This author arrived at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1981 kind of by accident, a DC public high school English teacher on hiatus from the classroom due to burying parents and birthing children. She was on her way back to that classroom, but the opportunity to work in the land of all things Shakespeare was too good to pass up, even though there were no established pre-collegiate education programs there--just a few events for students. The Folger Shakespeare Library's educational philosophy, then, was born out of practice with all kinds of real kids and real teachers. In this article, O'Brien describes how the library's educational philosophy and 25-year old educational program got its start.