Originally published in TEACH Magazine, January/February 2017 Issue
By Natalie Davey
One of my most influential teaching mentors is a secondary character from a sixteenth century Shakespearean play. I was introduced to the “wise fool” from King Lear in my last year of high school, and was taught to read his jokes and metaphorical “ramblings” as, instead, wise observations of a very broken world. Unfortunately, his words of wisdom fall upon the deaf ears of his king, thus the play’s tragic end.
In university, I went on to major in English Literature, and in my final undergraduate year I was reunited with Lear’s wise fool. My understanding of this character’s role was renewed and deepened when my professor pointed out how, at the end of the third act, the wise fool simply disappears from the play.
Dr. Natalie Davey is a secondary school English teacher with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). Her experiences in the secondary classroom have supported her teaching in York University's Faculty of Education, Section 23 classrooms, and her most recent shift to the TDSB's Student Success/Learning to 18 Initiative.
