Drama Tuesday - What will I teach today?

It’s the question we face as teachers every day of our working lives?

What will I teach today?

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a convenient text book to open and say to students,  Look at page 53 and do what it says there.

Unlike many other school subjects, drama does not seem to have a simple answer or a single set of textbooks or set syllabus.

Many Curriculum frameworks and syllabuses are written in open-ended ways. We need to join the dots or fill in the missing gaps.

• What are the choices and decisions that drama teachers need to make in their day to day planning?

• How do know what to teach in drama? When to teach specific concepts and skills and processes?

• How do I teach so students learn in ways that match or suit their age and stage of development?

To answer these questions we need to build a map in our head about how students learn drama at different ages and stages.

Teaching drama can’t just be a jigsaw of randomly chosen activities or a haphazard collection of things that work. They have to lead students somewhere. The word educate comes from the Latin deuce I lead forward.

We must have a curriculum compass that guides us forward in the learning of our drama students. One of the principles must be that we teach drama in ways that acknowledge and understand the ways youngsters learn at different ages. We need to teach with a sense of an underlying progression in learning. 

The term learning progression refers to the purposeful sequencing of teaching and learning expectations across multiple developmental stages, ages, or grade levels. They provide concise, clearly articulated descriptions of what students should know and be able to do at a specific stage of their education.

Consider the simple yet complex notion of improvising which is the backbone of many drama teaching programs. what is or expectation  of improvisation in children who are three and four? How do we shape learning experiences as they are five or ten or fourteen. We don’t expect 5 year olds to master the concepts of Algebra that they can learn in Year 12. But they do have things to learn in Year 1 so that they can learn in Year 12. There is a chain of connection across the learning years.

This is William, our grandson, in free play. This shows the seeds of improvisation that we develop through drama programs.

Where do we go next? How do we build learning upon learning?

What are aged and developmentally appropriate drama activities towards a growing learning about improvisation?

It is useful to visit again some of the learning progressions that have been developed as curriculum. 

 It might seem obvious, but nonetheless important, to observe that as children grow, their capacity to understand and apply concepts develop and our planning should reflect the patterns of child development.

The following example of a progression is based on some of my earlier research.

The Holy Grail of Drama Curriculum writers is to write workable progressions for development of drama across school years. It is notoriously difficult to write these progressions with ironclad certainty. They are at best useful approximations to guide. They are based on observation of young people learning drama and teacher experiences. But they are better than random guesses. 

A final thought:

I have had a conversation once with a teacher who said – for efficiency – that she teaches the same lesson to all the different years across the school. One size fits all. 

Can you spot the flaw in that approach?

What is the map that guides your choices as a drama teacher?

Drama Tuesday - Responding to existential threats to arts education

What is happening to the world of Arts Education internationally?

In my role as Chair of the World Alliance for Arts Education, I received the following message in an email from Greece:

Two days ago the Ministry of Education announced the weekly program for upper secondary education for the new school year 2020-2021 and they have eliminated the arts completely !!!

The arts, namely music, theater and visual arts, were among the elective subjects for pupils in their last three years of high school. In addition pupils had the opportunity to participate in interdisciplinary projects that usually included an art form and gave the opportunity to arts' specialists to collaborate with other specialists. Now everything has disappeared! There are no elective subjects. There are no arts in any form or in any way taught in upper secondary education. There are no projects any more. All of those hours have been re-allocated to other more highly valued subjects. (17 June 2020)

If this was happening in just one country we might be alarmed but just shrug our shoulders. But similar situations are being experienced in other parts of the world. In Australian Universities, the Federal Minister for Education, Dan Tehan announced changes that will favour maths, teaching and nursing units over humanities, commerce and law (Karp, 19 June 2020). 

How do we as an arts community respond to these threats to our work?

I share the Open Letter from the WAAE 

International Drama/Theatre and Education Association (IDEA)

International Society for Education through Art (InSEA)

International Society for Music Education (ISME)

World Dance Alliance (WDA)

Advocating for arts education worldwide – https://www.waae.online 

June 25 2020

An Open Letter from the World Alliance for Arts Education WAAE representing International Arts Education Professional Associations to:

Niki Kerameus, Minister of Education and Religious Affairs, info@nikikerameus.gr 

Sofia Zaharaki, Vice-Minister, Primary and Secondary Education, szacharaki@minedu.gov.gr 

Anastasia Gika, General Secretary for Primary and Secondary Education, sgika@minedu.gov.gr

I write to add the voice of the World Alliance for Arts Education WAAE to the many students and teachers of the Arts (Music, Dance, Theatre and Visual Arts) requesting the reversal of the decision by the Ministry of Education that announced the elimination of the Arts in the weekly program for upper secondary education for the new school year 2020-2021. The WAAE supports those who protest about the removal of elective programs in the Arts for pupils in their last three years of high school. This retrograde decision impacts on the lives of many and on the future of Arts Education in Greece.

The World Alliance for Arts Education WAAE is honoured to add our voices to the Departments of Theatre, Dance, Music and Visual Arts and professional organisations that represent specialist teachers from Greece, that are writing letters and petitions of protest. The Alliance highlights the negative impacts of this directive on students, teachers and ultimately the whole country.

Robust international research on the purpose, value and importance of arts education is rich and deep. The WAAE urges you to read and heed the research. Learning in, through and with the Arts shapes personal, social and cultural identity and is an entitlement for all students (see The UNESCO Seoul Agenda For Arts Education (2010) and the Frankfurt Declaration for Arts Education https://www.insea.org/docs/waae/WAAE-Frankfurt-declaration.pdf). 

The Arts contribute to the development of values, personal and interpersonal development. Learning in the Arts fosters creativity, innovation and persistence. In these times of crisis, the Arts play a significant role in mental and emotional health and wellbeing, as the current Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic is showing us all. The losses to individual students and teachers are devastating. They amplify the loss to the Greek education system as a whole from this decision. 

Please reconsider and rescind this directive.

The letter was signed by the members of the WAAE Executive Committee.

What is happening with Arts and Drama Education in your parts of the world?

What actions can you take at a local level when you see or hear of threats to arts education?

Why is a healthy arts education in schools and community valuable and necessary?

Why should we take action when we see an issue with arts education?

You will remember the famous quotation from Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Bibliography

Karp, P. (19 June 2020). Australian university fees to double for some arts courses, but fall for Stem subjects. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/19/australian-university-fees-arts-stem-science-maths-nursing-teaching-humanities

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984). Retrieved from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists

Music Monday - The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee on zoom.

On Saturday evening I drove into WAAPA at Edith Cowan University to see a production on zoom of the musical Spelling Bee, performed by Diploma of Music Theatre students under the direction of creatives Nicole Stinton (director and co-ordinator of the Diploma course), Tim How (musical director) and Jayne Smeulders (choreography). 

 I was curious to see this production. Very unusually, the audience were to gather in a lecture theatre on campus while the performers remained at home, ready to perform live over zoom. Across Perth, cast members farewelled their parents and families as the latter prepared to drive to WAAPA, and then the performers themselves settled in front of their laptops at home, ready to perform. Strange times indeed.

I confess that I was hoping that this might be the last zoom performance I would watch for the foreseeable future. Over the past few weeks I have seen several plays on this platform and although each had its merits, it was always hard to ignore the unfavourable comparison with a live performance. Spelling Bee would certainly be different in the sense that the performance was to be largely live – with some pre-recorded backup vocals and a couple of film sequences.

In the lecture theatre the atmosphere was that of excited curiosity – how was this going to work?

We were instructed to feel comfortable applauding after songs -although the performers at home wouldn’t hear us, the creative team had allowed for applause breaks.

And so the show started. 

It was certainly more comfortable to watch on a large screen rather than home laptop. That was my first observation.

The premise for this production was ‘that due to Covid 19, the annual spelling bee had been forced online. The rules would be the same as usual, with one additional rule being that spellers must have both hands visible on screen as they spelled.’

In this production the four audience members in the original script became additional characters – the exchange student from Australia who had become stranded in the USA due to the pandemic, one of the speller’s Dads, and so on.

Solo songs were performed to backing tracks played in the singer’s own space. Back-up vocals had been pre-recorded. 

The rehearsal process had clearly taken care and time with playing to the camera and to finding visual and aural clarity in dialogue between characters. There was a strong and vibrant energy in this performance -and a clear sense of ownership of and commitment to the production. There was some vocal pushing (perhaps because it was the final show) but there were also many memorable moments – one was the Dan Schwartz character who spent the performance cooking in his own kitchen, while manning the bell in the spelling bee.  A convincing variation on how it is usually played. An unscripted (I think) but hilarious moment was when the family pet dog started barking. Even on the zoom platform, live performance throws up the unexpected!

At the end of the show the audience were clearly delighted with what they had experienced.  I enjoyed every moment.

I spoke with Nicole Stinton afterwards and confirmed that she had chosen the musical before Covid 19 struck. It is hard to imagine a musical better suited to an online production.

I imagine that there will be many post-grad dissertations in the coming years about performing online during a pandemic. This production and its creatives would certainly have much of value to lend to the conversation.

Bravo to all.

Questions about inclusion for Drama Teachers in contemporary times

A teacher found a beautiful and compassionate monologue based play written and performed by an aboriginal woman . It provided interesting acting challenges for her students. They had to make strong physical, vocal and movement choices. They had to use their dramaturgy skills to contextualise their choices to embody the role. It was accessible and relevant. She presented it to them to workshop acting, dramaturge and director roles. 

The 12 girls in her class responded well to the challenge. She didn’t notice the looks exchanged between the 5 boys in her class.

As a reflective teacher, she was interested to read her student journals.

Some students questioned using a text that provided acting roles only for a single female character. Other students discussed the appropriateness of asking non-aboriginal actors to play an aboriginal character. Her one indigenous student who comes from a Western Australian Noongar identity, asked about playing a role based on Murri life.

The teacher began to question her assumptions. The text was theatrically compelling and offered challenges for her students. But she also realised that her focus on theatrically strong moments for her students maybe problematic.

The question of appropriation of culture is interesting, particularly in the week when it’s announced that on The Simpsons, characters of colour will no longer be voiced by white actors ("The Simpsons stops using white actors to voice non-white characters," 27 June 2020). Is it appropriate for non-aboriginal actors to portray indigenous roles? As drama educators we have come a long way from Laurence Olivier playing Othello in blackface (1965, check it out on the Internet). 

It’s interesting if you think about it. If we extended the logic, could any Australian actor ever portray an Irish character or a character from Ibsen or Chekhov or Shaw where the roles are so deeply imbued with a national identity? It may be inappropriate for a caucasian actor to reach into the makeup kit to portray an Asian or Indian character but where is the line to be drawn?

We could ask questions of other plays that, for example, portray abuse of women. What are the implications of studying A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams, 1947) and the portrayal of Blanche and mental breakdown? And Stanley’s treatment of her?

If you extend this line of argument, are there any plays but the most innocuous that can be studied by drama students? There are some who would argue that school drama needs to be neutralised. The spirit of Thomas Bowdler lives on in contemporary times. ( Bowdler gives us the term bowdlerise which means to remove material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), especially with the result that the text becomes weaker or less effective.) And many teachers tell of choices of self-censorship when it comes to choosing texts for students to work with. 

What are your thoughts?

Where do you draw the line in the sand in the choices you make as drama teachers?

What are appropriate texts(see interesting discussion in Lambert, Wright, Currie, & Pascoe, 2016)?

Bibliography

Enoch, W., & Mailman, D. (1996). THE 7 STAGES OF GRIEVING. Brisbane: Playlab Press.

Lambert, K., Wright, P. R., Currie, J., & Pascoe, R. (2016). Performativity and creativity in senior secondary drama classrooms. NJ Drama Australia Journal, 40(1), 15-26. 

The Simpsons stops using white actors to voice non-white characters. (27 June 2020). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jun/27/the-simpsons-stops-using-white-actors-to-voice-non-white-characters

Williams, T. (1947). A Streetcar Named Desire: [a Play.]. New York, NY: New American Library.

Music Monday - Embodied Singing

This is the final week of what has been a long and challenging semester in high schools across Australia and the whole world. In my own little world of a performing arts high school in Perth, I have a tradition in the final week of allowing the younger music theatre specialist students to sing an ‘own choice song’ of any genre, purely for the fun of singing -  the only provision being that the text is suitable for a school environment. I work at the school on Mondays and Fridays so today was the first of these ‘own choice song’ days for this year.

Predictably, today the year 10 girls chose music theatre songs from current favourite shows – think Wicked, Frozen, Beetle Juice, Bring It On.  And the year 8 boys, after asking, “Miss, is it okay to do a rap song if we don’t sing the rude words?”, sang lustily, with a nudge and wink at each other at all the (silent) offensive moments. 

What was clear in all the fun song performances today was that every student was relaxed. There was no sense of assessment or preparing a song that would at some point become an assessment task. Their bodies were relaxed and when they inhaled it was with relaxed abdominal muscles. There was a bit of bopping around to the backing tracks and a much greater unconscious grounding of their lower bodies. These are all qualities that as a singing teacher, I strive for every day. All the singing today was embodied.

Greater embodiment is something we often observe in a masterclass when a singer, after instruction from the master teacher, sings very much better on the second attempt. This can be due to valuable help from the master teacher -  but can also be in part, a more relaxed performance after settling into a performance situation.

At my other workplace – a music theatre department at tertiary level – we have a series of ‘audition performance practices’. Lately these have of course been online, but when we are all in the space together, students so often fare much better in the singing task set at the ‘call back’ than in their actual performance. It seems that getting an endorsement of their initial performance in the form of a call-back allows them to relax into their bodies for the ‘call back’.

What does this all mean for us as teachers of singing? 

I think we need to take every opportunity to learn from the expertise of psychologists working in the field of performance. And we need to constantly search for the warm-up strategies which help students unlock their own bodies. In performance, we need to encourage students to embrace the character and story and lose themselves and their complete focus on technique.

As always, I invite and thank you for your comments.

Zoom Performance

To ZOOM or Not to ZOOM? That is the question.

As the pandemic burst on us, as drama teachers we went on-line. We made compromises, adaptations, learnt how to use ZOOM or TEAMS or similar. We sorted on-line content. We created on-line content. We were often in survival mode. There were so many unanswered questions. Now we are at the point of considering or drama students performing in the new world. ZOOM is a necessity but provides a changed aesthetic for performing. Just as each form or style of drama and theatre has a set of conventions to learn and understand, so too does on-line performance. It is timely to consider some of those conventions and the possibilities of this form of performing drama. 

A ZOOM performance has a unique sense of occasion. When we go to a traditional proscenium arch theatre we have the experience of the space, the seats, the lighting and atmosphere of an audience. When we are sitting on our home sofa with the laptop perched on our knees and the dog snuggled against our thighs, the experience is different. We are an audience of one without the familiar wrap of others nearby. The actors are in a different space - and separated from each other. Their use of space and time is limited to the frame offered by their camera. In short, what we see and hear and even feel are different. Going to the ZOOM theatre is a different experience.

Looking at some examples of school and university based ZOOM performances, prompted some thoughts and interesting questions.

Frame: The frame offered by ZOOM shapes the way actors perform. In examples I have seen, the actors are shown in Two Shot – we see their head and shoulders facing the camera. They can move in that frame closer or further from the camera but generally stay in neutral  space. In some examples, though, there is a more dynamic sense of placement of the actors within the frame – the actors moving closer or further away. This can, however, affect the sound captured.

Framing within the frame: Basically in a ZOOM performance there is a choice of Speaker view where we see the speaker’s image large on screen; or,  Galley view  where speakers are shown side by side. The choices presented are limited. 

Physicalising Facial Expression: This sort of framing focuses on facial expression. It relies on the animation of eyes, cheeks, brows, lips. While there is the old adage about screen acting – less is more – subtle facial expression in this sort of ZOOM performance presented challenges to an audience. The unforgiving eye of the camera is up close and personal. 

Sitting energy: it is interesting that in the examples I have seen, the actors are seated to perform to their camera. This gave a different sense of spine and body. While on stage we might be sometimes seated, actors are more often moving and on their feet. Sitting provides a different body orientation. I am not saying that the actors’ bodies were slumped but there was a seated energy rather than a balls-of-the-feet energy. I wondered what would have happened if the actors had been standing (adjusting their cameras to be at eye line)? Would the energy have been different? I suspect it would be more and differently energised.

More visual interest happened when one of the actor got up for a seated position and moved away from the camera. 

Lighting: it’s obvious when you see it on screen, but better lighting shows more detail. Flatter lighting drains the performance.

Accent: as with all mediated performances, the quality of voice and the use of accent are impacted by the technology. Overlapping voices which we expect and need in drama can sometimes be lost by the latency effect (time delays in the technology) or simply the broadband capacity of the connection. 

Relationships: Drama lives on relationships. How does a ZOOM performance change the implied relationships and accompanying tensions?

Space: Actors in different houses are by definition not in a shared space. What is the implied shared space of the ZOOM performance?

Length of performance: performed plays have been getting shorter and shorter (remember when Five Act plays were de rigeur, the current fashion). How long can a ZOOM Performance sustain our interest, particularly when the format of static shots are used?

Making drama is a succession of choices. How will I vary voice, body, use of space in response to the shifts in intention or roles, relationships and tension? How will production choices of costume, lighting, design, sound interact with audience?

Another point to note is about the emotional impact of a ZOOM performance. We are distanced by technology in ways that we aren’t in the warm dark space of a theatre. Does the technology distance us even further? Do we share the emotional experience in the same ways as seeing it live? I know that I can cry and laugh in watching a movie, can I do that in watching a ZOOM performance?

There are other questions too. Is it different when we watch a “live” ZOOM performance from when we watch one that has been recorded and we watch in our own time. In other words does synchronous and asynchronous performance matter?

A final observation. When we teach students about Brechtian verfremdungseffekt (see, for example, "Brecht for beginners," ; Unwin, 2014) – one of the techniques we use is to place actors in a dialogue side by side facing directly to the audience, rather than creating a naturalistic relationship. In a funny way, the side by side Gallery view of ZOOM gives us that sense of distancing. The two characters speaking to each other are addressing us as audience directly implying that they are talking to each other. ZOOM might be a great way of teaching Brecht techniques. 

Where will the use of ZOOM technology take us in drama and theatre?

Of course, we all can’t wait to get back into our theatre spaces – whenever that is permitted. But there will be continuing interest in using ZOOM technologies for Drama. 

Interesting to see how the industry is adapting to changed circumstances. MTI have just announced a “new online, licensing, ticketing and content creation platform designed to help schools and community theatres celebrate  live theatre”. https://www.mtishows.com/streaming-an-mti-show. Not yet available in Australia, 

How will this play out in drama education?

Bibliography

. Brecht for beginners. In M. Thoss (Ed.), Brecht for beginners. (pp. 74-84).

Unwin, S. (2014). The Complete Brecht Toolkit. London: Nick Hern Books.

Music Monday - Performance Confidence

I spent Saturday accompanying year 11 and 12 singers for their semester one performance exams – individual recitals of around 10-15 minutes in duration. (We are fortunate in Western Australia to be easing restrictions now that we have no community transmission of Covid-19, so these exams took place live in the room, with everyone appropriately distanced.)

As usual there was a range of performance confidence – from the super confident singers who love every audience (including exam panels) through to the singers with borderline performance anxiety. Each exam had its own dynamic in that respect alone.

Most of the singers I accompanied that day are also my own voice students, and so part of Sunday was spent finalising their semester one in-class results. During the period that we were all self-isolating at home (the end of the 1st term and first few weeks of this term) these students submitted performances to me in the form of self-takes via email. I then emailed comments and feedback. During that time in lockdown, I often mused on how much more confident one of my students was on camera, as opposed to in the room with an audience. On Sunday as I again watched one of her emailed videos from earlier in the semester, I reflected on her live performance the day before and how, using the same marking rubric, her exam performance could never achieve the same result as one to the camera.

Now of course, live performance is the lifeblood of music – and aren’t we bursting to get back to it?  However, is there a step, we as teachers could take, to build performance confidence via the camera for those students with some degree of performance anxiety? And importantly – what would the steps towards confident live performance entail? Could it be the sharing of confident self-takes with their peers to ‘prove themselves’ before performing live in the class?

Do you have thoughts on this? Please share!

Teaching Drama For Redundancy

One of the sometimes overlooked roles of the teacher is to teach so that we are redundant. We are successful as teachers when our students no longer need us. There is often glib recognition of terms such as learning for life and independent learners. What that means in practice is often more difficult. 

I remember an inspirational teacher telling me that he teaches his drama students to run their own warm ups. He even has a roster for them to be the leader of the warm ups for each lesson. This has two advantages. Firstly, if the teacher is late to class or delayed, then students don’t sit around waiting but can get started. Secondly, in their lives beyond school, if they are working in the profession or taking part in a community event, they have the skills and processes to manage their own warm-ups (particularly, when there may not be someone to lead them). This left an impression on me and I have encouraged my drama education students to include this simple strategy in their own teaching.

Teaching for redundancy is also a timely reminder that we need to watch the temptation to take on the drama teacher as hero/heroine role. We all love a little affirmation as teachers. But, sometimes, the drama teacher as cult leader kicks in. As much as we as individual teachers have needs to be recognised, we need to keep in mind that it is not about me/us but about students. The glib phrase used is student centred learning. That isn’t about pandering to students wants and preferences; there is still a curriculum and learning to focus on. The measure of our success as teachers is that students are learning and that we make the difference in their learning. But what matters is the student learning nor our personal agenda. 

Each student does learn in her or his own way and we need to be mindful of overgeneralising about how students learn but some clear markers of teaching for redundancy do exist. Part of that process is recognising when students incorporate the learning without the teacher prompting. If our class has been working to understand fundamentals of improvisation – offer/accept/progress – when we see them using that process independently and without us side coaching, then we can see them taking the principles of improv into their own practice. Of course, there is a useful role for side coaching. But teaching for less side coaching is teaching for redundancy. Side coaching is not about us the teacher but about shifting the focus to the student in action.

What other ways can you teach drama for redundancy?

(For more on sidecoaching see https://spolin.com/?p=872)

Misconceptions about Drama Teaching

Misconceptions about Drama Teaching are interesting.

The misconceptions that many people have about drama and arts education are revealing.

A misconception is a view or opinion that is incorrect because it is based on faulty thinking or understanding

For example, there are misconceptions about drama itself. Drama is just entertainment. Drama is showing off.  Drama is faking emotions. 

Drama can be entertaining but it can often serve a wider purpose through telling stories that are enacted and embodied. 

There are misconceptions about drama in schools. Drama is just putting on scripted plays/musicals/Shakespeare. Drama is not a serious school subject/just something as a break from real learning. Drama is time filling/wasting/just games/pretending to be trees. Drama is touchy feeling/too emotional/too revealing. Drama is OK for the show off kids but not for all kids/drama is only for talented kids not average kids/. Drama is messy/noisy/disruptive/kids get too excited and they are high when they go to their next class. You also hear people say there’s nothing to learn in drama/there’s no writing/there’s no content. Drama is just pretending/a form of lying or dishonesty/unleashes undesirable thoughts and feelings/encourages rebellion/challenges authority/is subversive.

Drama teaching and learning is a legitimate field of study; what students learn in drama is specific knowledge and skills about using embodied forms of expression and communication to share stories. They also learn through drama about their  personal, social and cultural identities.

What are the misconceptions about drama in schools that you have come across?

How do we deal with these misconceptions?

I doubt that any one wilfully sets out to hold and pass on misconceptions. They often reflect gaps in a person’s experience or education or are the residue of a bad experience of school drama. Sometimes they reflect a lack of understanding of the purposes and scope of drama in schools. Sometimes, they reflect unspoken prejudices or cultural norms. Sometimes they are the fear of the unknown. Whatever the reason, misconceptions are learnt and as teachers our

role is to respond to that mis-learning and address it. 

Eggen and Kauchak (2013) observe, “misconceptions are constructed; they’re constructed because they make sense to the people who construct them; and they are often consistent with people’s prior knowledge or experiences” (p. 195). In that light it is important to understand the factors that impact on how we learn to teach the Arts and Drama.

All of us, including teachers, bring to our lives and work, our own learning experiences in the Arts. Teachers learn about their job and craft from other teachers:

• as students themselves, they see what teachers do and how they teach; the school culture can both enable teaching in the Arts or it can powerfully de-motivate and limit it

• if a teacher’s own Arts education or the Arts teaching they observe is telling them one thing, they are likely to believe and do what they see and are familiar with. If they are told often that Drama is time wasting/time filling/just games/etc. then this  message is reinforced. Many teachers continue to teach the way they themselves were taught even when they didn’t particularly enjoy that schooling.

Tied closely to what teachers do are their underlying attitudes, values and dispositions and these have an impact on how the Arts are taught and learned. Attitudes and values are most often socially formed. It takes powerful and embodied personal experience to change entrenched points of view.

Pointing out a misconception, simply labelling it as “wrong” or “flawed thinking”, is of limited use. People who change their thinking and practice need: 

• viable, alternative experiences that disrupt their mis-conceptualised understandings

• to see how that changed understanding is useful in the real world

• to see how applying their revised thinking to new situation actually produces desired results

• to have their revised world view valued and endorsed by peers and the school community

• to see that students are learning differently, with higher levels of approval and satisfaction and with better outcomes or results

• to see that parents and the community support what is different.

Teaching the Arts often needs to be transformational learning for a teacher personally and professionally. It needs also be transformational for parents, educational leaders and policy makers and the wider community.

The antidote to misconceptions is being clear in the messages we communicate. The ways that we state purpose and scope needs to be well articulated. We need to check for understanding.  Or to put it another way, as  Stephen Covey (2004) reminds us: SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD.

Stephen R. Covey  (2004) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, New York, NY. Free Press.

Eggen, P., & Kauchak, D. (2013). Educational Psychology: Windows on Classrooms, Ninth Edition. Boston: Pearson.

Purposes of Arts and Drama Education

There is a moment in the film Boychoir (Dir. François Girard, 2014), playing on SBS Movie Chanel, when the character played by Dustin Hoffman in a discussion about the notoriously short singing life of a treble voice over sees, “we give them a life, not a vocation”.

While, some students who study drama in schools continue to have lives and careers in their art form, arts education in schools is not just pre-vocational, just as a successful comprehensive education is not just pre-vocational.

Drama draws from stories of all human experience. Through the lives of other presented in drama we can better understand our own lives and stories. Drama is a rich and powerful form of expression and communication found in some form in all societies and times.

Drama shows how people interact with each other. It is about people living together in society.

Drama passes the stories of our culture from one generation to another. Drama is part of the cultural DNA, the stories that shape our wider identities.

Another way of saying that is that through drama we learn about our personal, social and cultural identities. Drama in schools is much more than a “try out” for some future job. Yes, it does develop what are sometimes called life skills such as confidence and communication. It is more importantly about how we shape the ways we express ideas and communicate and share them with others. The particular skills of using our voices and bodies, stepping into the shows of others with empathy and understanding, and having a sense of place and time are valuable in their own right. They help us tell and share the stories of our lives.

This challenges the views held by many about the purpose of drama and arts education. It questions some of the prevalent misconceptions. Misconceptions are interesting because they tell us so much. This idea of misconceptions about Drama is developed in the next post. (And there is a need to also consider drama for students who are identified as gifted and talented and pre-vocational.