theatrical education

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I am an educator.  I teach students how to use the English language.  How to be wordsmiths, and poets, how to bend the tongue to their will, how to be understood and to be persuasive.  I teach Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric.

Some people think I’m a replacement parent.  I’m there to teach right and wrong.  I’m there to teach them not how to think, but what to think.  I’m there to raise them to be upstanding young men and women.  And I don’t mind so much.  Because I most of that I can model.  It’s when they want me to do more than modeling and what fits into the curriculum that it’s hard.  Is it really my job to police what students wear?

Now I need to be a social worker too.  That I’m there to help them with problems in the home, to find them the right support services.  Or else I’m a therapist, guiding them through life’s problems.  Bringing out their personal issues and healing them.  Do I have any right to open students up?  I’m not trained in this.  I’m not going to be there at home to keep them together again.

Pretty soon there won’t be any time left to teaching.  My curriculum will no longer be Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric, but Parenting, Socializing, and Counseling.  

Everyone begins walking like a robot in a straight line.  As soon as they hit another robot or thing they must make a 90 degree turn.

One person begins by doing a simple movement and makes a sound effect repetitively.  Other people join in the machine by doing something which is somehow caused by one of the previous .

Each student takes out their cell phone and readies it to ring.  At a signal from the teacher one person or the class plays the cell phones ring-tone.  Conductor/teacher creates an orchestra

One person begins by freezing in a position that is part of an every day activity.  One by one the rest of the class joins in it trying to add to the freeze until everyone is there.  At the end share what you thought it was.

Arrange chairs to resemble a bus.  Have students sit on bus and exchange cell phone numbers.  They call each other and begin conversations as if they are on the bus.  Those without cell phones can videotape the conversations.

Each group reads a poem and must present it in an abstract way using some sort of technology.

Someone starts acting as something, “freeze” is called and a second person joins and changes the scene, but staring with the same position.  Continues till everyone is in.  Then they work backwards, through the scenes, leaving in order.

The instructor starts with a “ball of energy”.  He/she plays with it a bit and shapes it inot any object, then passes it on.  The next person does the same thing.