Maggie's Farm

I had an 8th grade English teacher who made Shakespeare enjoyable. We spent the entire year studying, reading and even acting Shakespeare. We even built a small cardboard model of the Globe Theater for inspiration. I can tell you as a 14 year old boy I was not a fan of Shakespeare but after awhile thanks to a great teacher I could at least appreciate him and his works. She also introduced us to Chaucer but the middle English is a hard read.

I have often wondered if this teacher strayed from her curriculum or not. I doubt that today you could devote and entire year of class to Shakespeare.

No. But you made me remember that our 9th grade English teacher choose to read/teach Greek mythology that year. As I remember we actually ran out of Greek mythology and moved on to other literature. What happened was... complicated.
In the ninth grade back in 1957 the school I attended had about a dozen or so really tough guys all over 18. But the law in the state was that a "child" could attend school until reaching age 21 or graduation. So the school was stuck with 18, 19 and 20 year old students going into the 9th grade. So they made a special "group" (we had three groups; college track, business track and general). The new group of about 16 students as I remember was called "trade track". We had a trade high school but high school started in the 10th grade. I was into cars, wood shop, metal shop and drafting and that is what we did all day. I loved it. The counselor tried to talk me out of it but I did it anyway. The fear was what these tough adult delinquents would beat up us 14 year old's. But it was actually just fine. Gym class was a little rough but manageable. My greatest memory was casting pistons in metal shop and actually machining them and using them in an engine rebuild. Cool!