You know the old saying!
“Ya can take the kid of the theater but ya can’t take the theater out of the kid!”
I’m just kidding. Nobody says that. Accept theater folk! But theater folk have a knack for saying a lot of things that Muggles – non-theater people – don’t understand! We like to keep our inside jokes a very loud secret! And maybe sing about them too…
Something people do say is:
“What in the world are you going to do with a theater degree? What’s your actual plan?”
I heard this so much growing up. But as I sat in my Diversity in the Classroom class today, I came up with a theater metaphor to describe our responsibility as teachers to look closer when a child is being disruptive, disengaged, expressing a strong emotion, etc. What I see of the student is what an audience sees onstage. But all of the things that could be driving behavior in class – trauma, an empty stomach, a recent fight with a friend, not having slept the night before – is what is happening backstage. The dreaded note that you got from a director was “Quiet backstage.” My question as a teacher needs to be: “If it’s not quiet backstage (if the student is not ready for learning) – why not? What is happening backstage that I can’t see?”
Take that all of my friends’ dads who couldn’t believe that Theater Arts was even a major!
They do still have me on the economics piece though…but hey I was prepared from a young age to make no money as a theater artists so at least it doesn’t come as a slap in the face/wallet!
After that metaphor, the connections between teaching and theater kept pouring out of me! They are everywhere! There are metaphors for practical things like don’t talk upstage AKA face your class when you really need them to hear something. And there are metaphors for social-emotional things like everyone deserves applause for being vulnerable enough to be on stage AKA every student deserves recognition for their efforts. But as I think about that daunting first lesson- opening night, if you will – I wanted to share some theater tricks and expressions that could help my fellow new teachers with first day confidence! Whether you’re a former theater kid who still says “Thank you, ten” when someone tells you how much time is left on a road trip or a Muggle who needs help “finding their light,” (stepping into the spot where the light is shining onstage), I hope these tips prove helpful!
1. The Power Pose
This video demonstrates the concept of “The Power Pose.” Research shows that standing like a super hero or, as I like to think of it , Peter Pan, can increase a person’s confidence in a very short amount of time. I used to do this before auditions all the time. If you are feeling nervous about teaching your first lesson in front of a bunch of 9th graders, stand like this before the bell rings and just breathe. You can do it!
2. Project!
If I had a nickle for every time I was told to project….Projecting is different than yelling! Yelling comes from the lungs and is shallow. Yelling sounds like it hurts because it does! Projecting comes from the diaphragm, an organ underneath the lungs that helps with breathing. As a teacher, you will be using your voice often over a loud classroom full of kids (hopefully) deep in discussion with each other. So not only is it good to learn how to project in order to be heard over your students but also in order to save your voice from harmful strain!
Learning to project starts with relearning how to breathe. As we age, we tend to shift into chest breathing patterns and forget to breathe with our diaphragm unless we are in a state of deep relaxation. This is sometimes why you feel light headed after a massage or a relaxing lie down on the beach. Your are breathing in a way that you are not used to! If you are breathing from your diaphragm, you can feel your belly extend on the inhale. You can see babies using their diaphragm’s to breathe all the time with their big bellies! Here is a very simple, but great, video to acquaint you with diaphragmatic breathing.
When you are teaching, notice where your breath is coming from. If it is coming from your chest, it is likely that you are unnecessarily straining your voice or it could signal that you are stressed. If you can feel you belly rise and fall, you are on your way to projecting and are probably feeling pretty relaxed! The National Theater has a number of helpful warm ups to help with diaphragmatic breathing as it relates to speaking, projection, and articulation.
3. The Rules of Improv
While improvisation has many rules, there are a couple that most practitioners agree upon. I strive to keep these rules in mind on the first day (and my first weeks!) when everything is new and I might feel like I got dropped in the middle of the play where everyone else knows their lines but me! When in doubt, improv!
- Yes! And…This is a rule about being flexible and embracing the uncertainty of what’s going on around you. When one actor suggests something for a scene, you don’t reject it, you say yes to the idea and you add onto the idea in order to build the scene from scrap. During those first few weeks, I am going to have to roll with the punches and say yes and to many things – students, changes to lessons, adjustments to my own expectations of how things will go. And not only will I have to say yes, but I will have to add new information to what I have learned. Maybe a lesson didn’t work the way I envisioned it – yes and….I will change X about it next time. Maybe a student already decided they don’t like me – yes and….I will take time to try to build a relationship with that student. YES! AND!
- Be flexible! The death of a good improv scene is when actors violate the first rule by saying no and/or by steering the scene in a direction it isn’t heading naturally. While expectations and norms of the classroom will guide the behavior of what happens in my classroom, I must allow for flexibility within that framework. If my class is chatty one day and silent work is just not working, I might switch the classwork to group discussion for the day. If my lesson isn’t reading, I might tweak it in the moment to see if that helps students understand content better.
- Make your partner look good! The key to a good improv scene is teamwork. Ego has no place in collaborative storytelling. One of the goals of a good improv actor is to always try to make your partner look better than you do. This reminds me to wipe my ego out of my teaching and to center what is happening in the classroom – even on the first day when I will totally be in my head – on the students and their learning needs!
If you ever want to check out some awesome, accessible improv, Whose Line Is It Anyways, is wonderful! You can see the performers using all of these rules in every single scene!
I hope these tips help the nervous new teacher who may or may not be used to speaking in front of large groups of people! They’ve helped me in the past and I’m counting on them to help me in the future!
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I have so many other theater metaphors that have helped me conceptualize some more abstract teaching concepts I have been learning about this week! I’d love to hear from former or current drama nerds on anymore that you can think of!
Amateur Hour 