Teachers= Actors?
A highschool teacher once explained to me that teaching is just like performing. You stand up in-front of a group of people and do your best to relay a message to them in an entertaining way. The Lincoln Center Institute in New York is taking this theory one step further by helping teachers to enhance their acting skills to further benefit their classroom. During a 5 day national conference, educators learn how to use gestures and voice to enhance their classroom setting. Relating this to my own experience, I can definitely remember the eccentric teachers much more clearly then those who were on the calmer side.
Although it seems like a good idea to liven up the classroom by getting into characters from novels and such, I wondered how you could apply this to other areas of study as well. One of the science teachers who attended the last conference commented on how his new found acting skills improved his classroom.
” ‘Working with Shakespeare, I learned about using language to build excitement,’ says Kevin Williams, a science teacher at Harlem’s Frederick Douglass Academy II. ‘My teaching persona is a lot more excited now.’ The workshop, he adds,’made me more of a risk taker in the classroom.’ The butterflies he felt before performing also made Williams more empathetic to students who perform in front of a class.
Relating this to the area of writing, many teachers found that their students improved in their writing skills and were able to think more abstractly when referring to material. Now I know this may be difficult to incorporate into each area of study, but it would certainly living up the classroom. Going along with my theme of making classes exciting and different, I can see students paying more attention to a teacher acting out Shakespeare then one who is simply having the students read the chapter to themselves. A teacher could take this idea and expand it further by having the students themselves act out certain elements of a lesson. During my time in middle school I can recall having to write a song about parts of speech for one class and one about the revolutionary war for another class. Yes the assigments were a bit bizzare, but the information is still clear in my mind. Who knows, soon the college of ed could require an acting class to get into the school of ed. Interesting thought..
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I can certainly relate to this article. I was going to be a theatre major before I decided on teaching. After I decided on teaching I thought, well I still get to stand in front of people and perform. I think the class that the article talked about is very innovative and could certainly help improve classroom dynamics. We all remember those classes where teachers just talked in a monotone voice and made you take notes the whole time, right? I don’t think any of us remember those classes fondly. I would love to see a movement in the educational community toward livening up our classrooms. I think it not only helps the students to focus and gets them more excited to learn, but I think it also makes it more exciting for the teacher. I really believe that incorporating more theatrical elements into the classroom would help students and teachers find a better common ground, one closer to each other. You could make your students act out parts of the story and it would wake them up and get them out of there seats. But, you can’t expect your students to do this if you’re just standing up there with not enthusiasm. You may have to model what you are looking for to them. I think this is a great idea overall. Good find, Amanda!
Posted 2 years, 6 months agoA teacher is very much an entertainer, if they want to be effective and have mass appeal. Honestly, this is one of the aspects to teaching that makes me nervous. I’ve never been much of a performer and class presentations were always dreaded. So why am I going to be a teacher? I somehow feel that it will be different and besides, I love History and English sooo much, I think my enthusiam will have to spill over into my classes – I want students to love these subjects as much as I do. This conference the article discussed sounds fascinating. I bet it did help a lot. I plan on being the crazy teacher who has costumes to reflect the day’s subject matter. As a history teacher, I will not be above wearing a toga, a revolutionary war costume, Rosie the Riveter, etc. to illustrate my point and help immerse students into the time period we are discussing. Incorporating theatrical elements helps to captivate students and to make the knowledge pill much easier to swallow.
Posted 2 years, 6 months ago