TSI Reunion

This weekend is the reunion for the Teaching Shakespeare Institute, where I spent a month in 2008 learning techniques for teaching Shakespeare. It was an intense four weeks of scholarship (lectures by experts, Socratic seminars), research (in the Folger Library), pedagogy, and performance, and I've used much of what I learned there in my subsequent teaching of Shakespeare. And the month was a good one, an experience that continues to impact me and my students: I'm sure that even 30 years from now, I'll look at that month in DC as one of the formative ones of my career.

Sessions today started at 9 a.m., but I couldn't give up a day at the gym nor eliminate some other things on the to-do list, so I ended up planning on getting there for the 3 p.m. session. I left Baltimore a little before 2, so I knew I'd be cutting it close but I never imagined I wouldn't get there until 6 p.m. Traffic was stop-and-go on the Baltimore Parkway the entire way. I still made it to the big barbecue, though, and hobnobbed with folks from my year all the way back to the early 80s.

Back tomorrow, including for an event called "The Rare Book Petting Zoo". Yup, dorky!