A different Drama Tuesday

Why I am a teacher. Why am I teacher?

During my first year in teacher education I found myself sitting across from a troubled young student. Anxiety was written in his sweaty body language, the tightly drawn breaths and the lacing of his fingertips as he dodged around the reason for his visit: he was struggling to write the first assignment in EDN101 Intro to Teaching. The task was a gentle recount of something from his own schooling that had left an indelible mark on his own decision to become a teacher. This topic was something that I could relate to as it was a question I had asked myself often.

“I can’t think of anything to write…” he muttered before trailing off into indefinite silence. 

I wanted to help so I offered some suggestions but his answers were desultory and noncommittal.

Tell me about where you went to school. In the country

What were your teachers like? They were OK, I guess.

Were you a good student? Guess so, about average. I always did what i was told. My mum made sure of that.

Why do you want to become a teacher? Mum thought it would be a good idea. Dad told me that it was a good job, steady. Lots of holidays. Good pay.

So you want to be a teacher? Nup. 

Impasse. I searched in my backpack of conversation topics to see if we could move on.

Tell me a bit more about school. Was there something you were good at in school? Sport. 

OK, tell me about that. I thought that being a PE teacher would be good. Always out on the oval, moving about. Couldn’t sit long in a desk. Hated doing head stuff and reading. But I could see myself doing that. I was pretty good at running and OK at footy and the health stuff was OK, bit sexy scary but it was interesting…

Something seemed to have switched on for him. Words flowed.

There was this one time, we had a lightning carnival. Our little District High went to the Senior High in the next big town and I was in the relay team. It was a blustery down south sort of day but OK and we won the relay which was right at the end of the competition. In fact, it was the very last event and the PE teacher made us get on the bus as soon as the race was finished and the cup was handed over. I was so happy. But it had been a busy day and after lunch i was too nervous to go to the toilet and had run the race with a full bladder, thinking I could go before I got on the bus. But that didn’t happen, did it (he added with a discomforting shiver of his spine).

She made us get on the bus, quick. Grab your things and get on there. I was still holding the trophy, a big silver cup and plonked it down on the seat beside me. The back of the bus had the usual gaggle of girls laughing and making jokes. The rest of the boys were sat at the fort of the bus because the teacher wanted to keep an eye on them because they caused trouble. So I was sitting halfway down the bus. It was OK at first, as we chugged out of the town and onto the highway. It was even OK when the other PE teacher driving the bus, ground through the gears and bunny hopped into cruising speed. But i knew I was in trouble.

I was desperate to pee. It really hurt. I asked the teacher and she said, Tie a knot in it, buddy! I pretended to look out the window at the green but couldn’t think of a helpless sense of agony. I tried looking out the window at the flicking by of the Tuarts and trying to ignore the rowdy shouting and the noisy joking in the bus that was starting to fog up the windows. I squirmed one way, then another. I crossed my legs. I tried thinking of other things – winning the race – but that only made it feel worse.

I scrabbled around in my bag in case there was an empty drink container. It would be desperate I know but I simply had to go. I looked at the plastic bag that mum had sent my lunch in, but it was too flimsy. I thought about opening the window of the bus, but those girls behind me would see. There was only one thing for it. The silver trophy was on the seat beside me. Trying to look casual, I slid it towards me and quietly, checking to see no one was looking … 

The relief was immediate.

I would have gotten away with it, but at that moment the bus slid into a turn and there was a clanking of silver cup against the back of the next seat. The PE teacher who was standing near the boys at the front of the bus, looked up quickly and was catapulted a couple of steps down the busy towards me. Her face said it all. She noticed the slopping yellow liquid, and my startled face looking up at her wide eyes. You dirty little bugger! And then everyone else on the bus was looking with questioning eyes. That’s disgusting, you little animal!, she said. Can’t you control your animal instincts! Her eyes had that look of disgust.

His narrative stopped now. He looked away and down, ashamed. Then he whispered mostly to himself. Bitch. She didn’t need to have called me that. I hate her. She can stuff her PE teaching.

I let the moment settle, waiting.

Why don’t you write about that? Mum would kill me, if I did that. 

Do you think so? I know so. I can tell, even now. She had to go up to the school to get me after the bus got back. They rang her from the bus. 

I still think you should write about it for your assignment. Not gonna happen. 

He left my study with a shrugged shoulders at an offer to help him write it. Soon after, he left the teaching course. It might be something that happened a long time ago but I still remember it powerfully. 

Was it a good decision for him to leave teaching? Impossible to know. Could I have done more to help him at this moment in his teacher education journey? There are no second guesses in teaching. When you think about it, his telling of the story and his sense of outrage of his own teachers might have given him the necessary empathy to be a great teacher. Or, may be it was the right decision for him to leave his course.

I am happy to share with you that I came into teaching determined that I would make teaching better than my own schooling. The casual brutalism of the daily plying of power and status of my own teachers resonated with this student’s experiences. I know it was judgmental and naive of me to be so dismissive of the parade of tired middle aged men who taught me. Their sarcasm that passed for wit ran hand in hand with their occasionally physical violence. And it is easy to say that was then and now we do things differently. But do we? As teachers are we kinder than those teachers from my past? i hope so. I hope that we are, but when I hear stories like this one, I see the old soft shoe shuffle of power and status holds the spotlight. 

One thing I have come to recognise is that we all somehow live out the unfulfilled ambitions of our parents. My mother, who lived through the Great Depression and a World War, wanted to be a teacher but couldn’t do so.  Therefore it is not surprising that she gently pushed me in that direction. But there was something more than that wish fulfilment to my decision to go into teaching. I was angry about my own education: the narrowness and aridity; the power plays between teachers and amongst students; the dullness. There had to be something more. I trained my eye to observe and notice. To be aware of the undertow of people and relationships and how that shaped learning. I teach because it is about being human, being alive, being wide-awake to the world (thank you Maxine Greene). As that young man in my study taught me: every moment is a learning occasion. 

Learning lies at the heart of teaching.

Music Monday - A Health Report on Music Education

It has been 15 years since the National Review of School Music Education (2005) and it is timely that a new  Report has been published: Music Education A Sound Investment by Dr Anita Collins, Dr Rachel Dwyer and Aden Date. The Report was commissioned by The Tony Foundation “to inform their vision to use music to achieve improved life outcomes for young people”.

Like the National Review of School Music Education, this report finds:

The problem: a large proportion of Australian primary school children have little or no access to music education.

The Report outlines the benefits of music education and  best [practice in the field. 

The following factors and issues were identified by the project team as the key barriers to the provision of a quality music education to all Australian primary school children:

Arts Educators would not be surprised by these findings. Nor by the State-by-State report on approaches to music education.

The question for arts educators must be what to do with the findings of the Report. 

Thanks to Music Australia <marketing@musicaustralia.org.au> for alerting us to this important report. 

Bibliography

Pascoe, R., S. Leong, J. MacCallum, E. MacKinley, K. Marsh, B. Smith, T. Church and A. Winterton (2005). Augmenting the Diminished: National Review of School Music Education. Canberra, Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training.

Drama Tuesday - Making a difference for Arts Education – book by book

From time to time I am asked to review arts education texts. I do so with a keen interest in arts education particularly arts teacher education. We are always searching for the Holy Grail of arts  education textbooks (and have an interest in writing that “perfect” text one day!). Therefore, I look at these reviews as a way of honing my thoughts about what will help. I ask myself, would this help a student teacher who does not have embodied experience of these arts concepts, to teach dance/drama/media arts/music/visual arts in her/his own classroom?

In the terms of the research literature (e.g. Darling-Hammond, Hammerness, Grossman, Rust, & Shulman, 2005), what content knowledge and what pedagogic content knowledge do you need to teach the Arts in schools?

• What arts specific information does a teacher need – by that I mean what knowledge of the discipline of an art form do they need? How much “arts knowledge” do you need?

• What arts teaching information do you need as a teacher about the specific pedagogies of teaching Dance/Drama/Media Arts/Music/Visual arts?

Looking at the texts available across Australia, what do we see?

There’s focus on:

• Addressing gaps in student’s own arts knowledge

• Interpreting the various curriculum mandates – including the labyrinth of how the Australian Curriculum: The Arts [ACARA] has been “adopted and adapted”

• Providing context

• Advice on teaching 

Each of these are noble aims and each of the texts addresses them. 

Do any of these texts address the reasons why the implementation of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts is inconsistent? Do they address the resistance of many teachers and school administrators to the expectation of teaching the Arts for all students? Or of student teacher’s own resistance to engaging with this area of the curriculum? Or do they address the prevalent misconceptions about the place, value and necessity of arts education in a comprehensive curriculum?

Maybe, maybe not. It is a huge task for any text to address the gaps in knowledge and experience of Initial Teacher Education students, let alone the prevailing points of view of school administrators, teachers and the wider Australian community.

It is 15 years since the two national reviews relevant to arts education – Music (2005) and Visual Arts (2008) – and even longer since the Senate Inquiry into Arts Education in 1995 which summarised the issue as Arts Teaching – the Cycle of Neglect.

The latest salutary warning comes from Robyn Ewing (2020) where she cogently argues:

There is unequivocal research evidence that quality arts processes and experiences engender a distinctive and critical set of understandings and skills that all young people need to navigate twenty-first century living. Yet the potential for the Arts and arts education to transform the curriculum coupled with the ongoing paucity of Australia’s arts storylines threaten the actualisation of The Australian Curriculum: The Arts. (p. 75)

All the textbooks in the world have not fixed the one obvious glaring and central problem: implementation of the endorsed Arts curriculum. 

Designing the next text for Arts Education

Firstly, a new text needs to set out the context for Arts Education as curriculum and as reality.

With that in mind, there are three focus points: 

• What to teach in the Arts – the disciplinary knowledges of each of the arts included in the curriculum

• How to teach the Arts – the distinctive pedagogies of each of the Arts

• Why teach the Arts – beyond the requirements of compliance 

Disciplinary knowledge needs to move beyond listing or defining. For example, fundamental to drama are the Elements of Drama: Role, character and relationships, situation, voice and movement, tension, focus, etc. It is one thing to list them and provide definitions for them (something that is not easily accessed in curriculum documents). But lists of information provided in a linear fashion proceeding from point to point in a logical fashion ultimately reads as a list. There needs to be a sense of a concept being used in the classroom setting. For example, role, character and relationships are fundamental to drama but look differently in a year 1 class or in a year 6 class. There is a progression from role (a focus on typical and generalised features) to character (distinctive and individualised focus). 

Teaching drama is three dimensional (teaching each of the arts subjects is three dimensional). There needs to be rich evocation of how a teacher manipulates and manages the elements of drama and the principles of story and making and responding praxis in the dimensions of time/place/resources and on the spot decision making in response to what students offer and do (and the other classroom circumstances). A list of elements of Drama doesn't actually give a sense of how they work - and what the teacher does to make them work.

Recognising that there is a need for examples of where the arts are integrated with the wider curriculum, examples of teaching programs must do more than provide tokenistic arts experiences for students and teachers. For example a unit on contrast  would provide. Contrast is evident across the arts and also a term used in other learning areas. It is possible to teach students about the use of contrast in role, situation, voice, movement and symbol. It is possible to teach about how contrast is used in the Principles of Story. It is possible to link this to the Principles of Design in Visual Arts and the use of juxtapostioning in Media Arts. There are links  to Music and Dance. But what needs to be remembered is that the activity is always only the vehicle for the underlying learning – where is the knowledge, understanding and use of the elements of the arts subjects is so that students learn to make and respond with them. 

A further point is that this text must connect students in training with their professional context. We need to help teachers strengthen their communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). Not only is this implicit in the AITSL Standard (https://www.aitsl.edu.au/teach/standards) for Professional Engagement, it underlines the need engage in ongoing professional learning and engaging professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community. The text must link students with professional associations, sources of inspiration and going information and growth. 

You might also like to look at the StagePage offerings in development. A work in progress.

A text is not nor cannot be a substitute for experience. (And we are even more aware of that in these Coronavirus COVID-19 times). But it must work harder (and adopt different formats to fit the times) to address the underlying issues of learning to teach the Arts.  

Bibliography

Darling-Hammond, L., Hammerness, K., Grossman, P., Rust, F., & Shulman, L. (2005). The Design of Teacher Education Programs. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing Teachers for a Changing World What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do: Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Diana Davis, & Australia Council for the Arts. (2008). First We See: The National Review of Visual Education. Retrieved from http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/research/education_and_the_arts/reports_and_publications/first_we_see_the_national_review_of_visual_education

Ewing, R. (2020). The Australian Curriculum: The Arts. A critical opportunity. Curriculum Perspectives, 40, 75-81. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-019-00098-w

Pascoe, R., Leong, S., MacCallum, J., MacKinley, E., Marsh, K., Smith, B., . . . Winterton, A. (2005). Augmenting the Diminished: National Review of School Music Education. Retrieved from Canberra: 

Senate Environment Communications Information Technology and the Arts Committee. (1995). Arts Education. Retrieved from http://www.aph.gov.au/SEnate/committee/ecita_ctte/completed_inquiries/pre1996/arts/report/contents.htm

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

From splendid to surreal: reflections of a weekend at an online national singing conference

From last Friday evening until late Sunday afternoon, I was online on my laptop, attending the 2020 ANATS National Conference. This conference of Australian singing teachers was originally planned for Adelaide, but after Covid-19 rendered a face to face conference out of the question, the planning shifted to a virtual conference. I was part of the organising committee and therefore experienced the weekend both as a delegate and organiser.

Conferences are certainly not new to me; over my 30+ years of singing teaching I have attended many, both nationally and internationally. I have assisted in the planning and running of several. But this was my first fully online conference.

It was refreshingly relaxing not to have to pack a suitcase and race to the airport after teaching classes up to the last moment. But I missed the flying and the opportunity those few hours in the air give to separate oneself from work at home and into conference mode. For the same reason, I missed the whole hotel experience – the catchups with colleagues over breakfast, late night drinks in the bar while going over the next day’s schedule and so on.

We did have a welcome reception on Friday evening. When planning for a conference in Adelaide, the Beatles famous appearance there in the 1960s, provided a theme. One venue which was considered in the early stages of planning was the Adelaide Town Hall, on the balcony of which the Beatles famously appeared on June 1964, to the largest crowd of fans of their Australian tour. Thus, the conference title “Come Together” was born and even when the conference planning moved towards an online format, the title and theme remained. 

At the welcome reception, delegates changed their computer screen backgrounds to Beatles themes, dressed in Beatles and / or 1960s inspired costumes and poured their own drinks at home. The inimitable Pat Wilson wrote and performed (with a little help from music theatre students at Elder Conservatorium) a song welcoming us all to the conference and showing us what we were missing in Adelaide. Delegates turned off their mics and sang along to “Come Together”. Random break-out rooms were created twice during the reception so that delegates could chat in small groups. This was a very popular activity. Vocalocity – Amelia Nell’s singing ensemble from the Blue Mountains, sang for us and provided a link between the previous conference and this one. Another link was provided by a video of the song composed by Di Hughes for, and recorded at, the previous conference in 2018.

An important aspect of any conference is the networking that happens during meal breaks and various social activities. The Beatles theme provided some opportunity to engage in asocial way despite being online; for example there was a photo competition for the best photo referencing to a Beatles song. Delegates were very creative with their photo submissions.

The conference took place over a conference app – Whova – with Zoom used for larger sessions. Delegates engaged easily with the app and were able to send messages to presenters and other delegates during sessions and throughout the conference. Similarly, the Chat function on Zoom was used both for personal messages and professional questions. Most of the keynotes were delivered live but papers and other presentations tended to be pre-recorded.

The 3 keynote speakers came from the USA, UK and Australia and during their sessions I felt a strong sense of being at the conference. But at the morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea breaks, it felt surreal to duck out and into my own kitchen to boil the kettle. I missed the chat with conference friends and colleagues. 

On the Saturday afternoon (we were 2 hours behind in WA) delegates from WA gathered at a bar in South Perth for a conference get-together. That was fun and a chance to chat with colleagues. Interestingly, many had not yet watched any of the conference. With the conference app, all sessions will be available for one month after the conference. The upside of that is that, unlike face to face conferences when one has to choose between concurrent sessions, with this one, all sessions can be watched eventually. 

Overnight on Saturday, some Australian states moved into daylight saving time. That meant that in my state of WA the Sunday 9.30am session started at 6.30am. Differing time zones is certainly an issue to be considered in virtual conferences.

This conference attracted around 300 delegates which is big for an ANATS conference. We had delegates from New Zealand and the USA – again unusual. Management of large groups online can be challenging; for example in the special interest group which I chaired, there were 4 screens of participants and I found it quite stressful to constantly scroll across screens to spot delegates with hands raised to speak, while at the same time focussing on the discussion.

In a post - Covid world there is likely to be an appetite for more online conferences – or at least  an online option or component in future conferences. Just as teachers have upskilled in online teaching this year, I am sure we will all become better at engaging in the virtual conference world.

Drama Tuesday - How do you plan for teaching Drama

Changing times but consistent approaches

In sorting through some images in my photo library I found a photo of the first planning tool that I used as a drama teacher. Long time passing in the previous century, our class visited a Friday morning class at  Perth Modern School. The teacher, Juliana Kuperis, shared with us her system of lesson planning. In a folder, she had a collection of self-made lesson starter cards (as you can see, reproduced using ink stencils). The cards could be shuffled into different combinations. Collected from a range of sources, these cards included, stimulus ideas for improvisation; prompts for shaping an improv; reminders about voice projection. 

This toolkit accompanied me into  my first teaching appointment and was developed and extended as I taught. It was rudimentary but taught me the value of organisation (after all these years, I thank you Juliana).

Early in my teaching I found and used the kit based on the ideas of Viola Spolin. (still currently available on Amazon and similar:  ISBN-13: 978-0810140073 ISBN-10: 0810140071

My battered version is still part of my library and is useful and valued (though i still twitch when teachers describe drama activities as games As useful as Spolin was in helping us, the troubling connotations of the word “games” trivialising important learning lingers).

I still use many of the activities and approaches derived from Spolin’s work and it is great to revisit the card file system. 

Of course, the world of technology has  superseded card systems - although I did use for a number of years and recommend to students The drama Game File (https://dramaed.net/the-drama-game-file/) developed by Jonas Basom with accompanying CD-ROM (remember them!). The advertising blurb still says (perhaps a little disingenuous) No previous drama experience is required. The kit includes drama terminology, activities, activity cards for students. It is well  organised. This kist is now available digitally

Of course there is nothing to say that you couldn’t make your own card system - or equivalent in  digital worlds.

 Remember: A toolkit is just that – as a drama teacher there are choices to be made

The amount of material on the internet when you search for drama teaching ideas is a blessing and a curse.There are so many drama teaching ideas out there. The issue is always which ones work. A more important question is: 

Which ones are suitable for my students at this moment in the learning journey?

Which ones are age and developmentally appropriate?

which ones will promote the needed learning at this point in the students’ progression? 

Or even, which is best for this particular student now?

If teaching is the knowing and caring intervention in the learning process for a particular group of students, then what is my thinking process as a teacher in choosing activities? 

In my current approach, i have a series of drama teaching and learning strategies that are the equivalent of my initial card systems. The beauty of a system of strategies is that you have a tool that is adapted le to the text and context of your lesson. In using strategies you draw on your paradigmatic experience. That doesn’t preclude innovation and de novo thinking (inventing a new idea or approach). But it is efficient and must be used in collaboration with an understanding of progression – how student learning develops over time. 

There is a fundamental truth about teaching. What matters is not the activity but the choice of activity to match the student(s).A system helps organise the choices that a teacher makes. But what is essential is the human factor – a teacher makes choices. That is the first rule of planning for drama. 

Drama Tuesday - Telling the story of Drama in schools – a challenge to us all

I am always looking for examples of teachers using drama and theatre with young people. Hjørdis from Denmark is the latest find. Hjørdis is a teacher given the task of creating a play for Anti-Bullying fortnight.  with a cast of socially awkward students. The pressure is on because the play is to be performed for a school visit by Princess Mary. As to be expected, things don’t go well. 

The story is told economically in four short episodes. The casting of the young people is effective and credible (unlike so many so-called teen comedies where the actors are so clearly post puberty, hirsute and sculpted by fashion). Lise Baastrup who plays Hjørdis is delightfully gangly (think Miranda). Her story of wanting to play the Princess in a school play and being forced to play the donkey is told with humour and bittersweetness. The other story threads are handled deftly. 

The “let’s put on a play” trope has been with us from Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland days (if not before -  See Babes in Arms the 1939 American film version of the 1937 Broadway musical of the same title. Directed by Busby Berkeley). The spin offs on television of the original version of Fame or shows such as Glee present one version of the transformation stories of learning and teaching drama. Often we are so used to seeing glossed versions of this experience that we can overlook the others. 

Challenge to drama teachers: tell the story – the real story – of working in drama with young people. 

 Check out Hjørdis. It’s funny and touching. Enjoy it.

A Socially Critical look at the state of Arts Education

I have been teaching students about Critical Theory and Critical Incidents. It occurred to me that arts educators might need to think about making a social justice case for the arts in schools. 

Critical Incident

In 2020, the implementation of arts education is under threat. Government decisions to strengthen STEM Education and the pressure to focus on Literacy, Numeracy and Science education through NAPLAN focus and teaching to the test, is diminishing the promise of arts education that documents like the Australian Curriculum: The Arts (ACARA 2014) dangle before us. Arts teacher education is being contracted. What is even more troublesome and galling is that the voices of arts educators are not cutting through the static. Our point of view is not being heard nor respected.

As Robyn Ewing (2020) observes, while 

…there is unequivocal research evidence that quality arts processes and experiences engender a distinctive and critical set of understandings and skills that all young people need to navigate twenty-first century living.… the potential for the Arts and arts education to transform the curriculum coupled with the ongoing paucity of Australia’s arts storylines threaten the actualisation o The Australian Curriculum: The Arts. (p 75)

It distresses me, as an arts educator, that the good work of many arts educators is going unnoticed. It angers me that my life’s work in arts education seems to be evaporating. I have been teaching my students to deepen their analysis of Critical Incidents as part of professional growth.and should try that approach.

Applying a socially critical lens to the current state of arts education as I perceive it, might help us better understand what is happening and why it is causing me distress.

Here is a useful outline of Critical Theory as proposed by David Tripp

Socially critical analysis in education is informed by principles of social justice, both in terms of its own ways of working and in terms of its outcomes in and orientation to the community. It involves strategic pedagogic action on the part of classroom teachers aimed at emancipation from overt and covert forms of domination. In practical terms, it is not simply a matter of challenging the existing practices of the system, but of seeking to understand what makes the system be the way it is and challenging that, whilst remaining conscious that one’s own sense of justice and equality is itself open to question. (modified from Tripp 1990b: 161) (Tripp 1993/2012 p 114)

Using this formulation for socially critical analysis I argue that arts education is being discriminated  against, marginalised and disadvantaged.

What is happening to arts education goes against fundamental principles of social justice, against a sense of what is fair and just. Prevailing attitudes to arts education in many schools are marginalising the value and significance of the arts in education; arts educators have legitimate concerns about choices which discriminate or minimalise their contribution and place in schools. There is hegemony in the status given to forms of knowledge and subject disciplines that play out in the curriculum offerings and the teaching of the arts.

There needs to be care in making this argument. In a time when there are many examples of marginalisation and discrimination, it might seem whinging to argue a case for arts education. Disadvantage, poverty, racism, gender bias and cancel culture are all legitimate causes for social justice concern. In the wider scheme of discrimination on social justice grounds, it might seem that the case for arts education is relatively trivial and unimportant because it speaks for a narrow group of people. Rather than weakening the case, the fact that we continue to see forms of discrimination gives legitimacy to the claim. The lack of arts education in schools is an indictment of discrimination which ultimately is one measure of social justice. It is discriminatory because the benefits of arts education are  withheld from the many whose lives would benefit from an arts education.

What arts education suffers from are forms of overt and covert domination. Decisions made by politicians,  school administrators and parents reflect unspoken misconceptions, assumptions and prejudices that place other forms of knowledge, other subject areas in the curriculum ahead of arts education. Arts education needs to be freed from these hegemonic decisions.

In stating this, I am not arguing that arts education is more important than other fields rather that arts education is as important. It is as important because a successfully comprehensive education addresses the breadth of human needs. Over time in schools, students need their cognitive, social, emotional and physical needs to be addressed. The Arts are part of a whole education. The arguments of a need for efficiency and prioritising of some sections of the curriculum over others, ignore the need for a broad and comprehensive approach that addresses the overall health, well-being and sense of identity in a democratic society. 

Steven Covey in (2004) offers the principle… seek first to understand, then to be understood. It is useful to consider how we understand what makes the system be the way it is. We need to spend time analysing why attitudes and values about arts education prevail. I speculate three points here: 1) the inertia of the ways things have always been (history and precedent); 2) fear of the unknown; and, 3) lack of opportunity.

History and precedent are no defence. In former times, prevailing social values gave legitimacy to slavery, racial and religious discrimination that we now question and challenge. Consider how attitudes and forms of habit about smoking have changed broad societal values and actions. What are the factors of those campaigns that provided the psychological and physical push towards change?

Fear of the unknown is a legitimate human response. To flee from the unknown rather than to confront it, is common. Without resorting to Rumsfeld’s known unknowns , the truism about teaching must be recognised: you can’t teach what you don’t know. In what ways can there be unthreatening and enjoyable experiences of arts education?

Ignorance and lack of opportunity. Poor or ineffective arts education negate decision makers who do not see the value and purpose of arts education. But the danger of Catch 22 lurks in the proposition that we bring long term improvement by incremental change. How do we implement opportunities in arts  education that are transformative of attitudes and values?

Shouting in the face of discrimination sounds hysterical and is too easily dismissed. Making logical arguments (like this one) are too easily ignored. Taking positions of influence and power are one way of addressing these issues – but slow, glacially slow. It is easy to get into a cycle of hope followed by disappointment. Making a cosy critical analysis of the arts education problem might help me understand better what is happening but does it change anything? What brings about actual change?. 

In a socially just view of the world, there is a fair sharing of resources, opportunities, status and responsibilities, There is a balance between the reciprocal needs of individuals and the institutions in society. A more socially just view of arts education means:

• overt and covert discrimination against the arts is addressed

• balance recognition of the place and value of arts education in schools is intrinsic to our society

• Arts Education is not just an entitlement but is fully realised.

The arts have often been vehicles for social justice and change. It is time for us to use our art forms to highlight the social injustice been meted out to arts education in schools. This is a call for action beyond analysis.

Bibliography

ACARA. (2014). "The Australian Curriculum: The Arts." from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/the-arts/introduction.

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

Ewing, R. (2020). "The Australian Curriculum: The Arts. A critical opportunity." Curriculum Perspectives 40: 75-81.

Tripp, D. (1993/2012). Critical Incidents in Teaching: Developing Professional Judgement. Abingdon, Oxon, Routledge.

Drama Tuesday - Principles of story in drama

Drama uses the Elements of Drama to tell stories. Story drives how we dynamically combine the Elements of Drama

Story in Drama is a way of making sense and meaning of experiences so that they can be shared and understood by others.

The Principles of Story include: Plot and sequencing of events; characters and people; setting; conflict and Language. 

Within each these major categories there are specific aspects that can be linked to both story and drama.

• Plot and sequence link to action and reaction; cause and effect; time and how it is manipulated; and, to the narrative arc of exposition, complication, rising tension, climax and resolution or denouement.

• In stories, characters and people link to protagonist and antagonist; rounded and flat characters; dialogue revealing roles, relationships and motivations.

• Setting links to a sense of place and time and to to mood and atmosphere.

• Conflict relates to the use of tensions and suspense; the various ways of thinking about the conflicts person to person; character to Nature, Society and Circumstances; and also the inner conflict within a character.

• Language is indispensable for story and drama; in story there is a focus on description, inner dialogue, symbol and the use of the author’s voice.

There are clear links between the Elements of Drama and the Principles of Story.

• Role characters and relationships are linked to aspects of Characters and people found in stories.

• Situation links to Plot and sequencing of stories as well as the setting.

• There is the use of tension in both drama and story.

• Drama uses aspects of language, ideas, meaning making and symbol.

The other Elements of Drama – Voice and Movement, Space and Time, Focus and Audience – are indirectly found in narrative stories.

In Drama we embody stories that narrative fiction tells through print or words alone.

Drama Tuesday - A Fools Project

Creating Performing Opportunities in Times of Lockdown

Lately I have been thinking about ways of generating drama projects for students in lockdown situations. My students need short scenes or plays that can be performed over digital platforms, if necessary, but which can also be rehearsed independently. There are many examples of compilation performances -  Two that I particularly like are based on Shakespeare also: Appel, L. and M. Flachmann (1982). Shakespeare's Lovers: A Text for Performance and Analysis. Carbondale and Edwardsville, University of Southern Illinois. Appel, L. and M. Flachmann (1986). Shakespeare's Women: A Playscript for Performance and Analysis. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press.

I started by thinking about all of Shakespeare’s Fools. 

I conceptualised this project as a research and performance project. Students would need to research and write about the characters considered fools and their functions in the plays that included them. They would need to look at the research about the Shakespearean Fools. Then, they would identify a scene in which the Fool and others interact, make a suitable scene cutting, rehearse and perform it. Together as a whole class we would construct a devised project. This sounds like a sufficiently challenging and yet satisfying project. 

The Shakespearean fool is a recurring character type in his plays. These characters were most often common people who had the wit and skill to make fun of upper class people. Often seen as “comic relief” to the more serious aspects of a play, it is worth considering that the Fools in Shakespeare provide an emotional depth and contrast to the serious themes. By shifting from the distanced world of the drama to more domestic and familiar scenes, the complexity of the dramatic situation is heightened. 'That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all.’ (Asimov 1978)

Jan Kott, in Shakespeare Our Contemporary ,

“The Fool does not follow any ideology. He rejects all appearances, of law, justice, moral order. He sees brute force, cruelty and lust. He has no illusions and does not seek consolation in the existence of natural or supernatural order, which provides for the punishment of evil and the reward of good. Lear, insisting on his fictitious majesty, seems ridiculous to him. All the more ridiculous because he does not see how ridiculous he is. But the Fool does not desert his ridiculous, degraded king, and accompanies him on his way to madness. The Fool knows that the only true madness is to recognise this world as rational.”

From a BBC April Fool’s Day Report:

Shakespeare loved a fool and not just on 1 April. He used them in most of his well-known plays, but who would their equivalents be today?

It was never about bright clothes, eccentric hats and slippers with bells on them. Shakespeare’s fools were the stand-ups of their day and liked to expose the vain, mock the pompous and deliver a few home truths - however uncomfortable that might be for those on the receiving end.

"Shakespearean fools, like stand-ups today, had a licence to say almost anything," says Dr Oliver Double, who teaches drama at the University of Kent and specialises in comedy. "It was an exalted position."(Winterman 1 April 2012)

In his book The Guizer Alan Garner (1975)tells us,

If we take the elements from which our emotions are built and give them separate names, such as Mother, Her, Father, King, Child, Queen, the element that I think marks us most is that or Fool, It is where our humanity lies.

The Fool is full of contradictions, as we are. He is at once creator and destroyer, bringer or help and harm. Through his mistakes we learn how to do things properly. He is the shadow that shapes the light. 

Putting on the Motley. 

The costume and props of the Fool were – according to reports of the times – standardised. A patchwork and ragged coat, sometimes with bells hung on it. Breeches of different coloured legs and a mono like hood and cloak decorated with animal body parts such as donkey’s ears and rooster heads. The prop was a stick decorated with a doll head or a fool. A pouch filled with powders, sand, peas or air filled out the outfit. 

Some useful resources

The No Sweat Shakespeare Blog: The Ultimate Guide To Shakespeare’s Fools

https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/blog/ultimate-guide-shakespeares-fools/

The British Library Shakespeare’s Fools

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeares-fools

OUP Shakespeare’s clowns and fools [infographic]

 https://blog.oup.com/2016/09/shakespeare-clowns-fools-infographic/ 

But there are many more. 

Bibliography

Appel, L. and M. Flachmann (1982). Shakespeare's Lovers: A Text for Performance and Analysis. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Univsersity or Southern Illinois.

Appel, L. and M. Flachmann (1986). Shakespeare's Women: A Playscript for Performance and Analysis. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press.

Asimov, I. (1978). Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare,Vols.1-2. New York, Gramercy Books.

Garner, A. (1975). The Guizer. London, Hamish Hamilton Ltd/William Collins Sons and Co Ltd.

Kott, J. (1964). Shakespeare: Our contemporary. Garden City, N.Y, Doubleday.

Winterman, D. (1 April 2012). "Shakespearean fools: Their modern equivalents."

Music Monday - Resilience in music teachers during Covid.

I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be an effective and resilient Australian music teacher in 2020.

The ground has shifted multiple times this year and each shift has found music teachers seeking new ways to find balance and stay effective in the job.

First there was the lockdown- which of course is still in place in parts of Australia. In the early pandemic lockdown days teachers learned to adapt and implement online learning over a variety of platforms. Those of us engaged in teaching singing quickly found the frustrations of the lag on every online platform. We started to prepare and issue backing tracks so that our students could experience accompaniments in real time when singing for us. Ideas and tips were shared.

Zoom fatigue became a thing- after a day of online teaching in front of a laptop screen our necks were locked and our brains exhausted. But then we would turn to watching videoed self-tapes submitted by students for our critical response.

When some states returned to face-to-face teaching we felt relieved. But then a new reality kicked in. Teaching rooms needed to be sanitized between students. Piano keyboards were sanitized between players. Social distancing rendered some of our teaching spaces unusable. Points of assessment missed in first semester were scheduled into a much tighter time frame. At the secondary performing arts school I work in, we scheduled two senior school musicals in the space of two weeks with a fifty percent capacity audience in keeping with the level of restrictions still in place in WA.

Our final year secondary students who are applying for places in tertiary music performance courses find the rules changed here too of course. Instead of live auditions in November - after final academic exams will be over- most tertiary institutions are requiring self- taped videos to be submitted from the end of August. This has significantly reduced the preparation time.

And of course, running underneath these shifting rules is the consideration of ‘what if?’ What if there is another wave (as there has been in Victoria) and we are locked down again? Will 2021 be the year in which most students in elite performance courses - like NIDA, WAAPA, VCA to name only three- are sourced from their home state rather than interstate and overseas? So many ‘what ifs’.

In the meantime teachers are dealing with understandably stressed students.

There has not been one week this year when I have not had at least one student at the secondary or tertiary level in a state of stress which has significantly compromised their work. I get it- none of us knows what the way out of this pandemic really looks like. None of us were around in 1918 for the last one.

But as teachers we are the guides, the strong ones, right?

But who looks after us? And if we are responsible for that, how do we do it?

Among my colleagues I have observed several approaches. One friend took a term of leave and has returned to school refreshed. Several friends are drinking more alcohol in the evenings than in non- Covid times. Yet another colleague has abstained from alcohol altogether and looks and feels fantastic. I have started knitting- nothing complicated, just long scarves with uncomplicated stitches. I find it curiously calming and meditative.

As I write this I am reminded of a radio interview on mindfulness and resilience which I heard in my car early on in the pandemic. A three point approach was encouraged:

1. Each evening think of one thing which went well in your day.

2. Each day make contact with someone in your address book- by phone, by text message, by an act of kindness or a social media post.

3. Spend 10 minutes a day being mindful- eg walk around your block focussing just on the sounds in your immediate environment.

What are you doing to stay healthy and strong in these challenging teaching times?

As always, we encourage and welcome your comments.