Updates on My Project
Delays are what I have been experiencing as well, Katie. When you are in the Public School system, there are so many rules, regulations and protocols that it often feels as if you are never able to innovate. Thank goodness I have worked with the teachers I am trying to collaborate with for 4-10 years.
So, as you have switched gears to work at Barstow Community College, I am coming to the edge of my work with the 3rd grade team. They are willing, but their schedule keeps changing.
One of the hallmarks of an extended learning day I assumed would be an increased ability to collaborate and innovate. Unfortunately, the principal we have is old school; she is not maximizing the specialists and using us to leverage a more balanced work day for students. It is just more time to push reading and math in conventional ways.
The wheels move slowly. I know that as you try out your work in a system that takes forever to get going, it is the same within the system that doesn't wholly appreciate how to use arts specialists for arts integration.
So my field work at work, is progressing slowly, but I do know where it is going. I am beginning with games, work with symbols and an introduction to using those symbols as a way to express self-identity.
With this 3rd grade cohort, I am still unclear who is going to be in the group. The teacher that is most involved, has said that she supports this kind of work with her students and we have a history of collaboration, so the work will have the suport of the classroom teacher. In addition, the literacy coach, who has a masters' degree in arts in education from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been helping me as I develop the unit from which these lessons arise.
The activities from week one of eight, are as follows:
Activities
Using Symbols
Draw 2-3 symbols
What do they mean?
Where might you see these?
Here are ancient symbols/what might they tell?
Trace 3-4 symbols that seem about a story about you or your family
Pair and share,
Create a Museum of ideas
Based on symbols tell your story with words or silently (with movement)
6. Listening to story
What did you notice?
What makes you say that?
Of what does it remind you?
This is what I see you doing. The impetus of your project was a monologue workshop you conducted in the spring of this year. You mention Heather's work with the universal language of dance as a tool and I wonder where that focus has taken you in your own work.
Here is what I wonder:
Do you incorporate an element of movement/dance into your theater work?
When are you most inspired and what modalities do you incorporate most?
Where would your work take you if you didn't have to live where you now live?
Part 2
What else is there to learn about the art of directing
How can I incorporate what I have learned into my teaching artist practice?
How are directing theater and teaching dance choreography similar/different?
Directing, it seems, is merely the art of arranging. When we are directing we are using the elements of stagecraft to visualize the words of the playwright.
Directing, it seems to me, is the art of organizing material and making sense of it. Blocking, which is done to create smooth transitions with movement on the stage, and to allow the actor to be heard and the words to make sense, is simply choreography.
The best theater teacher I had in college was a dance teacher who taught movement for stage. There are many rules to how to effectively move on stage and though it is mostly common sense, and some of this craft requires a suspension of how to address and use the audience as a partner to our world of make believe. When we are on stage it is in a state of heightened awareness. Though we are striving to become as natural as is possible, there is an element of theatricality that is self-aware and formal. When I walk on stage, it is with awareness that each step is vital to the life of a character. Movement, in my opinion, is the zenith of learning and creating a character on stage.
Directing, though it seems complicated, is really about listening. When actors are onstage, using the hierarchy of importance, actors make meaning by creating a physical presence. Nothing is more important than the ways of active listening, while in character.. To learn about the art of directing means to follow strict lines of research and character development, even when the simplistic approach would be to decide when and how to move without the underlying function of motivation of each character. It is important to motivate the direction by what is actually revealed in each character’s profile and motivation.
Part 3
Directing, though it seems complicated, is really about listening. When actors are onstage, using the hierarchy of importance, actors make meaning by creating a physical presence. Nothing is more important than the ways of active listening, while in character. To learn about the art of directing means to follow strict lines of research and character development, even when the simplistic approach would be to decide when and how to move without the underlying function of motivation of each character. It is important to motivate the direction by what is actually revealed in each character’s profile and motivation.
It is apparent through this process, that the “process” is messy and real for each of us. Theoretical ideas are exciting, but in the real world of creating work there are ways of navigating that are beyond our control. When we theorize how to help our students, there are still blocks to our progress. Much of our work is advocacy, because even in the most progressive districts, there are still questions when it comes to performing arts work in the public school system. It is still viewed, in large part, as an extra, an enhancement.
That is why it is so critical to do what I am attempting; to create units, which aligns with the common core and is a crucial part of the curriculum. By doing this 8-week session, I am piloting a unit that might become a best practice in our district. From looking at Katie’s struggles, I have realized that it isn’t simply one region that questions the “extra” work we are doing. As arts educators we are primarily arts advocates in the traction of common core, testing and standardized learning. We are allowing students to have flexibility in their learning in their regimented and formulaic lives. We are giving collaboration a new definition; not just between teams of teachers, but between classroom teachers, and arts leaders. We are advocating for a new way of looking at learning. While many of our administrators are 20th century thinkers, we as advocates need to drag them (screaming, if necessary) into the 21st century of imaginative thinking and learning.
This has given me an insight into the work that I have chosen to do, with love, compassion and confusion, at times.