To Shakespeare or Not to Shakespeare, That is the Question!

As many of you know, Shakespeare has been a common topic on the minds of English teachers. The struggles of new inventive ways of teaching it, as well as if we even should still continue to teach the great playwright.  I can remember my first exposure to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and I thought I will never get through this! Eventually, after exposure and experience I have come to love the words and actually enjoy the seemingly daunting task of reading one of his works. But many are pointing out that Shakespeare's language is simply too hard for young adults, whose first exposure to the poet is in the beginning years of high school in most school systems. I have read several varying opinions on whether Shakespeare should remain in the curriculum or not, so my question to pose to you is...should it? Are there ways to teach it that don't involve mundane exercises? Do we watch a performance instead of read it or visa versa? Students, how would you like to learn Shakespeare, if at all? What works have you been exposed to since starting high school? Watched any films about Shakespeare?

I think that the best way to approach Shakespeare is to find what students are interested in and apply that to the plays. An example would be to use modern pop culture references, there are several very popular films that use over arching themes from Shakespeare's works. I think that reminding students that the language needs to be read one step at a time is also important. Reading the whole text is very difficult and causes students to become lost in the words, instead take a line by line approach and ask students what they are really saying in a section, what does it mean "to be or not to be?"

 In Search of Shakespeare is a great website for educators and parents interested in how to get students involved in Shakespeare. It provides information on lesson plans and offers videos of the plays from the educational powerhouse PBS.