MY IDEAL LEARNING PLACE
(To teach is to Master...)
1. Place - similar to the meaning and spirituality that Aborigines give to the term place. A place where both my students and I can engage in learning on a much higher plane than just textbooks and assessment tasks. A place where enthusiasm reigns and creative process is the order of the day. Whether the classroom happens to be a drama studio, a theatre, a library session, a standard classroom or even an outdoor class or excursion it does not really matter. The ideal place is not necessarily an actual physical location at all. It is one in which there is an atmosphere of creative spirituality and a desire to learn more about the human condition through the practice of dramatic arts.
That said, to have a consistent and enriching space is a necessity that is cherished by children as creates an environment where one feels they are in a safe creative place.
2. Network Learning/Connectivism/Constructivist Learning - This is the ultimate model of education for Drama. This is a model of education where students 'construct' their own knowledge based on the experiential formation of ideas and concepts primarily through internet research and its subsequent implementation i.e a student researches a play on the internet - reviews, themes, the way other have played their character and partly constructs their role with this new knowledge.
It is a lot like the premise of 'personalisation' in Drama. Here an individual/actor/student constructs their own meaning and emotional sense of a role from reading the play and researching why the playwright wrote it and what they were trying to say and then breaking down each line so it makes sense to themselves. In this way a student is not simply just a parrot reciting lines, but an active participant in conveying meaning and sense to an audience from a real and truthful place within.
3. Community - This is all about Vygostky's theory which suggests that social interaction and community are a major contributer to cognition. Through a teacher's guidance and from peer interaction, students bounce knowledge off one another and learn much more than they would alone. Group work and especially working in pairs within the Drama classroom supports this theory tremendously. One is much more inclined to discover new meaning in a text or in themselves and thus a different way to approach a role with at least one other person workshopping with them.
This idea is supported by the fact that the majority of drama students learn primarily through interpersonal intelligence.
4. Reflection - There are 3 levels of reflection within a learning environment
a) Descriptive reflection - e.g describing a performance.
b) Personal reflection - e.g asking students how they think & feel about a performance. c) Critical reflection - e.g bringing outside sources of knowledge to analyse and evaluate a performance.
After a group or an individual performs a piece of drama in class, this is the time for feedback. It is invaluable for each individual to know what worked and what didn't and why. It is then my job to bring outside influences to the table to help them critically evaluate and relate their work to other pieces of drama.
5. Deep Learning - Giving students a framework in which they can access all the relevant information to engage with the full spectrum of the learning experience. (Bloom's Taxonomy - Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation) Deep learning often occurs at the conclusion of a lesson where students 'write down' what they have leant in their 'own words'. In this way meaning becomes personal to them. Distinguished from surface learning where it's in one ear and out the other by the time a student exits the classroom.
Below is the ideal way to construct a lesson to ensure that deep learning occurs - from the instructivist pedagogy of knowledge provision, through all the steps of constucting that knowledge into an evaluative capability.
New version above - Creating as its ultimate objective (re-mixing)
Old version below - Evaluating as its ultimate objective
6. Individual Gifts and Talents - each student is authentically included into the classroom by focussing on their personal strengths. Why concentrate on their weakness? They will only feel weak! Disruptive students need attention and responsibility. Provide them with meaningful tasks to develop these needs. If there is going to be disruptions within the classroom let it be due to the differences between students various gifts and talents and their individual desires to have their opinions heard and to reach their full potential!
7. Power and Freedom - Glasser's theory says that students require this to function. With good guidance this leads students to fun in learning. As a teacher it is important to be a leader rather than an instructor e.g don't tell the students how to act, with good direction allow them to discover this for themselves.
Also, it is important that students feel they have power and freedom within the physical confines of the classroom walls. Just as a teacher needs their own space and boundaries to fully function as educator, so does the student need these freedoms in order to flourish.
8. Creativity - create a learning environment where students feel safe to be creative. Encourage students to be bold and make mistakes when it comes to performing. If you are going to fail, fail gloriously. Without the creative drive humans would cease to exist! We are made by God/Mother Nature/Budda/the Big Bang etc. We must return the favour of our own creation by being creative ourselves.
Be brave, get messy, have fun and watch your standard of work develop beyond your wildest dreams!
9. Transformation of Individuals - a spiritual shift that occurs as students construct information to increase their levels of creativity and knowledge. A great teacher can facilitate this i.e a learning environment which caters for all different types of multiple intelligences. That feeling when a drama students says they hate Shakespeare at the beginning of the unit, but in helping them understand his genius they in turn love his works and one is transformed forever.
Put simply, this is the most satisfying aspect of the teaching profession.
10. Transformation of a School's Culture - If all these 9 previous steps are applied, within 5 years the entire culture of the school will have changed. This is the same as the trickle down effect from economics, but in reverse. Instead of money trickling down from rich to poor and eventually drying out, teachers have the potential to filter cultural change up: from one individual, to one class, to their own subject area, to other subject areas and subsequently to the entire school.
It is unreasonable and unfeasable to expect that every student in a school would grow to love the subject of Drama through an expert teacher alone. What is plausible though is that a culture of positivity and creativity could begin within the Drama classroom and permeate into the ethos of all the students within a school.
