Madness-style bracket and had the kids do research about one play, then give elevator sales pitch selling the play to their classmates to compete for bracket advancement. Whatever group wins the bracket gets 5% added on to their semester final (it motivates them to really try). The winning play is the one we WATCH in class; plays should be watched, not just read.
2. I emphasize all the dirty jokes. Teenagers like dirty jokes. I lean into it. I made a Cards Against Humanity-style game called Bards Against Humanity, and the kids really do seem to enjoy playing it. I think they’re pleasantly surprised how many of the insults and roasts in Shakespeare still make sense today. I’ve really enjoyed hearing them refer to one another as “three inch fools” for the past month. See? Sometimes they do pay attention! “College and Career Ready.”

In summation, don’t be so quick to ditch Shakespeare. I’ve had to adjust how and what I teach, but I know giving kids some exposure to his works is important. It’s better to do a little bit of it than none at all. I encourage you to go forth and revive the Bard!

Keywords: unit plan, lesson plan, printable game, secondary ELA, enraged2engaged, TpT, Shakespeare, Bard, research reading, research writing