We work with teachers across the UK and beyond using our rehearsal room approaches to develop their own confidence and skills and inspire children and young people.
We asked teachers what they wanted from us once the pandemic prevented us bringing them together in person, and based on their responses designed a series of 90-minute sessions which we’re delivering to our Associate Schools throughout this term and into 2021.
Sessions take place on online conferencing software with groups of teachers (up to 34 so far). Our Education Practitioners lead the sessions, focussing on the schools' chosen Shakespeare play.
Teachers taking part can expect:
- A warm-up activity
- Activities such as exploring narrative, characters and Shakespeare’s text
- Using conferencing features such as breakout rooms, annotating on whiteboards and screen sharing
In a year in which pupils have missed many months of school there has been high demand for courses about using our techniques and approaches to improve literacy and writing outcomes. We’re also currently piloting a course about race and identity in Shakespeare.
Walking in my students’ shoes
Jonathan Wright, a primary school teacher at Dulwich College International shares his experiences of our online CPD workshops.
The key thing I took from this CPD is how online students can be encouraged to participate and become more embedded in a hybrid lesson. It gave me a lot of food for thought as to how I can make changes to my overall online teaching and how an online learner can do more than just sitting still in front of a computer. It also allowed us to experience how some classic warm up activities can be simply adapted to allow inclusion from all students. Being able to experience the sessions as an online learner put me in my students’ shoes and helped increase my empathy of their situation.
This CPD allows me to consider how the rehearsal room pedagogy can be used across the whole curriculum. Having a primary orientated session exploring A Midsummer Night’s Dream, allowed for exploration as to how we can introduce the tangled relationships using a human paper chain, we considered what allegiance we should take by exploring small manageable sections of text suitable for the children we teach and we also discussed the importance of not shying away from Shakespeare’s language.
Working online allowed us to go into more depth with discussions at times and it also encouraged us to work to stricter time limitations as we would in lessons. It wasn’t the same as being together in the same room, but it was the next best thing and I look forward to implementing what I have learnt in my lessons.
Next year we will be continuing to develop our online offer to schools within the Associate Schools Programme. We will also extend this to schools across the country through courses online and our certification programme.