Teacher Trouble: Performing Race in the Majority-White Shakespeare Classroom

The topic of race has long enriched Shakespeare scholarship. Race scholarship remains marginalized in the broader world of Shakespeare studies. The simultaneous “truth” of these statements reveals a deeply rooted professional ambivalence. And while recent attention has been paid to its manifestation at conferences and in journals, this essay explores its challenge to black teacher–scholars in the majority-white classroom. Rethinking The Merchant of Venice as an educational play, with Portia and Shylock performing as nontraditional teachers, I develop the concept of “teacher trouble” from Judith Butler's “gender trouble” to reflect personally on the perils and liberatory potential of antiracist performative strategies.

The Case of e-Tutorials for Test Preparation for New Teachers Transitioning and Transforming into the Education Profession

This chapter describes the Ohio Transition to Teaching Project, which assisted adult learners pursuing an alternative license to teaching in Ohio with preparation support for the Praxis II: Principles of Learning and Teaching test. It addresses the challenges these nontraditional teachers face in becoming both “content” and “pedagogically qualified.” The case describes the rationale and process for the development of an interactive online learning community that provided electronic test preparation, virtual collaboration with peers, e-coaching, and resources. The authors present the advantages of a hybrid or blended approach to instructional design, which combines the best features of both face-to-face and online formats to enable self-paced learning and appropriate levels of interaction. The case concludes with discussion of a new initiative, Project KNOTtT, which is expanding the Ohio Transition to Teaching model to Kansas, Nevada, and Texas.