Engaging students is the best way to teach Shakespeare. Here is our philosophy.

1. It is more important to get kids to like Shakespeare than it is to encourage them to understand every word.

2. The best way to get kids to like Shakespeare is by getting them to perform Shakespeare.

3. Acting out a scene from a Shakespeare play is a form of close reading on your feet.

4. Sometimes it is better to just do part of the play rather than the whole play.

5. The best way to use video may not always be showing the tape from the beginning to the end.

6. There are wonderful plays to teach other than the big four.

7. A few tricks and gimmicks are not enough to make a Shakespeare learning experience significant.

8. Designing Globe Theatres, making Elizabethan newspapers, drawing Elizabethan costumes, studying Shakespeare's life, doing a scavenger hunt on the Internet, or doing a report on Elizabethan sanitary conditions - none of these has anything to do with a student's appreciation of Shakespeare's language.