Janet Field-Pickering's Bio

Janet Field-Pickering, Head of Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library, is a former classroom teacher with sixteen years' experience in teaching and directing Shakespeare in the public schools. Ms. Field-Pickering is the director of the National Endowment for the Humanities Teaching Shakespeare Institutes, and administers all the Folger Shakespeare Library educational programs for pre-collegiate students and teachers, including the Teaching Shakespeare Website, teacher and student workshops, the Folger Library High School Fellowship Program, and the annual Emily Jordan Folger Shakespeare Festivals for elementary and secondary students. She is the project director of the national Folger Library Education and Festivals Project, has presented workshops on teaching Shakespeare through performance at conferences in the United States and in Canada, and is co-author of Discovering Shakespeare's Language with Rex Gibson of Cambridge University Press. Her work with Shakespeare Steps Out, the outreach program for economically disadvantaged elementary schools in the District of Columbia, is one of her proudest achievements and has inspired several articles, workshops and lesson plans designed for elementary school teachers and their students.