William Shakespeare’s work is a constant in the high school curriculum and sometimes in middle school.

Just say the name William Shakespeare to a group of students, and there will be groans and cheers.  

To turn those groans into cheers, Ronan High School teacher Lauren Feese attended the 2026 Folger Teaching Shakespeare Institute from June 28 through July 17 in Washington, D.C. She didn’t just attend; Feese was one of 25 teachers chosen from across the United States.

The Folger Shakespeare Library called the institute “an intensive, hands-on, three-week course for secondary English teachers.” They focused on two of Shakespeare’s tragedies: Romeo and Juliet and Anthony and Cleopatra.

The National Endowment for the Arts provided a stipend for travel, lodging and expenses, and they received graduate credit from Trinity Washington University. The participants bunked at the Catholic University of America dormitories. 

The institute “was fabulous,” Feese said. “When they said intensive, it was not an understatement; it definitely was intensive. We ran from 8:30 in the morning to 5:30 at night, sometimes to 9:30 … We did field trips, seminars, acting; we got to handle rare books published in the 1500 and 1500’s.”

“It was gorgeous. They have the largest Folger Shakespeare collection in the United States,” she said. “Not all the books were about Shakespeare, but they were about his world — things that were happening at the time, belief systems, education, that kind of stuff,” Feese said.

“My sister got me hooked on Shakespeare,” she said. 

When Feese was younger, she was diagnosed with dyslexia, and she said, “My sister would read to me a lot. I think the first play she read to me was Julius Caesar.”

She still remembers one of the speeches even though the character got killed off relatively quickly. 

“Ever since then it [Shakespeare] clicked,” she said, “not necessarily the language, but at least the storytelling and how adaptable Shakespeare can be.”

Her favorite Shakespeare history plays are Julius Caesar and Henry V, and “the language of Richard III is gorgeous.”

Now, as an English and theater teacher, Shakespeare is extremely important in the canon, Feese said. “It’s adaptable; you can find lessons in it; you can change the time period. 

As an eight-year teacher in the Ronan schools, she teaches grades sixth through 12th at Ronan Middle School and Ronan High School — two sections of grade six theater, two sections of grade seven creative expression, grade eight literature and film, introduction to theater in the high school and advanced theater in the high school.

She has a degree from the University of Montana with a minor in teaching theatre, and “my students always do plays.”

Feese’s sixth graders perform for the fifth graders; the introduction to theater students present a play in January in front of the eighth graders.

As for the advanced theater class, “They direct, they do the lights and the sound, they’re the costume designers,” she said. Sometimes they even cast Feese if they need an extra person.  

Feese’s advice for a  student about theater: “Just try it; you never know until you try.”