A group of about 20 Ohio public school teachers are the first to participate in an extensive teacher leadership education program that’s at the core of a new partnership between The Ohio State University and United Kingdom’s Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). The first cohort of teachers come from Franklin County’s Metro High School, Columbus City Schools’ Linden-McKinley High School and its feeder schools, and Reynoldsburg City Schools. The schools are STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) schools affiliated with the Ohio STEM Learning Network (OSLN).
“We’re delighted to be working with these central Ohio schools in the venture with the RSC,” says Karen Bell, Associate Vice President of the Arts Initiative at Ohio State. “At first it may seem like a surprising fit to explore Shakespeare in STEM schools, but in fact it’s a perfect fit. Like scientific investigation, the RSC’s drama education program is all about creative learning, experiencing and exploring."
The three-year program that embarked in summer 2009 is based on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s acclaimed Stand Up for Shakespeare program. Ohio State’s graduate program - Teacher Leadership in Dramatic Inquiry: The Interplay of Arts, Theatre, and STEM Inquiry-based Education - will enrich and extend public school teachers’ ability to engage students in grades 3-12 with interdisciplinary investigations and explorations of the sort of universal themes contained in Shakespeare’s plays. In addition, Ohio State researchers will document and evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the program in the schools.
During the academic years 2009-2012, OSU will support week-long summer workshops in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and week-long summer workshops in central Ohio for teacher leaders. Led by faculty from Ohio State and education staff and actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, the program will help teachers bring the timeless literature of Shakespeare to life for students and teachers as part of interdisciplinary inquiry-based education. The summer programs will be followed by ongoing weekend workshops throughout the school year. In 2012 a Young People’s Shakespeare Festival is planned to coincide with the city of Columbus bicentennial.
Leading the workshops from Ohio State is Brian Edmiston, Associate of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education and Human Ecology and an expert on inquiry-based approaches to drama education. He explains, "I'm eager to work with teachers and students on the complex, engaging themes of Shakespeare's plays. It will be exciting to discover together, over three years, how we become a collaborative community of readers, thinkers and creators.
Educational leaders from the schools collaborated to identify the teachers who would participate from a broad range of disciplines. Says Marcy Raymond, Principal at the Metro School, “This teacher education program is perfect for Metro, where we focus on critical thinking and strive to teach students to express what they think and how they think in multiple formats. Plus, it’s a really good chance to advance the comprehensive view of STEM and how the program will involve more than just an English class. It will be a collaboration across all areas in the school.”
The international partnership between Ohio State and the Royal Shakespeare Company was announced in November 2008 and is the first of its kind in the U.S. The trans-institutional partnership is being spearheaded by The Arts Initiative at Ohio State, and includes the College of Education and Human Ecology, several departments in the Colleges of the Arts and Humanities, as well as the Wexner Center for the Arts. Students in the Department of Theatre will be actively engaged in working with Royal Shakespeare Company actors and public school teachers.
Thank you to our partners at The Ohio State University Arts Initiative for sharing this story with us.
For more information about the partnership and the Royal Shakespeare Company, go to http://artsinitiative.osu.edu/rsc