ABSTRACT
If you’d said to me a few years ago that I’d ever be teaching Romeo and Juliet or Julius Caesar to my kids, I’d have laughed. I mean, for English we’d mainly been worrying about whether they could fill in an application form or read the destination board on a bus. But now that I’m doing Shakespeare, I wouldn’t stop. It’s shown us what the kids can do if you give them the chance. And there’s so much in it for them – not just the language and the heritage stuff, but real, relevant ideas. It gets us into discussions that are about their lives as well as about Shakespeare’s characters – about families and difficulties with your parents and about power and corruption – great ways into a lot of the material we need to cover for the older students in personal and social education. So, yes, this is one bit of the National Curriculum I’d want to hang on to – it’s been brilliant.
