Dead Poets School grew out of Dead Poets Live, which was founded by the T. S. Eliot Foundation in 2017 with the aim of putting poetry on stage. In October 2022 the focus of Dead Poets Live expanded to schools, with the hope of extending our offer demographically and geographically. This led us, in March 2023, to producing our first tour of UK secondary schools, delivering lesson-length performances, primarily to those at Key Stage 3.
We began with the intention of a truly national project, but with over four thousand secondary schools, the logistics of a live national offer are overwhelming. Which is why, since 2024, while continuing to tour schools, we have been developing digital teaching materials, guided by what teachers tell us they need, but true to the participatory spirit of our live shows.
The result is what you see here: Dead Poets School. We hope to bring the spirit of performance to your classroom by making great performers part of your class. They don’t claim to have the answers. They might be brilliant, they might look foolish, but like your students, they’re also here to learn.
Within this website, teachers will be able to pick and choose from what they find, downloading whatever fits with the way they teach, or whatever they think will interest their students. In our range of teaching materials, we aim to serve those who find themselves curriculum-bound and those teaching with comparatively more freedom at Key Stage 3. Everything we do is centred on teachers: meeting the needs of teachers in a way that works in their classroom. So far, it is teachers who have shaped our choices about what to produce and how to produce it. And it is teachers, I hope, who will continue to tell us what will work, what they need, and in what form, via the Contact page.
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