Padua's Shakespeare Teacher in the News

English teacher brings Shakespeare to Padua

By Nicole Squittiere

Community News

ABOUT SLATER Name: Liz Slater Age: 61 Family members: Tom Slater, married for 39 years; three adult daughters; three grandchildren Recent awards/honors: summer 2009 Delaware Chapter of the English Speaking Union awarded me three weeks study at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London; eleven years earlier they awarded me the same gift. College: BA at the University of Delaware 1971; MED at Wilmington University 2000

Q Why did you decide to be a teacher?
A I could not "not be" at teacher. I was created to teach. In my more than 35 years in teaching, I have taught elementary school students, ESL students, adult learners in industry, students in community college, in high school and in the university.

Q How did you come up with the Shakespeare program and why?
A I created the Shakespeare courses at Padua to empower the students. The students run the program and I facilitate. I fashioned the courses after the 4-H model of "youth teaching youth." In fact, I wrote my master's paper about this theory. When the government of the Soviet Union fell, the newly-formed countries of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan invited the UofD’s 4-H extension office to bring the philosophy of "youth teaching youth" to the emerging nations. Empowering youth works!

Q Describe the Shakespeare course
A At one class meeting, there are three sections: Shakespeare I, Shakespeare II and Shakespeare Leadership. The course is also an exchange course with Salesianum, which adds boys to Padua's all-female environment. The students study and perform a variety of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. They participate in the state’s Poetry Outloud competition, held at the Smyrna Opera House each February. They also participate in the English Speaking Union Competition and Shakespeare festival competition – which have joined this year and will take place on Sunday, Feb. 28 at the "Sunday with Shakespeare" event at the University of Delaware’s Thompson Theatre. The Shakespeare students also facilitate workshops for city elementary school students. We invite fourth graders to our classroom and our teens get the little children from St. Peter's Cathedral, St. Paul's, St. Anthony's and St. Edmund’s up and performing Shakespeare. This year our students have also facilitated mini-workshops for seventh-grade students at Christ the Teacher and St. John the Beloved. This outreach portion of the course reinforces Padua’s mission of serving the community. In the past decade, our students have also volunteered by offering a weeklong workshop at the 4-H Newark Summer Camp at the University of Delaware.

Q What is your single biggest day-to-day challenge?
A To remain a facilitator and allow the student Shakespeare Leader to oversee the daily assignments; to remember that this course is about collaboration, not about teacher-centered learning. The strength of the courses lies in the collaborative, cooperative classroom culture. My job is to plan for the year, to create quarterly spreadsheets for the course’s curriculum, and then to allow the students to collaborate with me and with each other in assessment, in direction, and in daily execution of the lesson plan.

Q What is the best advice you’ve given?
A To daily ask for "knowledge of God’s Will and the power to carry it out."

Q Name someone who has had a major influence in your life.
A My husband

Q Describe a pivotal moment in your career.
A Deciding to get a master’s degree provided me with an added sense of confidence.

Q What five adjectives would your students use to describe you?
A O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping! Quoted from Shakespeare’s As You Like It

Q What’s your most embarrassing moment?
A I have always felt insecure in having my life philosophy of living without expectations. This summer, when I was studying at London’s Globe Theatre (a three-week study abroad gift from Delaware’s English Speaking Union earned when a Padua student won the ESU’s Shakespeare competition last year), our Globe Theatre instructor began to ask each of the 15 teachers from around the U.S. what our goals were for the London course. Each teacher announced clear, well thought out goals and expectations. I cringed as I voiced my philosophy of living one day at a time – without expectations. Then the Globe instructor, stopped, smiled, and said, "Since you have no preconceived expectations, how would you like to meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu tomorrow?" All the other teachers asked if they could change their answers. Quite a reward for living without expectations!

(Original article available online at http://www.communitypub.com/education/x1328940255/English-teacher-brings-Shakespeare-to-Padua)