Mortals, Be Not Fools! Give My Students Shakespeare!
My students need 90 copies of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare.
FULLY FUNDED! Mr. Jones's classroom raised $798
This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
I want the required reading in my eighth-grade advanced English class to include a second Shakespearean play, to be coupled with "Hamlet". For two years in a row, I've attended a Shakespeare Fellows workshop at Columbia University, and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was one of the plays we studied this past year. Working with the text has reignited my passion for it, and I want to share that passion with my students. My school is an ethnically diverse middle school for the gifted and talented, located in an under-served neighborhood.
For the past three years, I have relied upon "Hamlet" to be the sole exposure my students receive to Shakespeare. Of course it is an excellent play--the greatest play ever written, perhaps. But after reading "Julius Caesar" in sixth grade and "Romeo and Juliet" in seventh grade, I feel that I'm not giving my students the dynamic experience with Shakespeare that I wish I'd had if I don't also expose them to his brilliant comedies (we'll get to the histories and romances down the road). For this reason, I want to introduce "A Midsummer Night's Dream", revealing another side of Shakespeare. Because my school emphasizes instruction through the arts, Shakespeare's plays are an inevitable choice--they are poetry, prose, and drama all at once. I want to give my students the chance to see just how funny Bottom and the rude mechanicals can be. I want them to see the magical and imaginative world that is created in this play. I also want them to see that, unlike "Romeo and Juliet", sometimes young lovers find each other and, after they've done so, they go on living.
I need ninety copies of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" so that each student can have his or her own copy. I think the experience of reading a Shakespearean comedy will have a tremendous impact on my students. They are bright, articulate, and thoughtful, and they embrace anything I introduce to them. I find that if a teacher is enthusiastic about a text, the enthusiasm is contagious. I love Shakespeare, and I want to bring more of his work to my students.
Your generosity will ensure that my students enter high school having read a wide range of Shakespearean texts. Having a strong familiarity with both his tragedies and comedies will no doubt better prepare them for the rigorous coursework expected of high school and college students. In addition, the more Shakespeare they read within the same school year, the more their confidence will increase with the language overall (not to mention their confidence in modern and easier to understand texts). Finally, how can you deny my students the chance to understand what fools mortals can be?
More than three‑quarters of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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