How one teacher embraced RSC Rehearsal Room Approaches and transformed her teaching of Shakespeare.
Prior to her experience of working with the RSC, Jolaine Foxe had little success in teaching Shakespeare. She felt she had limited understanding of the plays and lacked appropriate resources.
Its therefore understandable why she was uneasy at the thought of working with the RSC. However, her reluctance soon subsided. "The training and ongoing support I have received from the RSC has been far from condemnatory; it has been less about my lack of knowledge and entirely about giving me access to a toolkit of skills I can use to decode the language," she explains.
Jolaine soon realised that the tool she needed to help students become more comfortable with Shakespeare’s complex language was the RSC’s rehearsal room approach. One of her students says, "I began to understand. It was like I had the code, so when I went on to another play, I felt quite well informed because it was the same. I could break it down, see how it fits together and try to make sense of it."
The RSC’s approach to teaching Shakespeare is now embedded in the school curriculum. "It has now become ‘just what we do’, and part of the fabric of English teaching at Eastbury. As the years have progressed, the RSC approach has made me a confident teacher of Shakespeare’s plays, and as result, has helped me to teach students in a way that makes Shakespeare’s world playful and enjoyable."
This is an edited version of the full case study. You can read the full case study here: Eastbury Community School Case Study