Description

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Walking in Shakespeare's Shoes proposes and explores a historical and cultural approach to teaching Shakespeare, situating the plays and sonnets in a tumultuous early modern world. The narrative structure invites teachers to imagine how middle and high school students connect with rigorous and older texts. Using Steelman's approach to teaching Shakespeare not only helps students in secondary grades connect to the work, but also raises academic and intellectual expectations. Once students begin to see that Shakespeare's characters react to their sixteenth-century world the same way that students react to their own twenty-first-century-culture, the distance melts and students are better able to understand Shakespeare's relevance in today's world.

Organized by play, each chapter illuminates the versatility of the approach through examples of how early modern primary sources can be incorporated partially or fully into any pedagogical approach to Shakespeare. Realistic accounts of how diverse students engage with Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, the four most commonly taught plays in middle and high schools today, are the centerpiece of the book. Two chapters on the sonnets and Shakespeare Book Clubs share practical techniques for working with several texts to explore how religion, politics, family, and cultural norms permeate his writing. Class discussions and student work, as well as teacher thoughts and observations, narrate, illustrate, and provide evidence for the value of the approach.

About the Author

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Sheridan Steelman received her PhD in English from Western Michigan University and recently enjoyed her golden and final year of teaching high school English at Northview High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2021-22. She served as English Department leader and Curriculum Teacher leader, and is the author of several articles--most recently, "Whose Ghost Is It, Anyway? Teaching Shakespeare Using Primary Documents" in English Journal. Steelman was awarded two School Bell Awards, an Outstanding Thesis Award, an Outstanding Teacher Award, and several Oldenburg Writing competition awards for her prose and poetry. Dr. Steelman is an AP Literature reader and has presented at the Annual AP Conference, the American Literature Association, the Midwest Conference for British Studies, the Calvin College AP Best Practices Conference, the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture, and the College Board MRO Regional Forum. She continues to facilitate the West Michigan AP Literature and AP Language Networking Group on Facebook and has orchestrated AP classroom learning labs in West Michigan. You can follow Sheridan on Twitter (@steelmsl) and Instagram (@dr.steelman.reads and @sheridansteelman).