Teaching Shakespeare? Use the smelly stickers, says Joan

Joan Fraser has taught the Bard to teenage boys in Tonga and five-year-olds in a NSW country school. She’s Shakespeare’s #Original Influencer and her students are keen for the sequels.

At age 12, Joan Fraser found the path she’d happily walk for the rest of her life. The schoolgirl from near Mudgee in rural NSW was thrilled when she unwrapped a much wished-for Christmas present – the collected works of William Shakespeare. 

Her love of the Bard has only grown in the years since. “I’ve sort of been on a long Shakespeare trail throughout the course of my life!” Joan says with a laugh. 

“We’re a tiny, tiny school. But I want Shakespeare to be something they can learn and they can keep.”

A Shakespeare influencer for 45 years 

As an English and history teacher, Joan has spent 45 years inspiring students across rural NSW, in Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, and as far afield as Scotland. 

Apart from her time in PNG, Shakespeare has been a core part of her curriculum and her life. 

She’s taught Shakespeare’s texts, acted in and produced his plays, helped colleagues with ways to teach his works, and adapted his words for her students to perform. 

She’s watched productions around the world, from The Tempest on a stormy night in Stratford-upon-Avon to Macbeth at the Sydney Opera House. 

But a favourite performance was not by professionals but by her students. 

“One of my fondest memories is sitting fully dressed in the beautiful water around Tonga, in T-shirt and shorts and a hat. And these boys, my students, jumping out of the water, outdoing each other to show who had the best Shakespeare quotes,” Joan says.

Living, breathing and talking Shakespeare

Joan returned to Australia about a decade ago. It was then she discovered the Bell Shakespeare Regional Teacher Mentorship program, sponsored by Teachers Mutual Bank. She applied, was successful, and completed the scholarship in 2017. 

“We just spent a week of living, breathing, talking Shakespeare,” she says. “Bell Shakespeare emphasised ‘on your feet and physical, move and physical’. And I think that’s the key. 

“They also said you don’t have to read every single word. You don’t have to do the full three-hour play. I tend to do 30-minute versions here in my class at the moment.”

As president of the Western Plains branch of the English Teachers Association NSW, Joan organised a workshop for other teachers to relay the acting troupe’s methods and tips and share the creativity. 

Teaching the Bard at Binnaway 

Joan uses what she learned every day at Binnaway Central School, on Gamilaraay Country between Mudgee and Coonabarabran. 

Binnaway’s population is just 425, and its school, where Joan has taught for the past 10 years, has only 57 pupils, from kindergarten to Year 12. 

“We’re a tiny, tiny school. But I want Shakespeare to be something they can learn and they can keep,” she emphasises.

“The more that you read Shakespeare, the more that you go and see productions, the more understanding you get. And that's what I want students to have.”

Joan applies her Bell Shakespeare techniques with secondary students and also with pupils in the junior years. That recently culminated in an assembly performance of excerpts and choral numbers from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

She’s also used her library supervision time to gently nudge the youngest students into exploring Shakespeare. When teaching Shakespeare to primary students, she’d quiz them in the playground on what they’d learned in the library. If they answered correctly, they were given a ‘smelly sticker’. 

“It got to the stage where they're coming up in the playground, quoting or saying something about Shakespeare and then waiting for this smelly sticker. I think I got them enthused!

“I say, ‘You're the smartest five-year-old that I know. No other five-year-old that I know knows Shakespeare, but you do. And how clever are you!’”

“And with the secondary kids, I've had a one girl ask me twice with two different plays, ‘Is there a number two? Is there a sequel?’ 

“And I thought, wow, there’s not a sequel of this particular story, but there are heaps of other Shakespeare plays for you to discover!”