Lincoln East Shakespeare teacher to retire

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By MARGARET REIST / Lincoln Journal Star

Dr. Anne Cognard’s Advanced Shakespeare class started — like virtually everything else in her classroom — as an idea, a thought from a student, studied and examined and developed into something all its own.

There, in classroom B041 in the basement of East High School, ideas are organic: living things nurtured and respected and encouraged, a product of the relationship built between student and teacher.

And the idea that turned into an Advanced Shakespeare class? The one that grew into a unique animal within Lincoln Public Schools — one that invites a few students each semester to further their study of the famous 16th- century playwright and help teach Shakespeare to their peers?

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East High Shakespeare teacher Anne Cognard listens to a class discussion of "King Lear." (William Lauer)

Well, that one came 15 years ago from a kid who had just finished Cognard’s Shakespeare class and asked if he could take it — again.

The teacher obliged, and from then on it became a class unto itself, one that embodies the very core of Cognard’s philosophy of teaching: that there is nothing high school students can’t do, including taking a chance at being colleagues with a consummate expert in all things Shakespeare.

“They honest to goodness never say, ‘I can’t do that,’” Cognard said of the high school students she’s taught for 23 years. “They will go wherever you take them.”

To understand Cognard’s Advanced Shakespeare class, and why this semester 11 students signed up — nearly double the number who traditionally take the class because they know this is their last shot before the longtime teacher retires this year — one must understand something about the woman who teaches it.

There is, of course, her boundless passion for Shakespeare, one that she’s shared with her husband Roger, a Nebraska Wesleyan English professor, for more than four decades.

Just as importantly, though, is a fundamental respect for her students, a belief as unwavering as her literary passion that their ideas have merit, that their potential and their willingness to jump off an intellectual cliff into the unknown makes the possibilities endless.

“My expectations for them are great,” she said. “It really is because I do believe to my very core that every single one of them has greatness built inside of him or her.”

She tells her students she wants them to experiment, to try things they’ve never tried, to go places that make them uncomfortable.

That means finding themselves in a class that looks nothing like what they’re used to, where they may write a lyrical ballad as a way of exploring the concept of rhythm and sound in writing. And then — God forbid — sing it in front of the class.

Students who’ve never considered themselves artists or musicians find themselves creating paintings based on Toni Morrison’s “Jazz” (because great literature is great literature, whether it’s written by a 16-century playwright or a 21st century American novelist), or writing jazz music or creating an imaginary debate between Hamlet and MacBeth set in a modern-day election year.

It means throwing out the traditional framework that says grades are based on unit tests and memorization and established literary theory. It means embracing new ideas and Cognard’s expectation that her students throw themselves headlong into that intellectual pursuit.

Cognard has taught all types of students over the years, though the top academics line up. Those kids, she said, are often the most intellectually conservative because they’ve been honed from a young age to get As.

And because they know exactly how to do that, they’re often reluctant to try something new.

So Cognard tells them they’ve got their A, as long as they try their best, a standard she outlines. She grades their papers, so students know how it would be judged in a college class. But their final grade is based only on how they push themselves.

“There is no absolute standard outside of themselves,” Cognard said.

And when you ask those students in Advanced Shakespeare whether it was Cognard or Shakespeare that motivated them to sign up, you get answers like this one from sophomore Kate Dwyer:

“I don’t think I’d love Shakespeare as much as I do if it weren’t for Dr. Cognard, so I think they’re inextricably linked.”

Cognard’s path to East High was circuitous.

She was born in Scotland —that’s a very subtle Scottish brogue, not a Boston accent you detect when listening to her — and moved to Omaha with her family when she was 11. She graduated from Benson High School, where she met her future husband.

“We were in ‘Brigadoon’ together and kissed so much in ‘Brigadoon’ we decided we ought at some point get married.”

They did, after she graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and he from Nebraska Wesleyan. They both earned their master’s and doctorates from Texas Christian University. They were lured back to Nebraska by a job offer for Roger at Wesleyan.

In Lincoln, Cognard taught at both UNL and Wesleyan and for a few years was co-director of the Nebraska Humanities Council before becoming a professor and dean at the College of St. Mary in Omaha.

Along the way, the Cognards had two daughters — both of whom grew up and earned doctorates in English. They traveled to England in the summers, taking students to study Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon. They filled their home with antique books and 16th century “stuff” — including what could very well be Shakespeare’s bed, which is undisputedly from the 16th century and the area where Shakespeare lived.

In 1985, Cognard decided the commute to Omaha was too taxing on her family, so she took a leave of absence. As it happened, her daughters attended East High School and when she mentioned her leave to the principal, he mentioned an opening. She took him up on the offer.

“I loved it,” she said. “I absolutely loved it.”

She’d found college students to be a practical bunch, focused primarily on getting a degree. High school was different.

“This sounds cliche, but it’s youth,” she said.

“There is this youthful, intellectual indiscretion. They are indiscreet in the sense that they don’t put up barriers to ideas. Ever,” she said. “They are willing to hold their noses and jump into the deep end because they trust you.”

And so Cognard stayed.

She taught Shakespeare, along with American Literature and AP language. For the past 12 years, she’s been the chairof East’s English department.

Some of her colleagues worried at first about her becoming department head. They’d seen her in meetings, opinionated, demanding and uncompromising.

“Here comes Patton,” Bill Dimon recalls teachers thinking. “My God, what are we going to do?”

But she was energetic, and professional and gave teachers the autonomy to do what they wanted. She inspired them with her vision and insulated them from outside issues.

“From that moment on, she walked on water and we followed and waded behind her,” said Dimon, who will take over as department chair next year.

In the classroom, Dimon said, she is unmatched, able to motivate students to do things they never knew they could.

In the process, she became a sort of institution at East.

A rite of passage.

A teacher whose students would never consider addressing her any other way than Dr. Cognard, who worry over the idea of having to miss her class — or tell her they won’t be there — and who do NOT, under any possible circumstances, want to be late. She’s a teacher who’s convinced the office staff it’s better to wait to deliver messages until students are finished with her class, rather than interrupt her.

There’s even a Facebook page called “I survived/am surviving Dr. Cognard’s class.” It has 205 members.

Cognard said she’s always mildly surprised by her stern reputation, but figures it’s really about students not wanting to disappoint themselves.

“I do expect them to respect education and to respect me in helping them to reach that, and to have me respect them in that process. I never waiver on that,” she said.

“In my mind, they’re living up to themselves. I think if they were only trying to live up to me, they’d tune me out.”

Students say she works them hard. They also say she will never, ever, condemn a thought they may express.

“Even though she’s so renowned, she never denigrates your ideas,” said Tina Zheng, a senior in the Advanced Shakespeare class.

If it’s a view that differs from hers, she won’t tell you it’s wrong, say her students. In fact, she’s been known to take those students out for coffee to discuss it in depth.

“Everything’s in shades of gray,” Zheng said. “Nothing’s in black and white.”

The Advanced Shakespeare class, in the spirit of delving into those shades of gray, spends about half its time teaching the other Shakespeare class, and the other half sitting in the English office reading related works and figuring out just how they’re going to get a particular point across to their fellow students.

One of the advantages of helping teach, said senior George Miller, is how it clarifies ideas.

“In all aspects of education, you never grasp the meaning of ideas ’til you try to express them to other people,” Miller said.

They get some direction, but also a lot of freedom.

“The thing Dr. Cognard most says to us is: ‘Take this place and do something cool,’” Miller said.

And so they do, because she asks them to.

Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.