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February 2000 
TOP students perform Romeo and Juliet By Sheldon J. Reber, Director of School and Community Relations | |
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S hakespeare is alive and well for the junior high students in Adina Lawson’s TOP class at the Jacobs Education Center. The class was busy last fall memorizing their lines and rehearsing a production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Lawson recently participated in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “Shakespeare in the Classroom” workshop. The Ashland, Oregon workshop was designed to revolutionize the way the Bard’s work is taught in schools. Lawson was also included in an article about teaching Shakespeare in the classroom in Teacher Magazine. She credits the activities she learned at the Festival with exciting her students—and herself. Lawson describes how her students kicked pillows to emphasize the changing thoughts in a speech, danced in a reenactment of the Capulet ball, and stood on their desks brandishing swords. The students were so energized by the production that three of them came to school sick one day rather than miss the play.
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