Drama Tuesday - A Code of Ethics for Drama Teachers

All day long as I have been driving through the South-West heading to marking Year 12 Drama Practical Exams, the car radio blasts: Drama teacher on trial for sex offences with her fifteen year old student. Scandal cries the tabloid headlines.

A fuming parent knocks at the door of the drama office, complaining that his daughter has been at rehearsal from 10.00 AM to 10.00 PM on Sunday, even though she is in Year 12. The word passed around the carpark before morning school is outrage.

Restlessly, the cast of seventy in the school musical, wait as the Director rehearses the “star” of the show. Frustrated, the Director turns and blasts the waiting students for chattering: just wait your turn. Whose time is more valuable?

A Principal in a school taps his fingers on his desk waiting for an explanation from the male drama teacher about rehearsing late at night with an all girls class production. 

Another parent rings because she’s heard that in drama class, students are expected to lie on the floor in darkened rooms, being told to clench buttocks in a breathing and relaxation routine. She complains about this “meditation stuff” and calls it a cult.

There are questions raised about the local Saturday morning drama classes seemingly repeating each term the same tired exercises and not progressing kids learning. 

A Youth Theatre Director is using psychodrama techniques and is stunned when one participant discloses an episode of sexual abuse within her family. The Director is not a trained therapist. 

In a Shopping centre Mall, a cutie pie performance by a local drama talent school is taking place with associated stereotypes, over-acting, stage door parents and ego-centric “look at me” teacher.

These are some stories gathered from the field of drama teaching. 

There are many more.

The purpose of this post is to ask these questions rather than answer them. 

I know that it would help me as a drama teacher educator if there was a well-developed and widely known code of ethics for Drama Teachers and Drama teaching. 

It should be:

• Voluntarily accepted by us as a profession (always keeping in mind that there are now legal requirements to be observed)

• Transparent

• Published

• Owned by practitioners

• Endorsed by government agencies, parents, schools, community.

It is also important to acknowledge that there are many drama teachers who establish special but healthy relationships with their students. Drama teaching is relational. It thrives, when well managed, on co-construction of learning, friendships and relationships of trust. The learning in drama builds on participation, negotiation, student-centred learning and collaborative working relationships. With this learning is a need for a moral and practical compass based on clearly stated standards of practice. 

What is in your Drama Teacher code of ethics?

Music Monday: Oklahoma

I’m sitting in the foyer of the State Theatre Centre, excited to see a preview of Oklahoma at Black Swan State Theatre Co.

There is a feeling of excitement and celebration all around me, as friends and strangers alike greet each other, all happy to be back in the theatre after what seems like the longest year. And everyone seems very mindful that most of the world is still unable to go to the theatre, so many theatres worldwide are still dark and desolate at this time.

Interval. There is energy, vibrancy and some fabulous singing in this reimagining of Oklahoma. The production seems to have taken inspiration from the now famous Circle in the Square production in New York. Except that this reimagining has Curly and Laurie as two girls and Aunt Eller played quite gender neutral. But no lines have been changed, so Curly is still referred to as ‘he’. It is slightly confusing- or perhaps deliberately unsettling. Or maybe they simply couldn’t get the rights to alter the words.

The star of the show for me is the music arranging. The songs are the same but the orchestration is in bluegrass style. It’s very appealing and appropriate. Jud Fry’s “Lonely Room” which always feels completely different from any other song in the show, is wonderful in this arrangement. The tension is heightened by the orchestration, and further by the actor singing from offstage with video projections into the smokehouse.

End of show. As we left the theatre, the famous mock courtroom scene carried extra resonance in the current American political climate.

This show is really worth seeing. Nine actors cover all the roles and ensemble with some backup vocals from the band. You will love it - or perhaps, long for the original version- but you won’t be unaffected by it.

Drama Tuesday - Participating in Drama in virtual space

Ihave been preparing a recorded presentation for IDEC in Beijing China. The presentations focus on Building Confidence in Drama Teaching and on Progression in Drama. As part of this preparation there is a Question and Answer section and I share part of a really interesting question: 

问题：戏剧是在虚拟的情景进行体验。但有时幼儿对虚拟的场景感到害怕或不愿意参与。比如，教师构建了一个在森林里的场景，但是，个别幼儿表示不愿意去森林探险。这个时候，是否应该允许幼儿进行旁观？或者进行引导？

Question: Drama is experienced in a virtual situation.But sometimes young children are afraid or unwilling to participate in the virtual scene.For example, the teacher constructed a scene in the forest, but some children expressed their reluctance to explore the forest. At this time, should teachers allow children to be an onlooker? Or teachers should do some guidance?

To answer this question I started by thinking about participation in drama.

What is participation in drama learning and teaching – either in the virtual classroom or in the shared physical space of the drama workshop. 

In drama teaching we design our learning activities so that there are opportunities for students to participate physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally. 

By this we mean that students are actively using their physical bodies. They move through space and time. They interact with each other. They use their voices. They use their muscles and limbs and move with a sense of weight, time, space and energy (Laban).

They use their minds and thinking in collaboration with their physical selves. They explore ideas, express and communicate with words, thoughts, images and imagination. 

They interact socially – having a sense of themselves and their personal identity that is shared with others in developing social and cultural identity. 

They engage with their emotions, recognising their capacity to experience and share feelings. 

In drama we want students to be doing, thinking and feeling. 

As teachers we will encourage participation at all these levels and help students understand what we are looking for from them. 

What is the application of these ideas of participation in  the virtual drama classroom?

Learning drama in the changed world means that we are all coming to terms with teaching and learning drama in the virtual world. 

We need better research to guide us. But here are some starting thoughts about 

diagnosing the issue of participation in drama with the student in the virtual space. 

To understand the issue, let us ask ourselves some questions:

• In the virtual classroom, what screen is the student looking at – an iPhone or similar? A laptop? A TV screen?

• How much space is there for moving and participating?

• Who else is in the space with the child? Is she on her own? Other there others who are watching? Is there someone like a caring parent or other who is supporting and encouraging them?

• What is the time of day? Is this part of a routine of on-line teaching or a one-off session?

• What other experiences has the child had of online learning?

• Are they confident communicators?

• What is the child’s age and stage of development?

The reason I ask these questions is because the context matters. We need to diagnose what the underlying issue is.

• Is this a drama learning issue?

• Or a general learning issue?

• Or is this a technology issue?

Some students will respond well in the on-line environment and others will find it difficult. It may be that their language competence and confidence is not yet ready for the online learning situation where their voices and images will be mediated and shared. It may be  that their technology access or confidence is limited. We need to look at the student’s situation to understand the problem.

The first thing that we must do as drama teachers in the virtual classroom is to talk individually with each child and ask them for their answers to why they are reluctant about participating. To have that conversation we need to build rapport with the individual child.

For example, 

• What is the image of us as teacher that the student has – how do we fill the frame of the screen? Are we close to the camera and look directly at them on the screen?

• How are we using our voice? Are we quiet and close or are we using our teacher voice when we have a classroom of students?

• Have we adjusted our pace of speaking? Our tone? Our vocal dynamics?

• Do we listen when the students respond?

• To work in the virtual drama classroom (or any drama class) students need to have clearly explained expectations. We call this the drama contract.

We need to establish with these students in the virtual space our drama contract. Students in the virtual classroom need to know some basic information about drama learning. As teachers we need to explain and students need to understand that: drama is practical and embodied learning. We need to explain to all our students that while we know that students have different ways of showing their learning, in this class you need to show your participation by doing, thinking and sharing your feelings. 

In practical terms, it may be that we need to show reluctant students what we are hoping they will do in the drama lesson. We could show them video clips of students in drama and explain to them what the students in the video clip are doing.  

As with all teaching, we need to plan with a sense of progression – of planning activities in drama that match the age and stage of development of the children in our class. 

Teaching drama is a complex skill and these are some of the things we consider as we plan our drama teaching.

Bibliography

Goksel, E. (2018). Exploring Drama in Education. An Interview with Professor Jonothan Neelands. ETAS Journal, 35(2 Spring), 13. 

Neelands, J. (1984). Making sense of drama : a guide to classroom practice. In (pp. 24-32). London Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books published in association with 2D Magazine.

Drama Thursday - Space as an Element of Drama in changing times

In a year when we are thinking about Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic, we have become conscious of social distancing and of teaching in virtual space. Audiences are not yet able to be in the same physical space of theatres. Classrooms have been shut down or moved on line. Yet we still think of space as one of the Elements of Drama. For example, the Australian Curriculum the Arts (ACARA) includes Space and Time in the elements of Drama:

The elements of drama work dynamically together to create and focus dramatic action and dramatic meaning. Drama is conceived, organised, and shaped by aspects of and combinations of role, character and relationships, situation, voice and movement, space and time, focus, tension, language, ideas and dramatic meaning, mood and atmosphere and symbol.

https://australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/the-arts/drama/structure/ 

But, trying to pin down how we use the term space in drama can be tricky. At one level, it’s obvious that when we talk about space we mean the physical immersions of areas in which we work, the height, width, depth within which we move. This is physical space in which drama happens. 

Within this physical performance space we can make choices about how we use space to create dramatic action and show relationships between characters. 

In this scene from a drama performance in Nanjing, November 2020, students show the action of a group of soldiers, tied together in a forest during the Sino-Japanese War. The action of being physically and symbolically tied together amplifies the relationships between the individual soldiers.

You can see how this is developed in the video of the unfolding dramatic action.

This is embodied space – using our bodies to show space. 

In drama we can also show social space between characters to tell the story. Placing actors close to each other, or far apart can provide audiences with ways of reading the social relationships. (the term used is proxemics)

We can also talk about emotional space between  characters. When characters are intensely involved with each other sharing dependency and status – who has high status and importance and who is subservient. 

In this example also from students in China, the relative heights of the actors, and the eyeliner focus of the actors, tells us as audience about the interconnections between these characters. 

Space is also a factor in movement. Laban identified that movement is a combination of Weight, Space, Time and Energy in movement. How we move through space shows character and dramatic action. In the video example from Nanjing, the struggle of the actors is shown how they are constrained in this moment in the story. In drama actors are able to move through space, directly or indirectly; quickly or slowly; with increasing or decreasing tempo; they can be still in the space. There can be contrast between how characters move through space to show the differences between them – an aged or older character moving more slowly, with effort and deliberation contrasted with a younger character moving with freedom and flow. 

One aspect of being in lockdown COVID-19 spaces of learning is how we include and explore the element of space in our lessons. 

How do we think about space in drama in our changed worlds?

It is one thing to talk or write about space but that is not the same as experiencing the use of space in drama. Drama learning must be physical and practical and embodied. Our challenge in these times is to make space the focus of the student learning.

  Bibliography

Laban, R. (1980). The Mastery of Movement. 4th edition revised and enlarged by L. Ullmann. London, MacDonald and Evans.

Pascoe, R. and H. Pascoe (2014). Drama and Theatre: Key Terms and Concepts (3rd Ed.). Perth, Western Australia, StagePage.

Drama Thursday - Restoring beauty and interest in things that have been neglected

 The buzz of anticipation in a theatre audience is palpable. 

I am sitting in the Octagon Theatre on the campus of the University of Western Australia. It’s the first time i have been in a theatre since March. We have been through the long Winter drought of theatre as our society has grappled with the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. I am here because Black Swan State Theatre Company is launching its 2021 season. 

Always hopeful to hear the new season, particularly after the year of no theatre that we have in this plague year. And the program from Black Swan looks interesting:

• a localised Cherry Orchard set in Manjimup and playing in and around the remnants of the Sunset Home on the banks of the Swan River; act 2 in the dying embers of sunset in summer.

• a new production about the relationships between Australian colonial settlement and indigenous people. York.

• a pick up from a Blue Room production.

• a year long quest to find the Shakespeare play that will conclude the season; Black Swan audiences asked to vote on which of the plays of Shakespeare will be performed. The director is named but everything else – actors, creatives – are up in the air.

• a celebration of 30 years of Black Swan as a company that was born out of the success of Bran New Day.

There’s much to look forward to. The Artistic Director, Clare Watson outlined the exciting season of productions for 2021 (not forgetting the Oklahoma production that will be what is left of the 2020 season that was pandemic struck). Revisiting the founding vision of the Company and an embedding of local stories and indigenous spirit.

But, in particular, I was struck by the words of Rick Heath, appointed as Executive Director just eight months ago and immediately before the pandemic shutdown. Describing himself as a pragmatic idealist and that “extraordinariness is for everyone if you choose to lean into it” Rick explored how “logic makes you think; emotion makes you act”.  

We are living in a time when our emotions are important. They are critical to our ell-being, our families and our neighbours, our lovers and relationships, our businesses and communities. Proust said that art is a mechanism that can restore beauty and interest in things that have been neglected – unfairly neglect. He also said that we can learn arts great lessons – to re-examine our relationship with the world

Rick went on to observe that theatre is a service industry – plumbers in better suits. He explored the idea that as curators of theatre we remember that that curators are “ones responsible for the care of souls”. and he moved towards his conclusion reminding us that the measure of success for a theatre company is twofold. Is what the company does great art? And how has the company shaped the circumstances put in place to make that art great?

Of course, the focus of any theatre company is not on any one person, let alone the executive director. But I found it refreshing that any executive director could and would share and shape thoughts in this way.

Looking forward to the year after a plague year. Looking forward to restoring beauty and interest in things that have been neglected. 

You can check out the whole launch as well as what Rick and Claire had say at the live stream of the event: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=413042723397048&ref=watch_permalink

Music Monday

The past few days have been more optimistic ones for women and people of colour across our planet.

In an election result which left the world breathing a collective sigh of relief, Kamala Harris was elected to the role of Vice President of the USA – making her not only the first woman to hold that office, but the first person of colour as well.

It is sobering to recognise that the election of a woman to that office comes exactly one hundred years after women were first given the vote in the USA. 

Change for women worldwide is a painfully slow process and for women of colour, so much more so.

But what a good day for girls and young women of colour in the USA to see that anything is possible.

Today in Australia, the cast for the 2021 Australian production of Hamilton was announced. This has been a joyful cause for celebration, not just in my waapa workplace from where a number of the cast originate, but across Australia. What a good day for diversity!

Yesterday I helped out at a local Solo Vocal Festival – an annual opportunity for secondary school voice students to perform a solo song in front of an audience. Given that there has been so little live music performance this year, this too was cause for celebration. As I looked around the (socially distanced) performers and audience yesterday afternoon, it was so good to see students from many ethnic and cultural backgrounds, all sharing in their common love of singing.

Music really does have the power to bring people together, to heal divisions and to promote empathy and understanding. People of all skin colours sing together – the vocal folds and larynx do not discriminate race. People make music together with little concern about their differences.

Importantly, this week is NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) Week in Australia. 

The 2020 theme is Always Was, Always Will Be.

Across Australia, schools and communities are celebrating local indigenous people, indigenous practitioners in all of the arts are sharing with the wider community.

Many music teachers teach songs from the original custodians of the lands on which their schools sit. It is worth noting that, while many Aboriginal people encourage wadjelas (white fellas) to sing their songs, some are sensitive. Always best to check with your local indigenous elders for guidance on this.

As we hopefully move towards healing from years of political divisions, racial inequality and oppression of women, let us always use music to connect people, never to divide.

Drama Tuesday - Before I Hang Up My Hat

A guest post by John Foreman

After around forty years of teaching Drama, there are a few of my students who stand out in my memory and underline the importance for me of teaching my subject. In each case, they were kids who never stood out to an audience in performance, but they were recognised by their classmates and by me.

The first, I’ll call Brian. It was he who arrived to our Sunday rehearsal at 2:50pm. We all stared at him. Why was he late? Why was he turning up now? “You said the rehearsal was 10 to 3.”

At the outset, Brian couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag. By the end of our run of four performances he could. Just. The rest of the cast, eight girls, mobbed him. They knew. His journey was far greater than any of the others, and there was a couple of very talented performers in that group. His parents were proud and probably the only ones in the audience who even noticed him.

The second we’ll call Richard. He turned up in my year eight Drama class. He possibly spoke half a dozen times in the semester. Shy. Solitary. Avoiding all attempts to engage him. As year eights, all students were assigned their classes. The following year, there he was again – his choice. And he did engage a little more. 

Year ten, there he was yet again. And this time for our end of year Panto. 

I asked him, “Richard you’ve done this for the past two years, and you hated it. Why are you here?”

“Yes, Mr Foreman, I hate Drama, but I NEED Drama.”

Such insight for a young man.

So, much as many of my young charges want to make it in the ‘Business’, and a few have, Brian and Richard underline for me what teaching Drama is all about.

We are here to foster some confidence, to nourish creativity, to expose our students to the world of performance, both their own and, hopefully, that of professional theatre.

At a promenade performance at University of Western Australia of the medieval mystery plays, I found one of my students in a corner at the interval crying her eyes out.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s so beautiful.” An ‘angel’ had just sung from the top of the clock tower. And, yes, it was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Grace’s reaction.

I often wondered why so many students wanted to be in those end of year Pantos. I wound up writing walk-on roles for those who were in Maths or Art or... and at least one for an ex-student. 

One of my practicum students told me simply it was my passion for Drama. Really? I just loved what I was doing. 

During the audition process for one of those Pantos there was one boy who said, “I thought Drama was going to be fun.” Before I could respond, one of the class jumped in, “It is! It’s serious fun.”

Perhaps my one huge disappointment is that over the years I haven’t seen that enthusiasm for drama in high school students carry over to attendance at professional theatre after they leave school.

For at least thirty of the years I have been teaching Drama, there have been upwards of 1000 students per year graduating across the state with Drama as one of their subjects. Their ‘high school love’ of their subject has not transferred to attendance once they leave school. It saddens me.

That being said, I still love that moment when a pair of Year Sevens nail a duologue to the point of bringing me to tears. Or when Year Elevens take over the design for their Antigone production, stage, make-up, costuming and poster. Or when a grandma hugs me after a performance, saying how proud she is.

Teaching Drama has been an unexpected joy. 

[I trained as an English Teacher.]

Drama Tuesday - The double gifts of Drama Learning

I am preparing a presentation to be given online for IDEC in Beijing. One of the questions they have asked me to focus on is about Why drama helps learning? At the same time I am co-supervising a Masters of Education Research student looking at how drama could help multi-cultural adolescents develop friendships as immigrants to Australia. In thinking about both, I come back to some earlier thinking I have been doing about the ways that drama learning works simultaneously at two linked levels. 

Drama learning is a double gift. 

In drama we are simultaneously in the embodied moment and in the wider learning moment about life.

It will help we think this as the double helix of drama learning. Just like the double helix model of DNA, there are two intertwined linked spirals.

In one spiral we learn drama through using the Elements of Drama to express and communicate ideas, stories and feelings through our bodies. At the same time, in a linked spiral we use those drama experiences to learn about life, people and relationships, story and literature. We learn about ourselves, our society and our culture through and with drama along side and with stories from life. These two spirals grow together, support learning in both.

This is why drama – when well taught – is powerful learning for life.

In the case of the research student, the drama acuities enable students to embody their experiences through doing, thinking and feeling (Applied Aesthetic Understanding, Wright and Pascoe, 2020). Simultaneously they are engaging in the matrix of experiences of multi-cultural friendships. This double linked spiral of experiences works at the same time where drama provides experiences of and insights into friendships across cultures while those same experiences of friendship deepen the drama.

Metaxis in drama learning

This model of drama learning draws on the concept of metaxis: simultaneously belonging to two worlds. Boal defined metaxis as "the state of belonging completely and simultaneously to two different autonomous worlds" (Boal 1995 p. 43) This dual state of awareness is a  key understanding in drama teaching. 

It can play out in a range of ways:

The tension between self in role and self out of role – and moving between these two states is a powerful reason why Process Drama is such a powerful learning opportunity. In this sense we can be participant in the dramatic experience (as actor) and also audience (responding to the choices made). O’Toole (1992) suggests that in theatre there always exists the dual awareness of being an actor and yet watching or being an audience to one's own performance. 

The relationship between the world of actors and their perceptions, and the perceptions of the audience. Boal coined the term spect-actor to identify the duality where  an audience member can step from being observer to actor in re-shaping the drama in forms such as Forum theatre. Metaxis is the where one can be both oneself and someone other than oneself.

Actors being and making decisions in role and out of role.

All of this matters in answer the question I started with: Why drama helps learning?

.Bibliography

Boal, A. (1995). The Rainbow of Desire. The Boal method of Theatre and Therapy. New York, Routledge.

O'Toole, J. (1992). The Process of Drama: Negotiating Art and Meaning. London, Routledge.

Landy, R. 1993, Persona and Performance, The Meaning of Role in Drama, Therapy, and Everyday Life, London: The Guildford Press.

A different Drama Tuesday

 I am teaching a class on using Critical Incidents in Professional Practice. It is a capstone unit for Masters students. 

In particular I am focusing on writing Critical Incidents that strongly evoke the qualitatively significant learning of a particular event. This store of writing is difficult for many students who are schooled in objective and distanced academic writing (not just in the sciences). In particular, I need to help my students understand the concepts of “thick description” and integrating emotion. 

I thought it might help if I provided an example. 

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 finger tips 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 your 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. 

Concluding thoughts

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.

---

My Theoretical Frameworks include:

Social Justice in Education; Empathy and the role of the emotions; making meaning from experience (Maxine Greene (1995))

Bibliography

Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, The Arts and Social Change. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.

Music Monday - Music teachers and musicians – keep playing those ‘Covid Concerti’

A week ago, I experienced a sudden and unexpected attack of gastro. It started as I got my backpack out of the car to start a new term of teaching – not great timing at all. After a hasty retreat to the staff facilities, I returned to my car and headed home to spend several hours in bed and the bathroom. Luckily for me it was a 24-hour thing and I was pretty much back to normal the next day. But I was perplexed. How had I caught it? Over the 7 months since the pandemic struck, I have followed strict routines of hand sanitising and cleaning the touchable surfaces in my home and teaching spaces. Here in Western Australia we are fortunate to have gone 6 months without community transmission of Covid so I – like many – have hugged the occasional friend. Could the gastro have come to me that way? And if so, had I passed it on to my husband? I kissed him goodbye that fateful morning. I was still pondering all this when I ran into a friend and work colleague. She shared with me that she, too, had had identical symptoms, and so had a student in one of her classes. Because the student fell ill during class, my friend had taken care to avoid direct contact with her (it was an acting class). However, at the end of class my friend had packed away ( and therefore touched) various shared props and equipment. This was possibly the source of transmission to her. That sparked a memory for me. A few days earlier I had been running late for a singing lesson. The student was waiting outside the room and there was also a student inside the room whom we had to ‘evict’. Usually I would sanitise the surfaces, including the piano keyboard, before starting on the lesson, but on this occasion, I recall thinking, “What harm can it do to skip that? After all we have no Covid in WA” I suspect (and I realise that this is anecdotal and speculative) that I could have picked up the virus that way and later, inadvertently touched my face. Now this was not Covid – it was a short-lived bout of gastro. But it serves as a reminder to us all – especially those of us living in the relative safety of Australia, where governments, both federal and state, have based their advice on medical science rather that politics – that the basics of hygiene are still our best protection against this awful virus. Observe social distancing, keep surfaces sanitised, wash your hands frequently, don’t touch your face – and when necessary, wear a mask! Some of my colleagues joke about the sound we all make when wiping down the piano keys with disinfectant as being the ‘Covid Concerto’. Musicians and teachers – please keep playing these Covid Concerti, whatever your instrument, until this damn pandemic ends.