Teacher Talk with Paul & Jay: Recent Episodes
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Paul and Jay draw on their experiences in the classroom to discuss books commonly taught in high school and their significance to students.
Paul and Jay welcome their first guest in this episode, the inimitable John Klein. John has been teaching Hamlet to high school seniors for over fifty years, and as you will quickly realize, his zeal for the play has not waned even a little. Listen for insight and inspiration to press on teaching difficult texts like Hamlet. John Klein makes clear the rewards of doing so. The episode opens with the breathtaking poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Our guest reads his favorite Hopkins poem, "The Windhover."
Paul and Jay focus on a single passage in this episode, Hamlet's dramatic spectacle of a soliloquy, the "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy. Read it again for the first time with Paul and Jay as they talk through it line by line. Jay opens the episode with "University Hospital Boston" from Mary Oliver's American Primitive collection.
Well into Hamlet by now, Paul and Jay meet again for more teacher talk on the inimitable "observ'd of all observers", as Ophelia has him. Jay opens with lines from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Paul charges forward (inspired by Stoppard's "...we are actors, the opposite of people") with the suggestion that every main character in this play is also acting in the play.
Paul opens the episode with "Animals", that great poem by Frank O'Hara before he and Jay dig in on the topic of fathers and sons, which reverberates throughout the play. Hamlet alone has at least three fathers -- and that's not counting Yorick -- whom he attempts to manage while trying on the paternal role himself on occasion. Settle in for part two of Paul and Jay's take on Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Paul and Jay are back with a new series on Hamlet, that enigmatic and overwhelming Shakespeare play that starts with a ghost sighting. Jay and Paul explore the state of the state of Denmark, in a bold attempt to establish even one reliable point on the compass before descending into the labyrinth in subsequent episodes. Jay opens with a little-known but timely in the extreme poem by William Butler Yeats, "Politics."
Jay opens with the poet Kevin Carey's "Reading to My Kids", and then he and Paul dive into the topic. This episode explores the role of secondary sources in the high school classroom. Jay and Paul discuss the benefits and the serious dangers of outsourcing classroom prep to even very good supplementary voices.
Paul and Jay take a break from specific books and discuss the ups and downs of teaching via Zoom. Jay opens with another poem, this one by the great Billy Collins.
Paul and Jay close out their series on Romeo and Juliet with a wide-ranging discussion of act five. They stick to their three questions -- mostly -- and add ranging reflections on the play that will be useful to teachers and students alike.
Paul opens with Robert Frost's short philosophical poem "Stars", which leads to a surprisingly substantive conversation about the shortest and least commented on scene in the play. You won't hear commentary like this anywhere else.
Jay opens this episode with the poem "Tatoo" by Ted Kooser and somehow he and Paul make their way from there to Mercutio and the dead center of the play. Tybalt's dead, Mercutio is dead and Romeo and Juliet's stars are turning to dust. Leave your comments on all that Paul and Jay get right and wrong in this deep dive on the central act of this tragedy.
Jay and Paul dig into act two in this, their third episode in the series on Romeo and Juliet. Lots of great analysis and, as always, a noteworthy poem to start things off, this time by Tony Hoagland.
Paul and Jay work through act one of Romeo and Juliet to find the obvious but essential, subtle but consequential and lingering questions. This episode is an excellent short review act one with provocative reflections along the way.
This is episode one of our six-part series on teaching Romeo and Juliet. In it, we ask and answer three questions that every teacher ought to start with before jumping in with this great play by William Shakespeare.