Interview with Gale Sigal, President of TEAMS and Managing Editor of "The Once and Future Classroom"
The current president of TEAMS, Dr. Gale Sigal, learned about the organization seven years ago when she organized a session on teaching the medieval lyric at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. She volunteered to be the managing editor of "The Once and Future Classroom: Resources for Teaching the Middle Ages," an open-access journal on teaching the Middle Ages sponsored by TEAMS, and took over from the previous managing editor, Christine Neufeld, with the spring 2016 issue. "I was really interested in what people were doing in terms of teaching," Gale remembers. "This is all about teaching. I was interested in essays, whether by high school or college teachers, about anything anyone was doing with teaching the Middle Ages that was innovative."
"The Once and Future Classroom" was established to publish essays about teaching the Middle Ages in high schools, but expanded to include essays on teaching in colleges and universities in 2015. The journal is interdisciplinary and, although articles are published in English, has an international focus as well. Gale explains, "We've published articles by Germanists, Hispanists... we don't just do English literature. We've also tried to branch out to publish essays in history and art history, and we would love to publish more in those fields."
The latest issue of "The Once and Future Classroom" was published in July 2021. "The essays are really fabulous," Gale says. "They're so useful and they have such great innovative ideas about teaching." Those essays include essays by Albrecht Classen, on teaching Kudrun for post-modern readers; Tamara Bentley Caudill, on teaching Marie de France in survey courses; Gina Brandolino, on changing the way we think about teaching; and the TEAMS 2020 Essay Prize Winner, Melissa Ridley Elmes, on teaching medieval literature and book culture with a Chaucerian miscellany.
While Gale is still the managing editor of "The Once and Future Classroom," last year she took on a new challenge: she's now also president of TEAMS. She acknowledges how important the previous president, Tom Goodmann (now treasurer of TEAMS), was to the organization: "He was just an incredible leader who really changed our direction and opened TEAMS up." Looking forward, Gale says she wants to build on that momentum. "My goals as president are to improve publicity and communications for TEAMS. I think what we have to offer is very special and I don't think enough people are aware of what we do, which is keeping medieval studies alive in both high school and college classrooms." As part of this effort, TEAMS is sponsoring five sessions at the 2022 International Congress for Medieval Studies, including one on digital mapping about which Gale is especially excited. "We want to spread the word about how important and relevant medieval studies is for the classroom. It's really about helping teachers to motivate students and to find ways to teach medieval... whatever they're teaching! Whether it's history, art history, literature, music..."
Whatever "medieval" you teach, TEAMS and "The Once and Future Classroom" can help. Check out our featured TEAMS titles below for some ideas, and consider publishing your own essays on teaching the Middle Ages in "The Once and Future Classroom"!
This feature, from the September 2021 edition of our monthly newsletter, is the first in an annual series on TEAMS that we'll publish in each September edition of our newsletter. See the full September 2021 edition here, and access archived editions here.
