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Off-screen voice: As he falls Caesar turns to Brutus and with his dying breath says. Actress: "E tu, Brute!
Brian Edmiston: This past summer
as part of a three-year program we took 20 teachers from Central Ohio
to Stratford-upon-Avon in England to work with the education
department at the Royal Shakespeare Company and then we brought the teachers back here
and worked with them for a week. Those two weeks were the beginning of a
three-year journey to become master teachers using Shakespeare
and other complex texts to explore the curriculum.
Amy McKibben: Working with these really extraordinary teachers in Stratford-upon-Avon was
just inspiring because they were organized and
energetic and really knew their content and believed
in what they were teaching. I think because we were in the land of Shakespeare,
they had such a breadth of knowledge about it that they could just
really bring it to life for us. It was very alive, it was not dead words
on a page when we were there. (in class) Developing his magical powers from a rare,
rare book, until he could control the elements of wind and weather.
Fifth- and sixth-graders are, normally if they know who Shakespeare is, they're terrified
of reading him. Working with the RSC and with The Ohio State University
has given me all these new ways to approach it with them. I can do that with
drama, I can do that with music, I can do that with play, and really
if they're learning through play, it's going to be something that they're going to keep with them and
it will make Shakespeare less intimidating.
Edmiston: Dramatic inquiry is a way of having an inquiry-based approach to education. But instead of being
sad at your desk or computer
and only doing them, you can take the ideas and stand them up, dramatize them, move them around,
step into the world as if you were in those scenes, and then you're
inside it, you're inside these contexts, which are very
engaging. McKibben: I plan to use dramatic inquiry with as many texts
as I can. I'm going to use it with other units I'm doing with the social
studies teacher and the science teacher, so we're integrating the different content areas
as well as using drama to really bring those things to life.
Student in beige shirt: When we first read it at the beginning, I didn't really understand the emotion of the characters
of the story. Student in pink shirt: I could get into a character's perspective, or feel my own perspective
of it. Student in jersey: It really taught me that there's different sides to the story. Student in purple sweatshirt: It really helped me
visualize a lot of how, like, what it might be like and how we understand how the characters would feel.
Student in gray shirt: When we did the games and stuff, I paid more attention than I would
have if we were just sitting there writing. Student in dotted shirt: I could probably tell the whole story to you now, since we did all that
stuff. But if you made me read it, I probably wouldn't be able to.
Karen Bell: This unique relationship that the Arts Initiative has created with the Royal Shakespeare Company has
been a wonderful example of how the university
goes out and gains expertise from an international partner and brings
that expertise home. These teachers said, "Our lives have been altered. We will
never teach the same way again. We will engage our students in new ways." This program will be
impacting tens of thousands of local schoolchildren. We're very excited.
McKibben: I honestly think it is the best thing I have done in education in the ten years that I have been involved with it.
It is just a blessing to have
The Ohio State University right here in central Ohio because we have experts that we can go to
and tap into their expertise, so that we can pick their brains about all these
things that we really want to implement in our classrooms. So having Ohio State here
is going to help my children that I teach, and that is,
it's invaluable.