Stephanie Shirilan, associate professor of English in A&S, introduces Nottingham High School students to the “Doing Shakespeare” approach through an interactive classroom presentation.
Connecting Classrooms, Inspiring Students
A student sends a paper airplane gliding across a Cicero-North Syracuse (C-NS) High School English classroom. A classmate catches it, unfolds it and reads aloud a question about the role of literature in Holocaust remembrance. Moments later, an animated discussion unfolds between high school students in teacher Patrick McAvoy’s class and Syracuse University students in Professor Harvey Teres’ The Holocaust in American Literature course. The thoughtful exchange and collaborative learning capture exactly what Teres envisioned when he created the Traveling Teaching initiative.
Traveling Teaching connects Syracuse University faculty and students with local schools through shared curriculum and experiential learning opportunities. The idea is to foster reciprocal partnerships.
“When students are asked to learn by teaching others, they respond with extraordinary commitment and sense of responsibility,” says Teres, the William P. Tolley Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S).
Supported during the 2025-26 academic year through a $3,000 Engaged Humanities Network (EHN) course grant, the inaugural year included four partnerships across Central New York: English professor Stephanie Shirilan and her Shakespeare students worked with classes at Nottingham High School; English professor Vanessa Evans and her Indigenous Studies students collaborated with students from Manlius Pebble Hill School and Hannibal High School; and Teres and his students partnered with classes at C-NS.
The initiative builds on Teres’ previous effort of bringing his students into local classrooms to present on Holocaust studies, but Traveling Teaching broadens that work into a larger model of community-engaged learning.
The program benefits everyone involved. Syracuse students deepen their mastery of course material while strengthening their communication, collaboration and public speaking skills, and high school students gain exposure to college-level perspectives and interactive approaches to learning.
“Traveling Teaching does many things,” Teres says. “It inspires our own students; it brings novel forms of teaching and learning to the high schools; it strengthens the vital connection between higher education and surrounding schools and the community as a whole; and it strengthens collaborative learning.”
Expanding Access to Shakespeare
At Nottingham High School, students were able to experience Shakespeare beyond the pages of a book. They were on their feet acting, directing and reimagining scenes in contemporary settings, transforming Shakespeare from something to be studied into something to be explored, interpreted and made their own.
The exercise stemmed from Stephanie Shirilan’s A&S course Doing Shakespeare, which also received support through a 2025-26 EHN course grant. In the course, students — many of whom have no previous theater experience — work together to organize and perform a full theatrical production of a Shakespeare play, gaining firsthand experience in collaboration, performance and literary interpretation.
Through the Traveling Teaching initiative, they brought that hands-on approach to Nottingham.
Partnering with Nottingham teacher and Syracuse University alumna Sinead Feeney O’Connor ’25, Shirilan encouraged students to engage with Shakespeare through performance and adaptation rather than lecture-based study. Students created modernized versions of “Twelfth Night” and “Much Ado About Nothing,” taking ownership of interpreting, staging and directing the plays themselves.
O’Connor says students responded enthusiastically to the creative process, noting that many “took on a whole new attitude toward learning and came out of their shell” through the acting and joint exercises.
The collaboration reflected the broader goals of Shirilan’s “Doing Shakespeare” initiative, which seeks to broaden participation in Shakespeare and classical theater by creating more inclusive and accessible opportunities for students. Through classroom workshops and performance-based activities, Nottingham students gained confidence engaging with Shakespearean language and interpretation.
“It was a delight to work with Sinead and her students, many of them studying English as a new language, as our research partners,” Shirilan says. “We are excited by the possibility of welcoming them to campus as SU students in coming years.”
The partnership also invited students to think creatively about adaptation and relevance, reimagining Shakespeare’s works in contemporary settings while building connections to higher education and the arts.
“The most beneficial part of this experience was giving the students the chance to see what is possible,” O’Connor says. “They were able to put on their own small production and have a conversation with a college professor and her students about Shakespeare.”
