Teachers wasting time, Too lazy to learn anything.

So, I wake up this morning with lots of people (or bots), mainly from the states, having visited various pages, but again no one has purchased a play or an audio-play to share with their students. So once again they will fiddle and fart away valuable teaching-time spouting about what they THINK they know about Shakespeare, what some dusty bore of a professor has weighed them down with. I call them no-talents. If you cannot play Shakespeare well, or help others play Shakespeare, you are a no-talent, and should hand your Bard teaching duty to the more gifted of your brethren, or even your best student. Shakespeare is not about reciting or labeling anything, it is about experiencing and fresh-minting moments as they come to the characters. It is about humans inventing language not reciting anything. If you can’t, or won’t try acting it, teach something else. Your labels are boring; no one thinks about them; they think of the characters.
There are enough resources here to fill many, many hours of class time if you have talent, if you can hear thought, or the lack of it, in the words, then you can make useful suggestions. When writing, Shakespeare invented this language in real time. He invented it, out loud, then captured it on a page. His handwriting must have be swift and superb, he thought so fast. So talking ABOUT it just wastes time, whereas actually playing it is how Shakespeare invented and wrote it, how he intended it to be used and experienced!!!

So if you are not bringing whole plays to your students, where they can take ownership of characters and scenes, but pacifying them with unrelated bits that you did not even create, what is your purpose? You need to take them through whole SOL plays by having them READ THEM ALOUD. DON’T MAKE THEM WADE THROUGH UNABRIDGED TEXTS THAT YOU BARELY UNDERSTAND! Along the SOL way they will discover the bits that they like, the characters they want to play, they will perfect those parts through practice. What they choose is not really your job. Your job is to schedule regular readings. It won’t take long to get through the play once, even if you and a talented student have to do most of the initial reading. You can also listen to my recordings of the plays. I play all the parts because I know how the lines should be stressed, and am willing to struggle with the emotional burdens of the characters I meet. I also try to invent as much as possible, as Will did, out loud, in his room, at night!

Look teachers, you can easily fail at this; many of your brethren have over a very long time, but if you think back, all the passionate stories of loving Shakespeare came from performing him. As difficult as it may seem, you are going to need some chaos to get started; the kids will need some freedom to explore; and if you provide a goal, like a performance or recording of some kind, many will become motivated by this challenge.

Use a whole SOL script. (I have never been criticized for anything in the series. Those two years were meticulous work) Schedule regular daily readings; grade them for these, if you like, and use the forms within the guides. Provide a goal: a few scenes for the principal, a performance for another class, perhaps an audio recording of the play that everyone can own. Your class-your goals. I created all of this for reasons, now it is your turn to invest. You and your kids will both profit but only if you investigate OUT LOUD!!!

No one has ever created a series like this. Do you honestly think you deserve to have everything Shakespearean for free? There are 27 plays left to do; let’s see you try one.