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8 FREE workshops during the summer and academic year
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Exclusively for CPS high school & middle school English, Diverse Learning & ELL teachers
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Participating teachers earn 30 PDH and 2 Lane Credits
Are you a CPS Teacher interested in enhancing your classroom culture? Curious about how to make Shakespeare engaging for students? Read more about Bard Core below!
“Bard Core Curriculum: Reading into Shakespeare” is a professional learning seminar, exclusively for CPS high school and middle school English, Diverse Learning, and ELL teachers. Over the course of eight workshops during the summer and academic year, Bard Core introduces drama-based, literacy-focused strategies for actively engaging students with challenging texts, such as Shakespeare, poetry, and contemporary plays. Bard Core is free, and participating teachers earn 30-PDH and two Lane Credits.
Bard Core teachers build a repertoire of strategies, which includes text work, scene analysis, anti-racist text-pairing applications, improvisation, and active reading strategies. The seminar is led by experienced facilitators, scholars, and content experts who guide “up-on-your-feet” practice and structured peer-learning that align with Common Core and several domains of the CPS Framework for Teaching. Each Bard Core session explores and differentiates strategies for each participant’s students and teaching environment that address the barriers of practical implementation, bridging lessons with teachers’ unique classroom experiences.
Teachers who complete Bard Core are invited back each year to participate in a group that teachers themselves dubbed, “Hard Core Bard Core,” our continuing professional development initiative exclusively for Bard Core alumni. Hard Core Bard Core provides our teachers unparalleled access to nationally recognized experts in the field, as well as peer-based learning forums that continue to develop their classroom practice.
For CPS upper middle school and high school English teachers who want to learn more, please call CST’s Education Department at 312.595.5678 or email us at [email protected].
“It raised engagement and achievement for everyone, but noticeably for ELs and DLs. I literally have had low-achieving students suddenly get more into ELA and understood the content way more.”
–Teacher, Alfred Nobel Elementary School
“I have concrete strategies to use on any text or topic. And the confidence to do it!”
–Teacher, Goethe Elementary School
LEAD BARD CORE SPONSOR
The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust